ROBERT MALLARY: 
A Self-Interview
1963

Q: Why do you use the method of the self-interview?
A: Because I can ask myself the questions I want to be asked.

Q: You are continuing to work on a series of figures using old tuxedoes, tailcoats and the like?
A: Yes. I buy these tuxedoes thirty and forty at a time in lower Manhattan, impregnate them with plastic, shape them, and they become hard and permanent. Five or six tuxedoes may be used in a single work. Some I use pretty much as is; others I rip apart and shred so that they become almost unrecognizable and only a button or a lapel identifies the material as a piece of clothing. Frequently the pants and the jacket are scrambled: the pants leg becomes an arm or vice-versa. This tuxedo series evolved out of my previous work with rags, burlap and cardboard which I also impregnated, shaped and hardened.

Q: You are doing a whole group of them?
A: I have in mind a group of related works, something on the order of an “environment.” But this word is not really adequate because what I have seen of these Neo-Dada displays has been too improvised and unprofessional for my taste. I am thinking of twenty, thirty or forty figures, each complete in itself but all working together in theme. Their cohesion would be tightened further by designing walls, partitions, platforms, stands, etc. I visualize an antiseptic precision and coldness playing against the humanly frantic and dilapidated tuxedo figures. This binding and integrating environment would suggest the outscale, impersonal organization of contemporary machine civilization. Each tuxedo figure would be an entity, a complete and autonomous work, but would also be a part of— in effect, “enslaved by”— the larger ensemble.

Q: Have you made any of the figures yet?
A: A few, including Fat Man, Suicide, Wastrel, and Blue Angel. These were the first works I made using plastic-impregnated tailcoats and tuxedoes; they were exhibited in 1961. Since then I have made others, including Crucifix, The Juggler, and Cliff Hanger. I have also been making drawings and miniature jottings in a small black notebook.

Q: Didn’t you make some lithographs recently?
A: Yes. Last summer I made some prints at the Tamarind Workshop in Los Angeles. Three or four of these might be considered studies for this project. One is a suspended, or hanging, figure; another, a sprawled figure; another, a blasted figure. Just before leaving for Los Angeles I made a series of drawings in which I found myself scrawling notations— for instance, “he took a nose dive,” “caught in a trap,” “his back against the wall,” and “he painted himself into a corner.” It is amazing how pungent and graphic these phrases are and how many of them there are. I may eventually adapt some of these as titles, but so far they only identify themes. In the black notebook I have also listed about a hundred words which are graphic and descriptive in various ways of “the human situation.” They also provide me with ideas. Generally I do not like an overly explicit title, but the blatancy, banality and vulgarity of many of these phrases have a lot to do with the series I have in mind. An unlikely combination of bombast and subtlety is something I especially relish.

Q: Do these titles summarize the theme of the group of figures? Can you summarize the theme?
A: Broadly speaking, it has to do with the “human condition,” the “image of man”— those themes treated in the so-called “theater of the absurd.” It has to do with contemporary man as assailed, harassed, confused, frustrated, befuddled, desperate, and hysterical. As lonely, isolated, afraid, and alienated. As tragic, comic, and tragicomic. The attitude is ironic, sardonic, sarcastic, and just plain hateful. The figures are smashed, torn, shredded, twisted, lacerated, maimed, and broken. They are being clouted, clobbered, jabbed, manacled, tripped, crushed, run over, caught in traps, in doorways, in machinery— and are taking pratfalls. They are involved in vague happenings, mysterious projects— and rush about madly in pursuit of uncertain goals. The images are those of shock, crisis, peril, the “extreme situation”— and the absurd.

Q: Are these figures realistic, partly realistic? Are there any abstract works?
A: Some of the figures will be quite “realistic,” while others will be mangled to an almost complete “abstraction.” Some will have “heads” and others only the vaguest metaphorical suggestion of a head, or none at all. Each piece will have its own level of abstraction or even combine different levels. These multiple levels will have to be disentangled and interpreted, taking each work individually. The spectator will not be encouraged to make prior assumptions as he moves from piece to piece.

Q: Won’t the tuxedoes add a flavor of realism to every piece?
A: This seems likely. But they will also play a multiple and complex role which should result in a prevailing atmosphere of ambiguity. In the first place, the tuxedoes and tailcoats are seen as fabric and clothing with their customary associations; this provides the flavor of realism you mention. In the second place, they suggest the human body itself, even if there is no human body, or even any solid substance, within them. The human presence is evoked through stance, posture, gesture, and movement. Especially important here are the long-established and conventionalized idioms of movement as they derive from painting, sculpture, slapstick comedy, vaudeville, the dance, the animated cartoon, the theater, puppetry, and pantomime. The tailcoats and tuxedoes are the vehicles of gesture; they become metaphorical substitutes for a body which seems to have been strangely sucked out of its own skin and dematerialized. In the third place, the tuxedoes, when they are ripped open, when their inner structure is laid bare, offer also metaphorical references to human anatomy, suggesting skin, tendons, nerves, bones, organs — even fluids. A fourth possibility is that the tuxedo is seen as “pure” energy or life force unrelated to any specific gesture or body, in the more abstract pieces. A fifth possibility is that the tuxedo material is seen as “passive” and dead substance, that it seems to have little or no energy of its own but rather has been shaped by forces acting on it during its manufacture, in the present, or both. Invisible pressures bloat it from within or buffet it from without. And finally the tuxedoes, combined with the impregnating plastic material, are the sculptural medium itself, which I use as others use clay, plaster, bronze, or what have you. By the time all of these functions and roles are combined in a single work, you have the multiple metaphors, the “prevailing ambiguity.”

Q: Aren’t you trying to get a lot of mileage out of tuxedoes?
A: I grant you your skepticism; there are hazards and pit-falls. Not every combination of these multiple functions is workable. The structure of metaphor can sag and even collapse altogether.

Q: In this group of figures you seem to be presenting a “world view.” Is this personal, or rooted in the objective situation, or both?
A: Possibly I am, among other things, working out personal aggressions, sado-masochistic impulses and the like. Certainly as an artist I am always “expressing myself.” And I do take a dim view of humanity: my attitude is more than slightly misanthropic. But despite all this I still believe that the objective situation, the world, gives one ample cause for anxiety, and that my anxiety is more nearly normal than neurotic. First there is the threat of thermo-nuclear war, although this is only the most pressing of a group of inter-related threats. The question is: will we destroy ourselves? Is human intelligence inevitably self-destructive? Will the species prove to be an evolutionary dead-end? In making this series of figures I am not pretending to discuss or answer questions of this sort; as an artist working within the limitations of the plastic arts I can only register my anxiety and join others in sounding an alarm.

Q: You sincerely believe the obliteration of mankind is a real possibility?
A: Yes.

Q: Further comment?
A: Jaspers writes that what is called for is nothing less than deep and profound changes within man himself, beginning first of all within each of us as individuals. I confess I do not find his prescription very reassuring. If the prospects for peace are contingent upon sudden and profound changes within man, the prognosis is pretty grim. We have to work with what we’ve got— man as he is now with his glaring defects and limitations. Also, any exacerbation of the crisis is as apt to bring out what is worst in man as what is best.

Q: Do you think you have any answers?
A: I have many opinions, but practically nothing in the way of answers. What I do have are questions.

Q: For instance…?
A: Why don’t the United States and the Soviet Union join forces to prevent other countries from entering the “nuclear club”? China, for instance, has loudly advertised its belligerence and recklessness. Why permit China to develop nuclear bombs? Why wait until the process of “decontaminating” China and other emerging nuclear powers would itself lead to war? Aren’t the issues which now divide Russia and the U. S. of very slight importance measured against the developing threat to both countries?

Q: What do you think keeps the two countries apart?
A: Raw power— the U. S. and Russia are the two great centers of power— fanatics on both sides (left sectarianists, neo-Stalinists, as opposed to our own Birchites), and inability to identify common dangers.

Q: Would you rather be red than dead?
A: The kind of rapprochement I speak of would not require that we “go Communist;” though it might require that we modify our anti-Communism or express it in regulated ways. Personally, I would very probably rather be dead than red; the prospect of trying to create authentic art under a totalitarian régime is repugnant to me. But I do not have the right to make this decision even for my own children, let alone someone else’s. Nor do the U. S. and the Soviet Union have the right to decide whether neutral peoples are going to be red or dead, or whether all living things are going to be red or dead. To wipe out all life on earth because of this issue, or any other strictly contemporary concern, would be the most abominable immorality conceivable. This is one point on which I am myself fanatical.

Q: Do these ideas in some sense represent the “content” of your present work?
A: But for these preoccupations, I doubt that my current work would have its specific “look”; in this sense, yes. The fact remains that the plastic arts are a poor vehicle for arguing abstract ideas. What painting and sculpture can do is help generate a ferment out of which ideas, and eventually action, can arise.

Q: Are you in any sense an artist with a message, perhaps a mutant Social Realist?
A: If “in some sense” having a message makes me a Social Realist, then “in some sense”… But there is in this work no specific ideological position. There is, rather, an attitude, a broad viewpoint, perhaps ultimately a conception of the nature of man. The focus is on evil, the evil side of man, because there is the root of our difficulties. The same concern can be traced back in Western art through generations of artists: Bosch, Grünewald, Goya, Daumier, Lautrec, Rouault, Grosz, Picasso, Orozco, and many others.

Q: Are you a humanist?
A: What do you mean by “humanist?”

Q: Do your preoccupations affiliate you with any school or tendency within contemporary art?
A: Several years ago there was an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art called “The New Image of Man.” Artists of diverse persuasions were represented, including Willem deKooning, who is commonly thought of as an Abstract-Expressionist, and Dubuffet, who is commonly thought of in connection with art brut. All of these artists had the human image in common and all of them made this image monstrous— in varying degrees and in a great variety of ways. It was as if none of them could think of contemporary man as heroic, beautiful, noble or good— as human subjects were depicted in Greek sculpture or Renaissance painting. I would say I fall within this very broad “image of man” category, but that I am trying both to expand and intensify the image.

Q: Might it not be better if you laid more emphasis on the positive side of human nature, on man’s capacity for good, rational and purposive action?
A: You have a point. But insufficient attention has been given to the buried beauty within this ugliness. The focus has been largely on the obvious ugliness. I have already suggested that there is an implied optimism when an artist can continue to work at all in the shadow of the mushroom cloud. Beyond this, when a contemporary artist or sculptor recasts the human image, he generally tries to give the new contours and proportions a beauty of their own— a new and unique beauty. He restructures, remeasures, and reproportions the lines, planes, masses, and intervals. The new structure can be beautiful in a new way.

My Sycorax may serve as an example. The lengths of the legs, their mass, their degree of separation, the slight angle at which they converge as they move up, the slightly varying angle of each leg, the point at which the body starts, where it ends at the top, the divisions formed by the cracks and the surfaces and shapes formed by these— all this and more involves ratio-ing and reproportioning in a manner which I hope is right. The really “ugly” aspect of Sycorax has to do with the bulbous black forms erupting out of the central mass like proliferating tumors. But even these are ratio-ed as regards their sizes and intervals, and “calculated” as regards their wholeness or brokenness and their varying degrees of emergence from the central mass.

Q: It would appear, then, that you place great emphasis on formal values?
A: Finally, they are almost everything.

Q: What is gained by presenting the same kind of image again and again?
A: Nowadays, we artists are apt to be criticized if we stick with an image, or a problem, for three or four years. It becomes “old hat.” But art requires time and constant recapitulation to build up any given style to the point of its most perfect statement.

Q: Don’t you ever get a bit tired yourself ?
A: I have to live with these figures more than anyone else. The prevailing mood can depress me; occasionally I am tempted by other projects. But the tuxedoes and tailcoats are I believe a highly effective vehicle for projecting an existentialist vision of the utmost violence and intensity. I would like to see to what heights or depths I can carry it. I would like to develop an iconography of absurdity and anxiety just as, in earlier times, there was an iconography of Christian belief.

Q: Are you an existentialist?
A: Existentialism in the arts is more than a prevailing mood or attitude than a philosophy, like romanticism a hundred years ago. Let us just say that I am influenced by existentialist ideas, particularly its emphasis on the exercise of free will in human affairs.

Q: Your theme would almost seem to be “man as victim.” How do you reconcile this with the existential idea of man as self-determining and free?
A: There is the well-known existential image of man as “thrown” into a bleak an indifferent universe— his primary victimhood, as it were. But within limiting conditions there are possibilities for freedom. As for my tuxedo figures, I would say that most of them are resisting the posture into which they have been thrown. They are “fighting back.”

Q: Have you thought that maybe you should give up art and do something effective about the bomb?
A: If this were my only goal, I’m not sure I would be making sculpture. Perhaps I would not be working within the visual arts at all. Perhaps I would become an organizer, a terrorist, a passive resister. But primarily I am an artist pursuing the goals of an artist and seeking the spectator who can “read” or is “tuned to” my work. I am more interested in the quality than the quantity of my audience. If the present series should also have an effective propaganda impact, I certainly would not object. But this would be a by-product, a bonus. The primary intention is to make art.

Q: Do you believe that all art is equal, but that some is more equal?
A: Yes, I believe that there is a hierarchy in the arts, and in “serious” and “authentic” art. But the absurd and the comic are not necessarily trivial. In any case, sculpture can use a bit of triviality: it has become stuffy, pretentious, and remote. I plan to do some pieces which are little more than “gags,” works which are whimsical, trivial, lightweight in every way. They might be called “occasional” or “casual” sculpture. More or less like party decorations. They are expendable. At the other pole are uncompromisingly “serious” works. In between is the much larger and more important area in which I pursue ambiguity. Here are located all kinds of combinations of the ridiculous and the serious, of the funny and the not-so-funny. Here I intend that the spectator be confused as to what I cam about, whether I mean it or not, whether I am facetious or not, whether I am involved with parody or not. Here again, I would like to keep the viewer off-balance, force him to confront each work afresh, on its own terms. Once again, this has to do with the existentialist idea of focusing on the immediate and concrete rather than the generic and the abstract.

Q: Is expendability a sufficient description of your idea of “occasional” sculpture?
A: No, but it is an important aspect of it. In the ratio of scale to weight, conventional sculpture is likely to be extremely heavy— I mean physically— if only because it has been made in a traditional material such as marble or bronze. There is also apt to be a substantial investment of time, money, and material in the making of the work. It is unlikely that a sculptor will spend months or years elaborating a trivial or humorous subject— this would in fact be highly inappropriate. A kind of economics is involved. But an occasional sculpture can be lightweight in every sense of the word without our feeling that something is amiss. This informality and casualness relates it to folk sculpture— to the dummy, the effigy, the scarecrow; to dolls, manikins, and costumery. One thinks of the Chinese paper dragons or the larger-than-life-size paper and frame figures in Mexican fiestas, which are finally blown to bits with firecrackers. I can work extremely rapidly if I resolve beforehand that I am not going to let myself be bogged down with the complications of formal elaboration and if I plan the work with this in mind.

Q: What would be an example of a “serious” piece?
A: Crucifix, I would say. It grew out of a previous work, The Juggler, which also has outstretched arms. I realized that the theme was very natural for my medium; I stretch and nail these tuxedoes to the wall and the analogy to what happened on the cross is obvious. At first I postponed doing the piece because I thought of it as a sort of culminating work to end the series. This would have put it about two years hence. Then Franz Kline died. I attended his funeral that Wednesday morning and returned to the studio, moved and upset. Many of Kline’s friends, I realize, did not approve of the High Episcopal funeral— it seemed out of keeping with his character. But I was affected by the ceremony. For one thing, I was impressed by the impersonality of it: Kline’s name, as I recall, was not mentioned. Anyway, I returned to the studio and had to be active. I had to do something. I decided to make the crucifix then and there, much as Kline might have made one of his black-and-white action paintings— all at once. I tore up and pinned together five or six tailcoats, doused the whole bundle in plastic, and proceeded to separate and stretch out the pieces and nail them to the wall. The image was basically “set” in four hours. But I am still tinkering with details, technical and otherwise.

Q: Is it a kind of “in memoriam”?
A: That was not the original intent, but I think of it now somewhat in that way. I’m glad I responded to the impulse to make it at that moment; I believe it is better than it would otherwise have been. Kline is an influence in my current work: I would like to match the sweep and power of his giant black strokes in my taut fabrics.

Q: Would you like to see the Crucifix installed in a church?
A: The prospect is unlikely. It would seem to be fashioned for some churlish, coarse-grained, hair-shirted, neo-primitive Christian sect which, of course, doesn’t exist. This is a “hard” image.

Q: What do you mean, “hard” image?
A: I would like to believe it is a powerful and poignant comment on death and the Resurrection. The tattered and shredded fabrics certainly suggest decay and disintegration. The folds hang in the quiet suspension of death. But working against these are the energetic diagonals, the taut contours and fast-moving surfaces. For me, at least, these suggest a quickening of new life— the Resurrection.

Q: A critic has made references to the unorthodox ways in which you install your work. Are they unorthodox?
A: Perhaps. But after Calder and his mobiles, why should it be strange to suspend a piece such as Fat Man or The Parachutist? For the last two years I have also been making works which lean against the wall instead of hanging on it or standing free of it. I have been making others which touch the wall and the floor, and yet others which touch two walls and the floor (or the ceiling). These I call “corner sculpture.” Viewed historically, sculpture has always related to the architectonic scheme; today, we are simply trying to renew this relationship in fresh, contemporary ways. I am also very interested in the idea and function of the pedestal, or stand, and how this relates to the sculpture itself, both as it can be assimilated more tightly into the total image and as it can be made to dissociate itself from the total image. If a tuxedo figure is climbing over a partition, the partition is also a kind of pedestal. Or if a figure is suspended from a rope…

Q: You have been criticized, too, for your use of junk and unorthodox techniques…?
A: I think many of the new materials and media have proved and are proving their worth. Welding, for instance, is now quite respectable. I have been using polyester resin since 1947, and it is still my mainstay technically. I use it for practically everything: as a glue, as the binding vehicle in my cement-like and clay-like mixtures, as a painting medium, and as a varnish. I am also using a variety of other plastics and accessory materials. These materials and techniques will eventually seem quite orthodox.

Q: You have been grouped with the Neo-Dadaists, with the “Assemblagists,” with the junk sculptors, etc. Do you agree with any of these designations?
A: I relate to all of them, but do not think I fall entirely into any one category. Like most artists, I resent being pushed into any niche or category. I would like to remain mobile, to change direction many more times, if I feel there is reason to do so, before my career is finished. The contemporary artist can have multiple careers if he chooses, either concurrently or successively; it is part of the climate of freedom. My interest in found objects, junk and the like, might seem to indicate that I have no potential interest in bronze-casting. And yet for me bronze-casting could be just another degree of the hardening of these more ephemeral materials, another transmutation. I would be very interested in seeing some of these tuxedo figures cast in bronze. In fact, I plan to try it.

Q: Would you do this casting yourself?
A: I would hope to. I don’t like to depend on craftsmen or technicians; I want to hold all the reins myself. During this trip, I looked in on a group of Bay Area sculptors who have set up their own foundry facilities. Their “do-it-yourself” approach appeals to me very much.

Q: What do you think is happening in sculpture? Can you see an overall direction?
A: I think the “breakthrough” area is now in sculpture, rather than in painting. If such is actually the case, it’s amazing, because painting has been dominant for at least four hundred years. In contrast, sculpture has been a minor art form. It is interesting to note how many painters have moved over into sculpture recently and how many young artists are choosing this field over painting. The explanation is not money, because sculpture is just as difficult to sell as it has always been. Pieces of sculpture are still cussedly inconvenient and awkward as objects, particularly if the scale is large.

Q: What do you take to be the explanation?
A: Partly the crisis in painting. Painting has been in a state of high ferment for many years; perhaps it is now enervated, spent. There is still much noisy commotion in painting, but much of it is hot air and pretense. “Hard Edge,” the “New Figure,” the “New Realism”— for the most part these are repeat performances, recombinations, and small variations of venerable themes. Sculpture has been undergoing a drastic technological revolution while painting has not; this in itself has opened up many new possibilities.

Q: For instance?
A: The subject is a large one. Briefly, I feel there is a need for what might be called an “omnibus technique” in sculpture. Too many sculptors are exploiting a single technical device, and their styles derive from these devices. A larger, rounded arsenal of technical methods combining, for example, found objects, conventional materials, plastics, welding, casting, forging, compression, sand blasting, etc. is needed. But there is a big difficulty— cost. Most sculptors can afford to “tool up” only for a limited technical operation and this restricts them.

Q: What do you think distinguishes you from some of the younger artists— for instance, the “Pop” artists?
A: Their coolness and my anxiety.