ARCHITECTURE, DiSPAtCHeS ART, MUSIC, ARCHITECTURE, FILM, SHOPPING, NEWS AND THINGS TO MAKE AND DO… ART, MUSIC, ARCHITECTURE, FILM, SHOPPING, NEWS AND THINGS TO MAKE AND DO…
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
BETTy TOMPKINS ON DUALITIES
portrait GUS POWELL
I am Interested In dualItIes, specIfIcally ‘publIc versus prIvate’. I have been working with the subject of sex,
and this concept, for many years. During the 1970s not only was I not able to get my paintings – which had very
formal titles, Joined Forms, but which I always called Fuck Paintings – shown. I had also been officially censored
in France. From that time I rejected this subject and these works so completely and with such regret that when
I next approached these pieces in 1997 for a small retrospective called the Women in my Life, I wondered, ‘What was
I thinking?’ Over the years I had danced around the idea, semi-avoiding it. It was only when I had physically to deal
with the works from that time, and look at them, that I just came back to the centre of the idea.
Porn – which I use as source material in my paintings – is a public, codified version of a very private act (private
for most people, anyway). This relates to something I have been interested in since I was in my twenties, which is
the idea that a painting should not look the same close up (from my point of view, at arm’s length) as it does from
the traditional viewer’s point of view. Both must be equally engaging, and for me they have to be totally different
viewing experiences.
The public/private duality exists in all my work. For instance, most of the drawings I have done over the past
few years have just a tinge of colour to them. Why? – I wanted my drawings to blush. That’s the private part.
My desire. My embarrassment. Part of the personal push. If I am not pushing myself, there is no point for me.
I could be doing something fun and easy like watching a movie. The public/overt part is that it somehow makes the
drawings look more photographic, so from a private impulse comes a different visual expression. What is art if not
that – the primal and primitive finding a form? My decisions about what I include, what I exclude, what I experience,
is none of anybody’s business but my own. I think art is risky and dangerous. My desire for privacy came to me early.
When I was a student, I lucked into private studio space when I was both an undergraduate and a graduate student.
I loved how it freed me to go into my deepest, most private thoughts. And I loved how it allowed me to ignore the
end result that is exhibiting. I focus so much on the private that when I show, it is something of a shock to me.
BETTy TOMPKINS IS AN ARTIST LIvING IN NEW yORK STATE. SHE HAS RECENTLy HAD SOLO SHOWS AT MITCHELL
ALGUS GALLERy, NEW yORK, AND GALERIE ANDREA CARATSCH, ZURICH. HER WORK WAS INCLUDED IN THE GROUP
SHOW Handsome Young doctor, CUBITT, LONDON, AND WILL BE IN Le PLaisir au dessin, AT MUSEE DES
BEAUx-ARTS DE LyON, FROM 12 OCTOBER TO 14 JANUARy, WWW.MBA-LyON.FR
Artreview 42
Dispatches_Betty T.indd 2 31/8/07 13:58:14
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