An Interview with John McCracken


NW: So, John, I have spent some time over the last few weeks looking through the sketchbooks, and it seems to me that they are like a Rosetta Stone — by which I mean it seems to have many aspects of your later and current practice encoded in it. And I'm curious about the extent to which you see that period (1964–1966), and by extension the sketchbook, as creating a blueprint for your career.

JM: Yeah, I can see that as a really cogent and interesting way to look at the sketchbook, although I haven't thought of it as a Rosetta Stone, or encoded in any way. At the time, for me, it was mostly a visual concrete memory. I was sketching and visualizing things on paper that I was interested in and thought I might like to make at some point. I felt free, like I could go ahead and visualize my ideas. Some of the pieces I made more or less right away and others I let lie. I came back later and thought, well, maybe I'll make that, maybe I'll extrapolate from this sketch and make something. And there were lots of sketches in the sketchbook where I put a little check mark next to something, which was a reminder to come back to that idea, a note to myself that said "make that."

NW: Which one of the drawings was the first to be realized as a sculpture? Or, rather, what was the first relationship between a drawing and a real life piece?

JM: The sketchbook starts off with things that are spinning off of the paintings I was doing at the time, so the first few pages relate to that. The first piece to be realized was really a transitional thing between painting and sculpture. It's a relief kind of thing— painted with blue lacquer, two feet square and two or three feet deep, and recessed in the face with both a red horizontal piece and, below that, a slot. For me, it was as if the idea leapt off the wall from painting, to this relief, to sculpture. So, the first sculptures I began making were those slotted pieces.

NW: The first pages of the sketchbook you mention, from 1964, begin with a series of geometric abstractions. These are formal variations on a square. By the following year they seem to have become three-dimensional and, I think you've said, they were like imagined photographs of buildings. What kind of architecture was interesting to you at the time?

JM: The architecture that interested me the most was ancient Egyptian stuff. It was just so aware of strong form and positive and negative space — and just abstract form. A few of the ancient sculptures too, struck me as being powerful in that way. As far as more modern architects, I think of Mies Van der Rohe. I like his stuff a lot.

NW: You were living in California at the time, correct? So you must have been aware of this mainly through photographs?

JM: Yes. I grabbed onto Art Forum and various other magazines and just sort of psychic-traveled through their pages to see the work of the world [laughter] besides looking in art history books, and all that, of course.

NW: I'm also curious about the literature that you were absorbing at the time. Were you interested in science fiction at all?

JM: I was always interested in science fiction and had science fiction around me in the house. I remember when 2001: A Space Odyssey came out, people thought that I had designed that monolith. I didn't [laughter], but it could have well been that my work was influential.

NW: That was 1968 I think. It seems to me that the monolith is an attempt to represent abstract intelligence, and therefore it's on a parallel with what you're doing.

JM: Exactly. I've always wanted my works to be almost like individuals — but by that I mean more like beings . . .

NW: Right.

JM: . . . and my work is not necessarily mysterious, but then ... maybe mysterious too, actually [laughter].

NW: Certainly they have the capacity to carry mystery.

JM: Yes. There is one analogy I have used, though it seems a little corny at times. But sometimes I think, well if I were an alien or a visitor to this planet and I wanted to leave something here, what would I leave? My sculpture has been an attempt to embody that notion. I would like to leave a form that is done in such a way that it evokes or talks or speaks to us in some way.

NW: I am also interested in the way the colors in your work draw from a primary industrial palette, like Donald Judd or a similar sort of range as his anodized metals. In terms of color, and also to some extent with form, how much were you influenced by industrial design? You refer to refrigerators, ovens and electrical components and that sort of thing as a source of inspiration. Another way to phrase this question is that I am interested in the way that you're using these very quotidian, mass-produced objects to create objects that are very singular, both in presence and appearance. Does that relate in any way?

JM: In a way . . . hold on, I'm looking for my drink. I've lost it here. Maybe I'll pour another one . . . [laughter] OK, good, maybe I'll rattle on here a little bit sideways now.

NW: Sideways is the best way [laughter]. Sometimes the only way.

JM: [laughter] I thought of color as being abstract, as having a kind of quality where if you could make a form that is made of color, that from the outset it would be oddly abstract already. Whereas, if it's made of wood, the wood itself gives it a recognizable aspect. I think the same of form itself. If you make a form that is too reminiscent of a refrigerator, or a microwave or something, it's apt to bring that to mind and distract from pure form. So I try to make forms and I try to use color in ways that keep the abstraction central, so that the piece itself, the sculpture itself, can have it's own being.

NW: Right.

JM: I try to make beings that are separate from the world but in the world, in a way. You know when you see an abstract painting and you see a horse's head in it or a sheep or something? After that point, you can't see the painting anymore because you only see the horse's head.

NW: Exactly. I recall reading in one part of the sketchbook a section where you're talking about the distillation of the essence of these objects, or as an endeavor to seek the essence out of them. This is, in some ways, parallel to what Bruce Nauman was doing with psychological realities. What was your relationship to Nauman at that point?

JM: I did respond to some of his work, back then. I remember one thing he did that was like a hanging piece of rubber. Already it felt like part of an octopus and other things that were made out of negative shapes, that had being or form in a way that I could respond to. But artists that were more seminal to my way of thinking were Barnett Newman, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, and at the time Bob Morris; they were all making things that were interesting.

NW: Yes. Right. What do you think about the relationship to Newman? How do you view the translation of objects into paintings and paintings into objects?

JM: Do you mean literally trying to mix the two mediums, or trying to relate one to the other?

NW: I'm thinking particularly about your use of color as structure, which possibly had been done in painting, but hadn't been lifted off the wall, as it were.

JM: I see. It's always seemed to me that painted sculpture usually produces a combination that doesn't work. I did consciously try to avoid that. I experimented, but in the end tried to avoid that type of thing. You have to have unity, otherwise you end up with a kind of confusion, or a combination of things that leaves you with two or three things that don't work together. Like the sculptures by David Smith; a few of his pieces were painted and weren't nearly as successful as his pure stainless steel pieces. They lost the subtlety and singularity.

NW: One of the interesting things in looking at the sketchbook is that you talk about the use of color as a structural material and its quality with regard to, I don't know, the translucency, depth, and density and so on. Yet color rarely appears in the sketchbook. Was that a conscious decision to do with the materialization of color, that it couldn't be or shouldn't be illustrated?

JM: Not really...

NW: ...In several places in the sketchbooks there are lists of color that, I imagine, you included because you were interested in them.

JM: That's an interesting thing to bring up. There's a little bit of color in the sketchbook, but I guess it was primarily form that I was trying to get down on paper. The color would then come kind of later, or be in my mind, as the material I'd make it out of. Some how I didn't feel ... Even up to now, when I go about making colors, I don't know really what color I'm going to make until I start making it.

NW: Really? I didn't realize that. But that's never true of the finish or texture of the work. Or is it, on occasion?

JM: It has been on occasion. I've experimented with matte finishes and some metallic paint finishes early on. But that's the part that usually just comes up when I'm actually materializing a piece.

I'm sometimes thought of as a colorist. But my main thing is form. Hopefully, intelligent form, or meaningful form, or embodied form, or form that's alive. I want to make forms that can make it in the world. That can stand or lean or hang or lie or whatever. They can be in the world and get away with it. That's what attracted me to the artists that I felt were strong. Their pieces had a life unto themselves.

NW: Was there an expressive quality to your use of color?

JM: You mean, did I feel it was an expressive aspect to the work?

NW: Yes. I'm specifically wondering about the color.

JM: Yes, at times. A blue column could be a piece of sky, neatly carved out and polished. Or something red, of course, has more excitement to it, in terms of color. I didn't think of the color as being especially expressive, but simply as conducive to embodying the material. I don't know if I answered the question or not.

NW: No, no. I think that does. What are your thoughts about the relationship between art and language? Your objects suggest a grammar and syntax and form. But they are incredibly resistant to description. I wonder if you regard sculpture as an attempt to create a non-verbal language, or to at least transcend language's limitations?

JM: Hmm. That's a good question. I know my work has been difficult to write about, even by me! [laughter]

NW: In the very best way, I think. It's resistant to description, which isn't to say it's difficult to write about.

JM: Actually, John Coplans once said to me, "If you can describe a work, you really have your criticism." I don't know how true that is, but you know, it's kin of a way of looking at it. I do try to make things that are mysterious, but sometimes it kind of mystifies me that they are so mysterious. [laughter]

NW: [laughter] The infinite regress of mystery.

JM: Yes [laughter]. A person will walk up to a piece of mine and say, "What color is that?" Often the faceted pieces are the most mysterious. Each side or facet can look like a different color and people will literally think that they are painted different colors, when of course they aren't.

NW: Right, right. Exactly.

JM: You're trying to perceive an object and you can't really tell what you're looking at. I like that. Later on, I made stainless steel things that are highly polished. Once in awhile those pieces can just disappear in the room.

NW: I've noticed how much the color pieces absorb and reflect the ambient conditions.

JM: I'm glad you brought that up. I like that aspect too, and I like to foster work that actually is in the world, but separate from the world, yet includes the world too. It's really frustrating for photographers to deal with that. I think that's appropriate in a way too. We're like that, in a way. There's a metaphor . . .

NW: Exactly. Exactly. Carry on . . . The metaphor?

JM: The most cogent metaphor is this: what art needs is the same thing that humans need — and what real art has is what real humans have. There is separateness from the world, but activity with the world; we're a little bit victimized by the world but we also make the world. All that stuff about individuals and how you can know them really well, but the next time you meet they are really different.

NW: That's very interesting. Somewhere in the sketchbook you annotate one of the drawings of the sculpture with the question "Don't ask me why they're here." I was wondering to the extent that the sculptures present themselves as rhetorical questions.

JM: Ok. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was when I was doing those slotted sculptures.

NW: Exactly. Yes.

JM: My thoughts had to do with pure invention. You open your mind and you're just purely inventing. When I started doing that, I had this odd feeling like I was channeling things into the world, that I didn't quite understand myself.

And I still try to allow that to happen. Often when I mix colors I adopt an attitude or state where it's almost like I listen to paint voices in my mind [laughter]. "Ok, a little more white, a little more blue." And I say, "Ok, let's do that." Not that I'm out of control or really channeling but it feels that way. I'm just allowing a pure, creative thing to happen.

NW: It's a very different version of 'agency'. Of what it is to be an agent in the world.

JM: An agent? What do you mean by agent?

NW: Well, I'm thinking of agency in terms of the effect of ones actions upon things rather than the other way around. I guess I'm interested in what might be the difference between applying preconceived notions and determinations to process and allowing process to determine the outcome, which is more of the channeling thing that you've been describing.

JM: Yes. To me it's always been a combination of both things, if I'm understanding you right. You want something to happen and you're going to make it happen, but doing that is like opening yourself to the universe, to get it to happen. Something like that. That might be a grandiose way of saying it.

NW: No, that's a good way of saying it: "Opening yourself to the universe." There's a drawing, I think from '66, of a sheet and then a plank connected to the clouds by lightning. Can you talk a little bit about the cosmic aspect of the work, if indeed there is one?

JM: Here's how I came to that. I was making forms that were more lightweight things, and I was trying to get reductive. I wasn't really trying to be a reductive artist or a minimalist exactly, except that it was intriguing to me to pare down to the most essential thing possible. I had made these blocky forms and I had made them out of plywood, of course. At one point, I just looked over at the wall where these sheets of plywood were leaning, and I thought, "Oh my God. That's it. They have to do that." It kind of shocked me to think that at first. It seemed weird, but it turned out to be a stroke of something that was interesting. The leaning forms really puzzled me for a long time. Actually, they troubled me. And in that way, they almost seemed like something that just insisted on coming in here, through me, whether I cared or not. It wasn't quite like that, but it was definitely an intuitive act. Later on I settled down and I could accept it. It occurred to me that leaning forms really separate themselves from the world more radically than standing forms or sitting forms. They have lines that coincide with the lines of the room and of the environment. Because they lean at an angle they wreck a room in a way [laughter]. And they seem to be about something else. Or up to something else. Maybe that's the spiritual or otherworldly dimension that they may seem to have.

NW: Certainly.

JM: I think those lightning drawings were . . .

NW: . . . the expression of the "Eureka" moment? [laughter]

JM: [laughter] Exactly. The experience left me kind of reeling and staggering around the room, but willing enough to go ahead and make them. I felt intrepid about making a thing like that.

NW: I bet. It must have been very exciting.

JM: Except it didn't feel like, "Oh boy, I've got it!" but like "Jeez, should I do this?"

NW: You felt apprehension?

JM: Yeah. I felt like I was out on a limb, by myself, with nothing to hold on to. Like floating in water or space or something. So, anyway . . .

NW: These seem to be vehicles for this abstract intelligence. I am wondering to what extent the pieces were connected to ideas of the paranormal, or with ideas of temporal continuum and that kind of thing?

JM: Well, they are connected in at least a vague way. I have always tried to make things that have that kind of character to them. Like the plank can hang loose from the earth, but connect with the earth and connect with the unknown at the same time. I want the work to evoke that feeling of suspense. I've always tried to make things that are both in the world and out of the world. Again, humans are both.

NW: Right.

JM: One troubling thing about us humans is that we can get enraptured and forget about the rest of the reality of the universe.

NW: And we're also reluctant to connect with worlds other than our own, particularly that we don't or are unwilling to understand.

JM: Right, right. I do think UFOs are real, by the way. I think it's tragic that we have a reluctance to be open to that kind of thing. I hope it's something we get past, this holding back . . .

NW: . . . this resistance.

JM: Yeah. It's really interesting stuff, I think. Maybe we can't, maybe humans are just loathe to think that anything is interesting except things like war, and so forth. Yet, we have to use our gifts and evolve our minds to where we can really get interested in actually exploring the universe. We've started to, but I don't think we're going to get out there until we get a little more hip to what's what around here.

NW: Do you think that what you're doing is distilling the essence from the man made world in order to open up the possibility of communicating with other worlds? Are the pieces, in that sense, I don't know how you'd say it, but are they conductors? JM: I hope so...

NW: Or have conductive qualities...

JM: I hope so. That would imply trying to distill some of the positive aspects of us humans. Certainly we have a lot of positive aspects. We're not just a bunch of jerks. We're smart! [laughter]

NW: We're smart jerks!

JM: [laughter] In a simpler way, "distilling the world" is a useful concept. I remember seeing a slide once of a piece of Trojan architecture. It was a big, bulky, cube-like thing, just sitting there but filled with energy and power. It's like the Trojans knew something, knew more than we know. They distilled something about mankind into a form. It's so simple and so partial but this power still comes through.

NW: Certainly. And in this classical simplicity there seems to be a very direct connection between not just the forms — like lintels and blocks — but between the ancient and the modern, on a kind of mythological level.

JM: Often I think that ancient buildings and some modern buildings are interesting in form for reasons that few writers or analysts can pinpoint. They talk about other things instead of this energy. So often, in art criticism or art writing, what largely gets talked about are influences and lineages, and not the meaning or the fact that the things really have power.

NW: Did you stop making the sketchbooks in 1966? Or do you still keep this type of journal?

JM: There were two sketchbooks. I still do sketches and drawings, but I went from a sketchbook thing to a notebook thing, where I did more writing. A lot of it is crap of course [laughter], but it is still interspersed with sketches and drawings — so I never really did stop doing that. Actually, re-visiting these sketchbooks has made me think that I should get another sketchbook! [laughter]

NW: [laughter] And do you find yourself going back to these sketchbooks as a form of inspiration? Do you find yourself revisiting the early sketchbooks, and re-visioning the past in some way, or re-visioning that set of ideas?

JM: Yeah! Actually, even right up to when David Chickey approached me about doing this book, I was going through the sketchbooks and making a mark or adding a little something or just noting something that I was interested in. They have never really stopped being alive and dynamic. They might keep changing even after the publication this book! Even though I may have to tell myself "No, you can't do that!" [laughter]

NW: Ok, John, this has been great. There is so much in this sketchbook that's truly fascinating.

JM: Ok.

NW: I won't take up any more of your time. Thank you...





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