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Born in Pittsburgh in 1924, he returned last month to be honored with the History Makers Award at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center. His work is currently being shown at the Michael Berger Gallery in Point Breeze. The show runs to the end of June.
Q: Were you ever tempted to go against the grain of your personal art history and do a more idealized nude?
A: No. The whole thing was a very calculated plan, concept. When it occurred to me, I was teaching and had already been experimenting as an abstract expressionist painter for a while. I really didn't get involved with the figure until I was in my late 30s. It came directly out of an article I wrote, which was published in Art News, which was called "Figure Paintings Today Are Not Made in Heaven." The premises of my article were why was it so difficult for sophisticated audiences to accept realism? Why was it so difficult for artists to make realist paintings that would be acceptable to the avant garde?
Q: Have people ever commented on the distracting nature of some of your backgrounds?
A: It's always my studio and [the things] are picked because they have personalities. I go to flea markets a lot and antique shops. I've also painted landscapes, and I do portraits all the time. The landscapes are often watercolors. I approach everything exactly the same way: A dedication to trying to capture what is directly in front of me and to make the painting as forceful as I can. It is all very carefully thought out. I paint them [the models] as intelligent people. We become friends. The conversations we have are likely to be about current events.
Q: Have sparks ever flown between artist and model in the intimacy of the studio setting?
A: Yeah, but there are always several people around. It's not that intimate. I play music while I'm actually working to cut down on conversation.
Q: Do you have a "Helga" like Andrew Wyeth?
A: I didn't believe that story for one minute. I think it was manufactured to sell the paintings. I think she was just a very good model for him, period. My wife and I have lived [here]; the studio is part of the house, you know? My kids grew up with the studio up on the top floor. There was never any secrecy or need for secrecy.
Q: How much do you concern yourself with the business side of the art world? What will sell a painting?
A: I can't predict it. I have never understood why some things sell and others don't. Whatever happens, happens. I do the work I feel I want to do. The sales are nice when they happen, and they help pay my model fees. It's very expensive to paint the way I do -- directly from life with models.
Q: Have you considered your place in art history?
A: No. It's too nervous-making. I know a number of my friends have been quite successful, including Andy Warhol. I've known a lot of artists that have been very successful. You just can't think in terms of competing.
Q: Some artists are successful in their lifetime and others rise in fame after they are gone.
A: I just wonder what's going to happen to [the paintings] physically. You can't worry about history. I've studied art history. I did a thesis on Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp and that got rid of modernism for me. I felt I knew all about it, and I didn't have to do it.
Q: Should interpretation of a painting be an intellectual or emotional activity?
A: I think we live in a society that is so split. It has so many groups that are oriented differently and have so many different frames of reference that you can't hope to communicate [to] more than a half a dozen people, and those people already know my work. I don't go out of my way to try to set up stories. My paintings are about painting. Painting problems, period. Whatever meaning there might be attached, I mean what people want to attach is almost accidental.
Q: Your paintings are more engineered.
A: Yeah. OK, that's a good word.
Q: The New York Times said your new works are filled with subtle signs of optimism. What do you think when you read something like that?
A: I thought it was very nice. Maybe what he was referring to was the use of a neon-like drawing of Mickey Mouse that I found in the neighborhood of Phoenix, Ariz. He might have thought Mickey Mouse was very optimistic, you know? I don't know. I can't go beyond that. I do recognize that a Mickey-Mouse figure has an iconic meaning in America. It means America.
