Frank Bowling: A Conversation
artists from downtown. But then everyone discovered that I was a painter besides writing. You know the word goes out on these mixed shows. So you try to get your work in these mixed shows. And that was when I got to the Whitney situation. Because the Whitney Annual everyone put in ...you could go to the lobby and get the curator to corne and of course, the curator has got to. I was into making these maps African maps, maps of South America, maps of Guyana. I pulled those out to show and in '69 I got into the Whitney annual. Well, I think that '71 was the first bi-annual and of course, I'm around, they put my work in the show. And it was then that I got the show at the Whitney, but I'd been there already three years or more. O.E.: I think that's very significant because in your talk you mentioned certain landmarks in terms of the constitution of the avant-garde in the United States, that is to say in ew York. Max's Kansas City, the Chelsea Hotel, Elaine's and all those places. You're talking about, also, your interest in post-colonial issues via your paintings. Taking that past and then relocating to the United States where the entire discourse was different, how did that affect the way that you worked? F. B.: I would say that once I got to the United States and realized that, if you like, I was spending all my sap to try and reflect or hold up a mirror to the dilemma late in the 20th century; the blight of post-colonial situations. It was not making a dent. I was painting these pictures, and these pictures were to me deeply felt and specific to the situation I was addressing, but it wasn't doing anything. So I gradually became more involved in painting, not just painting, but painting as total activity almost immediately after I got here. I painted some works that were sort of an attempt to have it both ways. A reference to what was consuming my interest, in terms of a human being living in this world. My childhood in Guyana. Anecdotes about my family. I kept making images, ready made images and then would sweep them away. I was painting maps... O.E.: You were interested in the post-colonial period at this time. If one were to take this period, because of the comparisons with Bacon that was going on (and it's a whole different sort of concern that Bacon had), why wasn't what you were trying to get across readily seen in these images? F. B.: Well I tell you what! It's my considered opinion that it was in the beginning. You know we were all corning out as sort of the next generation and there was no color line. We were just all coming out and then suddenly, there came the point at which you are going to go home and teach the natives.But I stayed, because there was no question of my going back Lent, 1963, oil on canvas, 72" x 144", courtesy of the artist. Journal of ContemponIY African Art· Spring 1996 EmIl Dan's Dawn, 1991, acrylic on canvas, 74" x 32", courtesy ofthe artist. because there was no place for me to go. So there I was and the question became, "What to do with Frank?" So I got the big accolade, the Shakespeare commission and then I got a job at Reading University as a lecturer, that was '59. That was the cream, I could go to the university for one and a half days a week for a salary, that was the best they could do. I took the job and I was very happy, because I was making money on the side, a little bit with my art, by selling the odd picture. The Arts Council of Great Britain bought and I was trying to get the Tate Gallery to buy. I met with their representative, and David Sylvester was very much a supporter, but there was nothing. It was a desert. I mean aU the prize exhibitions I heard about after they were over. Like the Stuyvesant. Whereas R.B. Kitaj m::!DJournal of Contemporary African Art· Spring 1996 was getting these other money prizes, Frank had been palmed off in this lecturership at Reading. O.E.: That's very remarkable because I'm thinking also, how it is no longer like going to attend an exhibition. At an exhibition, the social networks are where these recognitions are made. It's no longer that people would remember Frank Bowling based on the strength of his work. But if you kept the social network that's how you get your retrospectives. F. B.: You've said almost exactly what Danny Johnson was saying.. .it's networking. Well how deep can one resent social things? Oh, you know, I'd like to be on the mailing list, because I've been off the mailing list for so long. It's not their fault that I have not been around. I think that what I resent more, when 1 emerged in the early 70s was to compete with the other painters as a so-called "Color Field" painter. I was accepted as a contender. Like Marlon Brando, "1 could have been a contender!" O.E.: But you see that's the dilemma, because Black artists or African artists or African American artists are always positioned in this space, in the process of becoming and never really there... F. B.: That's it. Unless you're strung out and you're into the psyche as part of the imagined icons, Like Jean-Michel Basquiat. Guilt up to the hilt. Free-wheeling guilt, like the jazz musicians were; it's an American myth. The artist as hero that dies young. 1 think that this is the myth of the land. Basquiat, because he was a very clever young man. I wasn't around, so I have to take what has been said, but 1 must admit that when Danny talks about him, he talks very differently; he really felt that this guy was runaway talent, and we've seen some wonderful things by him. 0.0.: That fascinates me and worries me too. I spent most of my time in England studying. And I haven't yet figured out the mystery, that moment of amnesia, where everyone including Bill Rubins seems they get to that point and then they forget Frank Bowling is around. It does disturb me. I sometimes wonder if Jean-Michel had lived longer, could this not also have happened to him? Yes! They could erase it, but they' couldn't ignore it. I was reading Francesco Clemente's piece before I came over here. He was claiming Jean-Michel as the manifestation of his generation of the great white tradition... O.E.: But in art history that's not part of the cannon. Or that has not been admitted into the cannon. So I'm looking at these little pictures that you have been making and the ones you've made over the past few years, and I see this element of suture going on. The needle piercing clear through cloth and coming out torn apart, then reconstituted. F. B.: You could see that I was leaning on your word. It is more or less exactly how you articulated that, how I work now. Because of my concerted effort to restructure and to go to this scale I had to. I've been trying to tackle making small works for ages now. I'm actually getting by that same process closer and closer to getting it out. Now, whether it is good or not, that's something else. But I certainly feel that that is along the right line, what you just pointed out, and also my own strong feeling that a display of skill is permissible at my time of life. That it is not an arrogance necessarily; although the motivation must be that! But some inner urgency to do all the things I possibly can do as an artist to make my art. 0.0.: That's the point. When you said that, I was thinking of what Anton Storer the British psychologist said about the artist's life. You are not contesting anything. F. B.: No! 0.0.: Nor competing for anything. F. B.: No! 0.0.: You just feel like this is the time to do what you enjoy. F. B.: Yes! Also I'm not going to rule out being competitive, because it's part of the energy quotient. I'm very conscious, I want to say. That's why I don't want to leave the concept of competitiveness. I'm very conscious of all my peers like Howard Hodgkin. You name the British artist, again you can say they are my peers, but they are a little older. Like Frank Auerbach, R.B. Kitaj and David Hockney, they are conscious of all these people too. What I'm consciously feeling is that I could do all these little paintings, just do it good. Whether it looks like it's influenced by Sepik River sculpture or house decoration Bambara sculpture, or whatever, I don't mind. I just want to let it all hang out on this scale. I want to do my number. That improvisation that jazz is involved with, I'm into that. But I won't rule out being competitive, I mean, I just won't do that. F. B.: Where I'm situated, which is your question right? You know a whole bunch of us including all the people like, Al Loving and all these guys, I think that we brought an original sensibility to abstraction as a new way of making art. A new way of making painting. It evolved with the generation after 1945, with Pollock and all these people. But by the time we, the black guys got on the scene, I think we brought a new sensibility to painting that was no longer a question of bridge-building at all. We were going with the flow, and I think that we brought a very original edge to the postpainterly abstraction and color field painting which is not recognized. Al Loving knows this. I feel that I'm mouthing something that between us we've talked about endlessly. Recently when we went to visit him, he had an open-house, he was remarking that he remembered that we did think so alike, because I suppose he's been in arguments with some of the others. So, I think that he was rather surprised that when I started talking, it was like we were talking only yesterday. But I think that is not acknowledged, you know. They talk about all these shows that Black artists are in, and there are some very fine artists, with very quick eyes, very smart people, doing a new kind of theater and bringing their special understanding of the world to it. When I hear about some of the events that David Hammons has done, I actually am going sort of "What?" because I couldn't conceive of it, I wasn't around to see it. But he did some things that really did draw people's attention. But I think that the avant-garde in terms of