Cheryl Donegan, Video Still Channelling in 4 Versions
A CONVERSATION WITH CHERYL DONEGAN
AS Bessa: The title of one of your videos at the
New Museum’s window project makes reference to Courbet. Duchamp
thought that Courbet was the beginning of “retinal art.”
Did you mean to address that issue?
Cheryl Donegan: I have come across that famous line
from Duchamp many times before (I have even heard him repeat it in
a conversation as part of a series of interviews we have on CD). It
was not that particular reference to Courbet I had in mind, but simply
the image of the famous painting where Courbet depicts himself in
the studio before an easel surrounded by a host of spectators—everyone
in his life and art swelling the studio for a look. It’s an
old idea—the theater of painting, the performance in the studio.
I think Duchamp means that Courbet’s work marks the moment where
the eye/sight becomes anonymous from the body/seeing, a rupture Duchamp’s
work denies. Maybe because I look at Courbet’s image with a
Contemporary, neurotic eye, I see it as an anxious image of vision
and presence.
ASB: I didn’t think about that particular painting,
but since you mention it, I think it does make a lot of sense in relation
to your work—the open studio as a performance, or in your case,
the performance as an open studio. It was a great idea to pair your
work with McCarthy’s. Whose idea was that?
CD: It was Laurie Halsey Brown’s idea to put
McCarthy and me together. She is the New Media Education Director
at the New Museum. She organized a series of projects in the New Museum’s
window during the McCarthy show with artists whose works were related
to McCarthy’s. I’m the only one who was paired directly
with McCarthy. I think the reason it worked was because, although
we participate in a similar legacy of performance/video/painting,
there are enough significant differences to make it interesting. I
think my work is flatter than his—takes place in a more shallow,
anonymous, and maybe desperate space—my back is literally to
the wall.
ASB: I think the pairing brought out the issue of
complexity in your work. You have been so identified as a video artist
in the past that people get puzzled when you show paintings. There
is a difficulty to understand that you are a painter, that video is
but an expansion of painting and not the contrary.
CD: Yes, it has been an issue for me in my development
as an artist. I don’t really blame people for the label “video
artist”—one could say that my strongest, most public work
has been in video. It is certainly what I am known for. Yet the investigations
I have pursued have always encompassed painting in one way or another,
either as a subject in the video, or by creating a relationship between
painting and video like the document/documentary format of the piece
“Tent.”, for example. I think the fact that I have not
produced a consistent style as a painter or that I’ve conducted
the whole thing as an experiment is troublesome for many viewers.
And in some ways for me too! I think I’ve found a more comfortable
relationship with painting with this last body of work—if that
is possible for me! I feel like for the first time I don’t have
to reinvent it for myself at every outing, but can go deeper into
a position. I’d like to think that the way I’m working
will create an appreciation that painting need not be threatened by
newer media, but can benefit by, as you said, the expansion.
ASB: What you call “inconsistent style”
or “experiment” is perhaps the most interesting aspect
of your work. It implies always being open to what is happening and,
on the other hand, a very analytical mind. I was really struck by
the conversation that we had some time ago when we discussed the work
of Michael Krebber and I realized how thorough you were in examining
his work. You mentioned going to the Armory fair just to get a certain
catalogue of Krebber’s work and I thought “Wow, that is
great!” It seems to me that you are willing to engage in someone
else’s discourse and perhaps even incorporate it into your own.
I find that extremely important.
CD: I guess that anxiety about “inconsistency”
is just a reflection of my insecurity of not having measured up to
the standards of the current context of art . . . and wondering if
it matters. I remember first hearing the term “an artist’s
artist” long ago in undergraduate school. To me, it sounded
like the highest compliment, the thing to be. Little did I realize
that many considered it the kiss of death! I guess it is a case of
being careful what you wish for! Nevertheless, I stick to my first
impression, because the artists I admire, artists like Michael Krebber,
I guess could be termed “artist’s artists.” I saw
a Krebber show at Luring Augustine a long while ago, in the early
‘90s, and I thought it was really great—a kind of painting
that I describe as loving but impatient, offhanded yet inevitable.
I’ve tried to follow his work, but he hasn’t shown in
New York since. I met him once by chance and told him how much I loved
that show. He got a great look of shame on his face when he recalled
what a failure that show was. I went up to the Armory Fair to get
a catalogue from Christian Nagel, his dealer in Cologne.
ASB: I want to go back to the issue of the studio,
or the artist in the studio, which is so central in your work. Your
use of video and painting is like a mirror device where one bounces
off the other—movement vs stillness, documentation vs representation,
and so forth. So we are constantly thinking, as we are watching the
videos and paintings, about motif vs product, situation vs representation
of the situation, etc, which are pretty much the issues that one faces
in the studio. And in this sense your work is much more geared towards
an audience of fellow artists than the usual audience. Is it not?
CD: I guess that is why I have recently come to Cézanne.
I feel I now have more understanding of what he called the organization
of sensations. He was talking about the work of seeing, not a transparent
representation or illusion of the world, in his case of nature, but
it’s gathering up as sensations, which are suspended in a matrix
between the knowledge of form and an awareness of change. It’s
why I favor a relationship to process, without necessarily making
“process art.” I’m not interested in just how something
was made, viewing residue, but I want the things I make to bear a
relationship to their making. I think the idea of things bouncing
off each other or being, in fact, versions of each other, works. In
the past, I was more literal about these relationships. Now I’m
searching for a deeper structure.
ASB: I mentioned to you before but I want to address
this issue again: when I saw a show of yours at Basilico years ago,
it reminded me of Godard’s One Plus One, and I was so happy
when you confirmed my suspicion and you said you love that film. Anyways.
The issue, or strategy if you will, of slowly building the “product”
in the presence of the viewer. Perhaps leading him/her to think that
the building is occurring in his/her mind. I think it’s devilish,
and it worked wonderfully in that installation. Everything was left
in suspension, in this “ in progress” mode.
CD: Yes, I like the way you describe this. It is
very clear the way you put it. Last night we went to see the Wooster
Group perform a work in progress. Elizabeth LeCompte made the introduction
during which she said that they were adding new material each day
and performing each night with the fresh additions. She asked for
the audience’s indulgence should they have to “stop and
start over again” as they worked to incorporate the just-learned
material. During the performance itself, one of the performers would
make a stage whisper, a false step, or a nod to another, but because
of the nature of the work itself, you were never sure if this was
truly their nakedness with the new material, a real gap in the flow,
or if these asides, too, were staged. The director put you “in
the know” with her explanation, made you feel privileged to
observe the crafting of the object in its raw stages, yet, in the
midst of the experience, it was tantalizing and unclear what was raw
and what was cooked. It left you more vulnerable, less stable in your
ability to judge. What I think is so very good about One Plus One,
and Godard’s treatment of the Rolling Stones in particular,
is that the viewer is afforded this similar type of privileged position,
witnessing the rehearsal session, observing the creative act, being
part of the “revolution” as it were in the case of the
‘60s Stones. But what is also being revealed here is the production
of an object for mass consumption—in the end, there is a certain
let down; as you hear the familiar strains of the finished version
of “Sympathy for the Devil”, you realize you’ve
been on a factory tour, not too different from watching them make
cereal in Battle Creak, only more glamorous.
AS Bessa
Brooklyn, New York
2001