Page 3 - Conversation: Rosenberg + Kaufman .... / May

JW: Performance Art suffers from that quite often too I�ve found.

FK: Well yes, it�s what you do with it, ultimately. Part of what happened with abstraction in photography was scale in that it became so monumental.  So when printing photography on a large scale it inevitably became abstraction because the marks were blurred. There was a lot of that.

JW: Do you think with regard to scale that the notion of making something bigger makes it more important by garnering greater impact?

FK: I think that did happen because there were a number of photographers who became known for doing these giant photographs.  Often what might be otherwise seen as a mundane subject matter was rendered extraordinary; the pictures worked really well because the photographers had reasons for working large.  But what happened with the next generation is that many simply copied the proportion of scale.

JW: Yeah, that�s what I�m getting at, that scale, in and of itself, is not enough. Those that make good use of it do so for specific reasons whereas imitators merely jump on the idea of scale for its own sake.

SR: Well invariably, whether its photography or painting, imitators always champion form over substance. So the work ends up looking like what it�s expected to look like.

JW: Let�s get back to something you mentioned earlier with regard to generations of artists.  Do you find that younger artists these days are tending to do that sort of thing?  Do you think they tend to go with form over substance?

SR: A few years ago when we were looking a more work then we are now, it got to a point about 10 to 15 years ago where we could tell where the person went to art school.

JW: Really? (laughs)

SR: Yes, because their work looked like the art of their teachers and we knew who was teaching at which school.

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FK: There was also one group of people who were sent by a professor and they told us that they had been told they should choose someone to copy.

JW: What? That sounds like the old �Academy� way of thinking.

SR: One of the things that I�ve been seeing as a subtext, given the young artists coming through these days, is they are not as willing to accept what they are being told anymore as the Holy Grail. It�s not a matter of just revolting but rather of recognizing that there is a lot to take in; that what they are learning is but one take on the world. So I�ve noticed that the more serious people are tending to seek their own voice much earlier then they used to.

JW: It sounds like there is more discernment among these artists. That is, of not just going along with what they are told or to rebel against that, but simply to decide for themselves.

SR: That�s some of what I�ve been seeing but I have to tell you, and I can�t speak for Fran on this, but I have been influenced in that thought process by some of the young musicians that we�ve been exposed to in our sound and music events over the past year.  As you know our assistant, David Schotzko, has been curating music to go with the art we are showing. This is a major difference from what was being done in the 60s with �happenings� where you�d throw Cunningham and Cage up on a stage just to see what would happen. It was wonderful and all good fun and kind of interesting but there wasn�t much discipline to it. What we�re seeing with some of the younger people is that they are engaged in some serious discipline, which I�ve been very impressed by.

JW:  That�s actually a very refreshing change.

FK: I think there�s another aspect to it though in that a lot of the young artists are more career-driven then artists were even 10 to 15 years ago.  They are much more conscious of where they want to be, of what galleries they want to be associated with, without losing their ability to make art.  One doesn�t hurt the other. But I think that�s because there is such much publicity about young artists being discovered very early.

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