The
first thing I want to say, I’ve put in 40 years of hard work.
Tell me about them. When did you start?
I
don’t want to talk about that. People will figure out how old I am. I want to
talk about now.
Who cares?
About
now?
No, about how old you are.
Okay.
I started painting when I was a child. I hate to get into the past. Just say
that my training was between the Bauhaus and the Ecole de Paris. I’ve been here
36 years, and when Louis and I first came, there wasn’t one gallery in Taos.
You and Louis started the Ruins Gallery,
didn’t you?
It
was a very romantic notion. It was in the early 50s. I don’t remember just
when, but it was a very important time in Taos. There was a lot of experimental
work going on. Agnes Martin was living here and showing in the gallery, and so
were Clay Spohn, Ed Corbett, Tom Benrimo, Mike Klein. Wolcott Ely was with the
gallery, doing very good work. Some of them came from San Francisco, some like
Louis and I came from New York. Oh, and Louise Ganthiers was with us, too.
Why The Ruins?
I
was nothing but an adobe ruin in Ranchos. I think we paid $10 a month. We just
painted the walls and hung the paintings. No water, no electricity
What about security?
Who
worried about that? It was the most avant-garde gallery in New Mexico. We had
parties, openings. Poets came. I don’t know if anybody sold anything, but there
was a nice feeling about it.
What kind of work were you doing when
you first came here?
I
started at the beginning, with the Renaissance. Louis and I both did. I’ve been
trying to get simpler and simpler ever since. Abstract art is the end, not the
beginning. But when we first came, we both got involved with the Indians. We
went to their dances, we were fascinated with their psyche, and intrigued with
the elemental essence of the land. I began by painting the landscape. I spent
five years getting acquainted with it. Then I started painting my own
direction: I painted the feelings I had of New Mexico. I’ve become a New Mexico
painter after 36 years! My work has the sophistication of the European
tradition, but it also reflects the spirit of the land, the ancient feeling,
and also the Indian and Spanish cultures. I think it’s all here.
Your last show was two years ago, at the
Stables Gallery. I remember the
paintings as very bright, musical paintings. The new work, this “Celebration
Series,” is somewhat heavier, denser.
These
paintings are a celebration of life, and of Louis and his life and his work
[Ribak died in 1979]. I think they’re very different paintings. I’m not
painting happiness anymore. I don’t know,
I let a lot of things go.
Is there any conscious symbolism in your
work?
No,
it’s totally non-objective. The time of the ego is over. I’m not saying I’m a
good artist, but I am saying that I think I’m communicating something important
to the world. Something that everybody knows, but few know that they know. It’s
a basic thing we’ve got, but can’t put into words.
Do you know where the work comes from?
No,
I don’t know. I feel like I’m on call. When a painting is ready to come out, it
comes out. While I’m waiting, I sometimes get depressed, spaced out. I can’t
remember . . . Then all of a sudden I just have to do it. I wonder, “Who’s
doing all this work?”
Where do you start?
With
empty space. Then I put down the first notes in the space, and make the melody,
and then I weave in between.
But you’re not writing music. I mean,
those aren’t notes . . . they’re shapes, and color.
What’s
the difference? Is there one? I’m painting symbols. I’ve created my own
language. The work is full of meanings that have no words. It’s like music.
Can you be more specific about the
language?
I’m
trying to get new meaning, new experience from the oldest, most primitive
symbols – circles, squares, triangles. And the colors are elemental, basic. I’m
using the most basic things, but using them in a sophisticated way. I don’t
know what I’m doing. I just do it, and it comes out clear as a bell. It seems
right, sure, good. Do you know anybody who’s paintings like this? In New York
or anywhere else?
No.
Nobody
works like this. Georgia O’Keeffe sees symbols in the landscape and makes them
her own. I don’t. She will use a mountain, a gorge, a flower. I will use a
triangle, a circle, a line. Out of it I make music. And I do hear the music.
Since I’m a painter, I communicate it with paint.
Can you think of any painters who have
especially influenced your art?
No,
not really. Although, in looking back, I’ve recently been very startled by the
similarity in attitude and thinking between my work and what the Russian avant-garde
was doing around the time of the Revolution, the work being shown now at the
Los Angeles County Museum. Malevich, especially, and some of the women
painters. They were turning inward, while Picasso and the other moderns in
Europe were turning outward.
Larry Bell once said that one of the
reasons he’s an artist is because his studio is a refuge from the outside
world, which is often a very unsatisfactory place. Does that strike a
responsive chord with you?
Larry’s
right. The whole thing’s a mess, politics, economics . . . The quality of life
is not good. We’re living in the middle of a big revolution. But, in the midst
of it, or out of it, a new world is evolving, too. Man is going ahead. I’m
celebrating that, too.
Looking back at the work you’ve done
over the years, the style has changed drastically, and so has the color, and
yet there’s some basic rhythm that looks common to it all, some basic
‘Bea-ness.’
Yes,
I think it’s true.
The work you did a few years ago, the
“Balkan Series,” had a lot of swing – those quick, energetic, light arcs.
And
now there’s more Beethoven, more weight. I don’t feel fanciful.
You said earlier that abstraction was
the end, the goal, that you were trying to get simpler and simpler in your
work. Do you feel you’re getting closer to the essential Bea Mandelman?
Yes,
I think so. Though as I look now at this older work, I see that it was there
then, very essential things, and I wonder just how far I’ve come. It’s a search
for the essence. You spend your whole life eliminating. You have to in the
world that’s so unsure. You have to eliminate the frills. It’s a paradox,
though, that you have to work so hard to get the simplest expression.
Can you say what the essence is?
I’m
not a verbal person. This is very hard for me. I think you can see it in my
work. Or hear it.
What do you want people to get from your
work?
I
hope people that look at my work get a real experience. It requires new
thinking, maybe. The observer has to bring as much to it as the painter, but
the result is an experience. I got a real experience looking at the Hopi
painting show that was at the Kress Gallery. There was real communication, not
from the literal symbolism, but the poetry of the work, the basic things not
said but implicit.
Funny question, but do you like your own
painting?
My
own painting turns me on. I feel it in my heart, the same feeling I get when I
hear good music. I feel warm, I get a lift. But it’s intellectual, too. I’m
trying to work from chaos into order, stripping away, using the basics. That
part is intellectual. We’re all different, but I think all real artists are
working toward the same thing.
What’s that?
Freedom.
What kind?
All
kinds -- emotional, intellectual. Where you can just fly. There’s a certain
detachment there that comes with freedom, that’s harder for a woman to attain
than a man, I think.
Are you saying it’s harder for a woman
to make it as an artist?
Of
course it is. But that’s really not the point. The point is, I did. I am.
Rumor has it you read palms. Would you
read mine?
Sure.
Stephen
Parks, September, 1980
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