In the spring of 1988, Robert Moskowitz was interviewed on several occasions by Linda Shearer, curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The following is a compilation of those interviews, which was published by Thames and Hudson in association with and on the occasion of artist’s retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in June 1989. This exhibition later traveled to La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, CA, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.

Linda Shearer

The first of your paintings that I saw, in late 1969-early 1970, were the monochromatic, so-called corner paintings. By then you had been working seriously as an artist for ten years. 

Robert Moskowitz

I began those paintings around 1965 when I was interested in images of furniture and architecture. I had gotten a little book on interior decorating--how to decorate your house--that I found fascinating. But what really intrigued me was the drawing of the room where you put the furniture. The room was incredibly pure because the furniture was what was important. And so I started drawing a room related to the room in the book. Then I began to refine it, taking out things like the columns. I ended up with an almost symmetrical room; it was like looking at a corner, with nothing in it.

LS

What was the scale?

RM

At first, the paintings were different sizes, but all small, some eight by nine inches. I was working in oil; I decided they had to be bigger and more physical. l tried making paintings nine by fifty inches, but the oil paint didn't work on that scale. So I used acrylic on the same size canvas, but that wasn't large enough. Then I went to ninety by seventy-five inches, and that became the size I worked with for a very long time. It's related to the body, with a little extra room. It was also the largest size painting I could get out of my studio without folding it. So I guess it's also related to a door, getting out of a door. 

LS

How long did you work on the corner paintings? 

RM

Nearly five years, up until around 1970. I would make a drawing first, a schematic of what I wanted to do, blow it up and transfer it on to the canvas. Those line drawings let me really work on the painting. The paintings themselves were just atmosphere with the paint laid on and built up closely. I worked mainly with blues and violets. I always thought the blue was physical and the violet more cerebral.

LS

I feel a special attachment to those paintings because they were the first of your work I had seen. But now I realize those five years were a key interval between your earlier work—the collages—and the paintings with images with which you are now most closely identified 

RM

That period really was important because it was a time of transition. I wanted to restrict or keep some of the image, like the corner, but also concentrate on the painting process itself. 

LS

I also remember being astounded when I heard about the class you were teaching then at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore. 

RM

It was a painting class during which I'd show slides of paintings I liked. I didn't base it on dates or anything like that; it was based on the alphabet—the way things are listed in the library. I started with Albers and ended with Warhol. 

LS

Well, I was impressed. 

RM

You have to remember I had never really been to school, so that seemed the only logical approach. I mean, I had graduated from high school, but I wasn't a good student. As a painter, I had to find a way of teaching that made sense to me.

LS

Yes, and what struck me was that the literal approach to a survey seemed perhaps even more revealing than a conventional history. Tell me more about your early years.

RM

I come from an immigrant background in Brooklyn. All my friends' parents were hard working and wanted their kids to go to college and become accountants or doctors. But my family had split up by the time I was around twelve, and my mother didn't have those expectations of me, which in a way was lucky. Even though I took academic classes in high school, I was more inclined toward putting things together physically. So I had a hard time in school; it was difficult to concentrate. Because I didn't do well, I couldn't go to college. And because my father had left us, it was really up to me, as the oldest male child, to find a job and help support my family. 

LS

What happened after high school? 

RM

I went to trade school at night. I went for three years, taking mainly mechanical drafting and working at odd jobs during the day. Just before I graduated, friends from the school helped me get a job as a technical illustrator out on Long Island at the Sperry Gyroscope Company. I made three-dimensional diagrams using drafting tools—ship's curves, ellipse templates, triangles—things that I still use a lot in my work. 

LS

Did this experience help you decide to become an artist?

RM

The main thing about working there was the friends I made. I'm still close to Tom Russell. He was involved with art, and we'd go to look at art together, like to the Museum of Modern Art. That was my entry into looking at art. 

LS

Was there any work in particular that had an impact on you at that time? 

RM

I remember a [Joan] Miró painting at the Modern. It had one little black dot and a line; it was very minimal. I was taken with it--with how you could make a painting with so little and still have it be so dense. 

LS

When did you actually take studio courses? 

RM

Tom and I both wanted to be graphic designers. Sperry would help pay for night school if it was related to your work for the company, so we decided to go to Pratt [Institute of Art]. But in order to take graphic design you had to present a portfolio. So, I took a comprehensive class, mainly fine art, with Robert Richenburg, to put together my portfolio. He was very encouraging. Around then I started to think that maybe I could be an artist. 

LS

Didn't you study with Adolph Gottlieb at Pratt? 

RM

He was teaching an advanced painting class, and I really wanted to take it even though I wasn't actually eligible. But Gottlieb let me try it and I loved it. Twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, three hours, seven to ten. 

LS

So that was your first experience with painting? 

RM

It was basically my first true, formal experience, but what was so amazing was that Gottlieb was there and he was a working artist. 

LS

Did you know his work? 

RM

He was pretty well known, but I hadn't actually seen his work. He had a show at the Jewish Museum while I was one of his students. He was a great teacher and also very supportive. But I remember he would get impatient if you talked about doing your work commercially or if you worked realistically. You had to work abstractly in his class. He really thought that contemporary artists should do abstract work. But, you know, I always thought of his work as realistic. His paintings were like landscapes to me. 

LS

Were you aware of the other Abstract Expressionists? 

RM

Sure, because Gottlieb used to speak about them frequently. And I was so hungry that I went to see shows all the time. But I was most involved with Gottlieb and [Willem] de Kooning's work at that time--in other words, more expressionistic work. It's odd because it's as if I started with Abstract Expressionism and then worked my way back. Gottlieb used to talk about the roots of Abstract Expressionism and how he felt there had been a big break with European tradition. He spent a lot of time in the Southwest, which, of course, is reflected in his early Pictograph paintings. I don't think of the images I paint as pictographs in that sense, but perhaps there is a connection char I hadn't thought of between Gottlieb's early paintings and my later ones. I want my images to have a clear meaning, even a metaphoric one. Gottlieb said you could say his work relates to Miró, for example, but he didn't want to be compared or categorized. I remember that he pulled out of the "Nature in Abstraction" exhibition [1958-59] at the Whitney [Museum of American Art] because he didn't like the title. He got angry and felt they were misinterpreting his work. 

LS

He felt his work was totally abstract, without any references? 

RM

I think all those artists saw their work as having no illusion. But I don't think there is such a thing as totally abstract, totally pure. I don't think any Abstract Expressionist came close to it.

LS

What about Piet Mondrian? 

RM

Not even Mondrian; I think of him as a Flemish landscape painter. I think someone like John McCracken comes closest, but even his work relates to surfboards and industrial materials. 

Eventually, I started getting more involved with illusion and contradicting everything I was taught. Gottlieb thought everything should be flat on the picture plane and you should see paint as paint, not in spatial terms. I want some kind of figuration or something that is recognizable in the work and that can have symbolic meaning. 

LS

Why do you think he was so adamant about it? 

RM

I don't think he ever wanted to admit to any references or ties, mainly because I think it took so much for the Abstract Expressionists to break away from Europe. He'd get very uptight if you said his work related to nature. 

LS

But nature is important to you, isn't it? What about Clyfford Still, for example? 

RM

Still's work, for me, has a definite feeling of nature. It reminds me of the Southwest, like Canyon de Chelly with all those amazing shapes everywhere. The grandeur in his work is related to that landscape.

LS

And both [Barnett] Newman and [Jackson] Pollock had made references to nature in their early work, for example, Newman's Tundra [1950] or Pollock's Sounds in the Grass series [1946].

RM

Newman's work, for me, has a really strong sense of an interior or architectural space but still a space, a forceful space. A painting by Pollock makes me think of a grand space outside, a much more natural space. Space has an incredible presence in Pollock. 

LS

And, of course, in a very personal way Jack Tworkov was important to you as you were evolving your own ideas about Abstract Expressionism as well as your own art. Had you met him while you were studying with Gottlieb? 

RM

No, I met Jack after meeting Hermine [Tworkov's daughter and Moskowitz's wife], which was in 1961. But I knew his work, and he was somebody who was always interested in new work. And, of course, Jack became very important for me. He was like a father because I never really had one. He was a teacher, too, but different because I was married to his daughter and he was a well-known and respected artist. And when I did get to know him he had his own ideas about abstract art that were different from mine. Even though I was no longer working abstractly at that point, he helped me understand what I was doing. 

LS

That's right, your work changed considerably after Pratt, when you spent a year in England. 

RM

Yes, I lived outside London in an extraordinary studio—like a one-car garage—from mid-1959 to mid-1960. There were a number of studios; the whole complex had been a school. Each studio was about twenty by thirty feet with a huge skylight going up thirty feet. I spent most of my time doing collages, and then, toward the end of my stay, I took down the window shade from the skylight and started using it. 

LS

What do you mean? Did you use the shade as a found object or as a material to paint on? Was it primarily the physical surface that attracted you to the shade? 

RM

I literally used the shade, which was really old and had a fantastic surface, putting it on the canvas with rabbit-skin glue. It was as if I was working abstractly but with something very real. I had been doing collages--gluing fabric down and painting on top of it. I think I saw the shade mostly in terms of a material to work with; it had an incredible quality. 

LS

And when you returned to New York you continued to use window shades, right? 

RM

Yes, but there was no way I could duplicate the fabric of the window shade from England. I found I was interested in different qualities of the material, how the sun changes it over time, for example. But objects in New York never have the sense of time or history that you find in England. I loved the atmosphere of history there and the feeling that art is part of the world. 

A whole world opened up for me in England. But it was impossible to continue doing what I had been doing there. So back in New York I gradually began to focus on the image of the shade itself and that brought into play a whole sense of psychology. 

LS

How? 

RM

By my thinking about window shades—what they mean, what they are. The realization that I was focusing on an image was perhaps my real break with Abstract Expressionism. At first, here in New York, I used the shade alone, concentrating on its shape. Soon, I included the string and the pull, which made the image unmistakable[3].

LS

So, you were becoming conscious of the, let's say, metaphoric implications--such as a painting as a window. 

RM

Yes, I realized that I was using an image. I didn't know exactly what the image meant or what its ramifications were, but I knew it was an image and I was attracted to it. I wasn't sure what I was getting into, but I knew it was something different. I was aware of what Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were doing and interested that they were working with images, too.

LS

And with that play between the flat surface and the illusion? 

RM

Definitely. 

LS

Didn't you start showing around this time?

RM

Ivan Karp, who worked for Leo Castelli at that time, was the first dealer to see my work. He brought Bill Seitz [associate curator at the Museum of Modem Art] over to my studio, and Bill included my work in "The Art of Assemblage" at the Modern in 1961. Around the same time, Leo Castelli saw my work and asked me to send some pieces to the gallery. I remember seeing my window shades in the back room next to a Pollock, which was really exciting. Castelli started selling my work and put me in some group shows. I remember walking into the unemployment office and saying it was okay, that I no longer needed their money. They asked me if I'd gotten a job and I said not really, but I felt confident enough at that point to go off unemployment. 

LS

You had a one-person show at Castelli in 1962. Did you know artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, who were also starting to show there?

RM

I had become friendly with [curator] Henry Geldzahler, [art dealer] Dick Bellamy, and Ivan. They took me to see Lichtenstein in New Jersey, at Rutgers [University]. I liked his work a lot. And Henry took me to see Warhol's work. I was inspired by what they were doing, but I wasn't doing the same thing. 

LS

Their work was more concerned with the media and popular culture, whereas yours was based on found and assembled objects. 

RM

Right, and I also think my work is more rooted in traditional art, in Modernism, while theirs represents more of a break with the past, partly because it is directly related to a commercial process. I was attracted to what they were doing, but their work always had a kind of accessibility that mine has never really had, except perhaps only recently. Their frame of reference was always of a public nature, whereas mine has tended to be private. 

You know, now I think perhaps Pop art did have an influence on me. Some of the images I use are Pop in a way. I mean Rodin's Thinker is almost a Pop image, not unlike Leonardo's Mona Lisa.

LS

What happened after your 1962 exhibition? 

RM

I think Pop art really took center stage for a long time and that made it difficult for anyone else to get in at that point. In certain ways that was good for me because basically I withdrew into the studio and concentrated on my work. By 1963 I had become interested in oil paint. I had been looking at American artists, Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe, for example, and found myself drawn to the kind of surface their paintings had as well as the kind of imagery. I decided I really wanted to learn how to paint with a brush. But, curiously, I started putting actual objects on small paintings, a little chair, for example—a miniature replica of [John F.] Kennedy's rocking chair, which I attached to an eight-by-nine inch canvas.

LS

When was that? 

RM

Around 1964. Two of those pieces were stolen from an exhibition, and I decided from then on to just paint. I wanted to work very flatly—another very important decision. Then I just evolved into the corner paintings. 

LS

What about the envelopes? They were a logical extension of the window shades, don't you think? 

RM

They were done in 1962 and 1963, and you're right, they probably have to do with closing off or covering up, like the shades. 

LS

Along with the potential or implication of opening something. 

RM

That's true—something behind something, abstract and real at the same time. What was also interesting was that envelopes are flat—so flat I thought I could paint them. I never thought I could paint the shades. I could make drawings of them, but those drawings are like rubbings or impressions. That time—1963-66—was all about learning how to paint and working with images. 

LS

What other images did you use? 

RM

Besides the envelopes, paper bags and airplanes going by windows, all of which led to the corner paintings. 

LS

The corner paintings were made at a time when Minimal art was prominent. Did you see your work as part of the Minimalist aesthetic? 

RM

I have always been attracted to empty spaces or minimal things. Maybe today you could say those paintings relate to Minimalism, but I don't think they did at the time because I was working with an image and Minimalism was not associated with images then. The paintings do, however, have a definite purity, a kind of resolved quality, and they are monochromatic. 

LS

I've always wondered if Ad Reinhardt's work figured in those paintings at all? 

RM

I have known Reinhardt's work since l was a student with Gottlieb. But when I made the corner paintings I was thinking about how I could make them work logically. I think the surfaces and the close tonality were necessary for the paintings to work. It wasn't until I finished that I saw a relationship to Reinhardt. 

LS

Reinhardt had a strong interest in oriental art, and I know you've had a long involvement with Zen Buddhism and meditation. Do you see a connection there? And can you articulate what role you think it's played in your work? 

RM

You could say the paintings have a meditative, perhaps hypnotic effect. But I am reluctant to talk about it in relation to my work; it would be presumptuous, I think. I have studied with a Zen teacher and have sat for nearly ten years. I practice zazen, the form of Zen that concentrates on sitting or meditation; you discover things through yourself. Instead of looking out, you look in. It's been very healthy for me, almost a form of therapy. 

LS

I tend to see all your work in terms of absence and presence, one always implying the other. Do you think that's related? 

RM

Possibly so. Even though they are empty, I think of those corner paintings as needing things coming in. If you empty out, other things come in. There has always been contradiction in my work, I know that; there's inside and outside and positive forms turning into open spaces that look as if they should be filled but aren't. There's nothing there; you look through it. I think it may have something to do with my feelings for my father. While l was in therapy my father played an important role, but at one point I realized our relationship was gone and I gave him up. I think that might have something to do with the sense of having nothing there

and something being there. Possibly becoming an artist had something to do with filling this void. Becoming an artist was my way of going into myself, discovering and learning who I am. Art can be like nature, and as an artist you become part of nature and the world. Maybe that is in my work as well. 

LS

It is safe to say that many contemporary artists, especially musicians, have been drawn to Eastern concepts--perhaps out of disillusionment with the West. Has that been true for you? 

RM

Well, even though I think my art is rooted in Western traditions, much about Western culture has been disappointing for me—mainly the intensity and speed associated with the sense of time in the West, which is related to materialism and the pace of the world at this time. The idea of focusing on a single image becomes a form of meditation. But I think the space in my work is definitely a Western space, and perhaps most important, the psychology of my work--what it means--is totally Western. For me, many of my later pieces are figures trying to make emotional contact, Skyscraper II and III [Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim] or even The Mittens [Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim], for example. 

LS

In a strange way the corner paintings were meditative not only in their visual effect but also in that you kept repeating the same image for nearly five years--it was like a mantra. 

RM

Exactly, the corner became like a tape--a tape that plays all the time in your head, repeating, like a loop. I began to realize I wanted to get away from that kind of purity. I really felt a need to loosen up, start dripping, start painting again in a different way. 

LS

So, you could say those paintings were so resolved, and, therefore, restricted, that you had metaphorically painted yourself into a corner? 

RM

Right. Two things actually happened: first, I needed to change and stir things up; and those pictures were so pristine that when they started going out for shows, they got marked up. I think it was a combination of the works getting damaged and my desire to do something else. Then I decided I might as well mark them up myself. I began by putting the architectural form on in a very mechanical way and then working on it spontaneously. I was interested in seeing what kind of images I'd come up with as well as in creating two kind, of spaces--the illusionistic space of the corner and another, two-dimensional or nonillusionistic, space. It was as if l was violating the surface, and I thought to myself, that's not what you're supposed to do, but then I thought I really had to do it. 

LS

What were the results? 

RM

At first, the marks were very abstract, drips really, in Day-Glo colors, with the overall painting getting darker and darker. I had seen a theater set that I know influenced my tendency to darker colors instead of the blues, grays, and lavenders I had been using. Around 1972 images started coming out. At first, they looked like interlocking rings, which made me think of Brancusi and his Endless Column [1937]. Soon, I started to isolate the image and began to feel I no longer needed the corner structure. In 1973, when I was sketching, I made a study of a chair, which worked into The Perfect Painting (for Michael Hurson).

LS

Were you aware of other artists also using images at that time? Did you feel you were part of something that was larger than yourself? 

RM

Michael Hurson and I have been friends since the early 1960s and have always been supportive of one another's work. I knew Joel Shapiro's sculpture, and it was around that time that he began working with images. Susan Rothenberg hadn't yet begun her horse paintings, and I wasn't really aware of Neil Jenney's work. I remember Richard Marshall first approaching me about New Image Painting (1978), the exhibition he was organizing for the Whitney, and it seemed an interesting idea since there weren't that many people working with imagery. But I also remember feeling compatible with Jon Borofsky. I felt he used his counting as a structure the same way I was using the corner. 

LS

I'd never thought of that. That's interesting because he moved to actual objects and personal dream imagery at that same time, the early 1970s, but never dropped the counting. 

RM

I remember talking to him about my untitled duck painting from 1974. He liked it a lot; he recognized and identified with the feeling of vulnerability that I had felt about it myself. 

 LS

By the mid-1970s you had clearly established your mature style. I'm interested in your process. Do you start with an image?

RM

I always have an image. I might not know exactly what it means, but you could say the image is the idea. First, it's intuitive--I'll want to paint a particular image. Later, I find out what the image means to me, usually after the painting is finished. I'm never quite sure why I realize one image or another. 

LS

I remember you said that for a long time you had carried around in your head the chopstick image that went into Cadillac/Chopsticks [Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles]. 

RM

Yes, and the Cadillac, too. That's probably the case with most of the images I use. The painting becomes something believable and takes on a life of its own and goes beyond making a literal statement. A sort of transformation takes place. I don't think you can ever perceive the entire process of nature; it's too dense You see one square inch of something. I don't think you can ever possibly perceive a person completely. 

LS

Is that why you rarely paint people? 

RM

The first blood creature--organic, that is--was that duck and I have painted people, like Swimmer (1977) [Collection Whitney Museum of American Art].But that figure is pretty anonymous, there are no details. I have never been interested in realistic representation. It would become too distracting; I don't want to lose my own sense of the image. I want to protect the image I have in my mind. 

LS

You've used other works of art, Rodin's Thinker, for example. 

RM

And Brancusi and Giacometti. What they have in common is that they are all sculpture. I'm really interested in taking sculpture and making it two-dimensional. When you think about it, all the images I have used since the corner paintings have been forms from buildings, nature, monuments, objects, and landscapes as well as other art. But I'm also interested in the psychological aspects of these images. It has to get beyond its initial meaning. For example, I've been working on an Academy Award picture, you know, the Oscar. But even though it's abstract, I can never get past the meaning of the Oscar itself. So, I just can't make it work; whereas I think some sort of transformation takes place in paintings that work. And that transformation relates to all the art I'm attracted to--it changes constantly and goes beyond illustration, which for me always stays static. 

LS

Let's go back to Cadillac/Chopsticks and talk more about the origin and motivation for those images. 

RM

I put the Cadillac on first and I realized it needed something else. I began thinking about what was really far away from a Cadillac; the chopsticks that I had been carrying around in my head for ages seemed logical. I always wanted to do a painting with chopsticks; I especially liked the crossing of the chopsticks. If you are standing, you focus on the Cadillac—it is at eye level. Then, I thought, I'd like something if you are sitting on the floor-the chopsticks. Eventually, it became an East/West painting. So, you see, there was a situation where the images were chosen on a gut level and the meaning came from this very organic approach. 

LS

What motivates you to repeat some images in different media? The image stays the same, but what changes most is the background. 

RM

Yes, one might be pastel and another graphite, and the way I apply it makes a big difference. The image in relationship to the medium is what makes it compelling for me. The image also has to be strong enough for me to rework it. 

LS

It seems as if you have become more involved with the physical act of painting or applying the medium in the background. 

RM

When I'm working on the paintings I don't even know if I think of foreground and background. Basically, I work with two areas, trying to keep them separate. They can easily slip back and forth for me, and it isn't as simple as the image always occupying the foreground space. I use an image more than once because I want to put it in different contexts or light—change the mood or tone. Sometimes it has to do with scale. For example, the first version of Skyscraper (1978) wasn't large enough. The second version is larger, but for me they are both early-morning paintings. The third version has a smokey-red background. 

LS

How do the drawings differ from the paintings?

RM

The act of drawing itself is more obvious, more direct than the painting process. There's a greater spontaneity in the drawings; it just comes naturally. For example, Eddystone (1979) [Collection of The Museum of Modern Art] is very subtle, especially the area of the light, which is raw canvas—I got it by letting the ground come through. It came about by working everything else on the painting. 

LS

That goes back to our discussion of creating a presence by a form of absence. 

RM

Well, yes. When people look at my work I want them just to discover it in a quiet way—not unlike when you' re walking down the street and see something and then realize it's just there, in a very physical or literal way. I think what really first attracted me to art—and wanting to become an artist—was the pure physicality of it.

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