Simmons: Emotions Emerging iin n Art

Sculptor and graphic artist Gary Simmons is best known for his ruminative “erasure drawings” in which careful chalk renderings of popular imagery are vigorously rubbed and abraded. The result, whether executed on paper or in monumental format directly on the wall, is a drawing whose familiar image seems both assaulted yet tenacious--somewhat like an ambivalent memory you can hardly bear, but one that won’t entirely go away.

Simmons, 37, was born and raised in New York and received his MFA from CalArts in 1990. A breakthrough exhibition at the former Lannan Foundation gallery in West L.A. brought him to wide attention in 1995. He now lives and works in both cities, recently joining the faculty at USC.

An exhibition of new work, scheduled to open at New York’s Metro Pictures on Sept. 15, was postponed in the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The artist spoke by telephone from Manhattan, where he traveled last week to finish installing the show, as well as to attend a memorial service for his friend Michael Richards, an artist who was killed in the towers’ collapse.

Christopher Knight: In the face of a shattering event like this, what sort of response is called forth through art?

Gary Simmons: Initially, when this whole thing happened, the last thing on my mind was doing the show. I thought, how can I do this? The gallery should just be empty for the month. But the more I talked to people the more I realized it was really important to do. People wanted to see art. People wanted to go out and see things. However long they spend in the gallery they’re taking a break from what’s outside--particularly in New York, because there’s such chaos here. Everywhere you go it’s in your face. Every street corner, all these fragments and shards of life.

*

Knight: Does that desire to see and think about art reflect the general desire in other walks of life to return to a daily routine? Or is it something specific to the idea of art?

Simmons: I think art separates a bit. People look to a certain kind of creativity that’s outside their own experience, to project themselves into it. It’s very different from, say, going to the movies. It’s so much more personal. Art is slower.

I don’t want to go over the top, but it’s like the way people use religion--they’ll go into a place where they can be by themselves to reflect. Art functions that way. It’s experiential and one-to-one. You internalize things so that you can hold on to them, whereas at a movie the experience is about everyone in the room being entertained.

*

Knight: A mass art.

Simmons: Yes. You can’t internalize a Julia Roberts movie the way you can a Gerhard Richter painting. That’s the most amazing thing about being involved in art at a time like this.

It’s still early in the emotional ballgame, but I think for a while we’ll see a lot less cynicism in art--unless this turns into a really ugly military action. Any normal-thinking person doesn’t want to see any more killing. Enough with the killing. So it depends how deeply they go with the military strikes; then art will become reflective of people’s frustrations. It will become more politically based.

For a while, though, I think we’ll see a lot more sentimentality in art.

*

Knight: Sentimentality is usually a pejorative term when discussing art--which can be a mistake. That minimizing has to do with people’s fears of their vulnerabilities.

Simmons: I agree. Particularly in New York. There is still such a raw feeling here. Facing those fears and vulnerabilities is going to come out in artists’ work. It’s such a strong emotion that, either consciously or unconsciously, it comes out. It’s probably one of the most cathartic experiences you can have.

*

Knight: Is it possible for an artist to address this traumatic event directly--say, in the manner Picasso did so famously in “Guernica”? Or does the response need to be more ephemeral or ambiguous?

Simmons: I’d have to go with ambiguous and ephemeral. I don’t think art has the same relationship to society that it did earlier in the 20th century. Art was able to have a more political impact then than it does now. I don’t think any painting or sculpture or video installation can have that same cross-cultural impact. There are so many other sources of information now that we’re visually calloused. What painting could carry the same impact of the images on CNN? There’s no way to compete with that. For an artist now to get that kind of attention would require more of a shock value, to try to compete. It would have to go toward being offensive or vulgar for that to happen now.

*

Knight: Yes, competition is the word. Visual images used to be rare, and the further back in history you go, the rarer they were. So they were intrinsically powerful. But in an image-saturated world like ours, competition among images becomes an issue.

As you were finishing your wall drawing for the show, were you conscious of how all this was affecting what you were making?

Simmons: No matter who makes what work, when you put it up at a time of such tragedy, it takes on new meaning. In the show there’s a very big [erasure] drawing of a wishing well that’s disappearing, and it’s titled “Wish You Were Here.” Twelve days ago that image had a different reading than it does now.

*

Knight: And that’s an image you’ve used before.

Simmons: Exactly. Now it has an emotional quality beyond what it already carried.

I have to say it was great to be physically working almost from the moment that I arrived in New York. There’s an emotional energy one works off of. When I do wall drawings, they’re the residue of a physical performance, and that’s affected by the emotional situation. I’m really aware of how one’s physical form is carried by one’s emotional form. You’re literally wearing your emotions on your sleeve. That’s what we do.