DETROIT Hjh FOCUS QUARTERLY

”Volume Number DETROITHjH FOCUS QUARTERLY A Visual Arts Publication Photo: Lucy Bates Tom Parish in his studio. Letters to the Editor Detroit Focus Quarterly Detroit Focus A Visual Arts Publication 743 Beaubien Artist’s Response: Detroit, Ml 48226 962-9025 I would like to clarify some of the misin Wed.-Sat. 12-6 terpretations concerning my installation Staff which were made by Dolores Slowinski in Publisher Gere Baskin her recent review of theFields of Fire show Woody Miller at the DIA. Ms. Slowinski speculated that Editor Sandra Yolles having '' been there’ ’ (in dozens of European Design Editor Gigi Boldon-Anderson military cemeteries) was the reason I created Advertising Design Military Cemetery: Homage to Greenham; Manager Nelson Smith however, “ being there” was not my reason, Editorial Board Doug Aikenhead Allie McGhee nor would it have been enough. Only con James Kirchner Gretchen Wilbert sciousness of living in a nuclear age world MaryAnne Wilkinson whose dominant priorities have historically Sales Manager Jeanne Poulet placed the military, “ national security” and Bookkeeper Cathy DeMay profits above human needs and lives would Typesetting & Printing Grigg Graphic Services propel me to spend more than three years working on a statement that could com municate the need for change. The writer’s defeatist notion that an artist would try to Detroit Focus Quarterly is published four times compete (and of course be doomed to per year (March, June, October, and December) by Detroit Focus, 743 Beau failure) with “ the real” experience bien, Detroit, Michigan 48226. Copyright © 1988 by Detroit Focus. Contents in whole or part may not be reproduced without written permission. The opi (whatever that is), and her dismissal of the nions expressed are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the audience as too “ numb and detached” to be gallery. Address all correspondence to Detroit Focus Quarterly, c/o Detroit challenged are frustrated views of people Focus Gallery, 743 Beaubien (third floor), Detroit, Ml 48226. Manuscripts which are familiar weapons used against must be typed double spaced, and accompanied by a stamped, self- addressed envelope. Ad salespeople receive 20% commission. those who actively promote social justice. To infer that this effort is impossible or outdated is to give up, at best; in bad faith, at worst. The fact that nobody would read all the Contents In this issue names on the bones is not the point; the Interview:Tom Parish Contributing authors comparison with a bronze plaque is con Barr’s Spatio-Temporal ExperienceGary by Carol Jacobsen tradicted by the writer’s own “ curiosity” S. Vasilash Roberta Litwin about the use of bones as material for art, I Barbara Siwula and her identification with “ the Asians” Gilda Snowden whose bones they may originally have been. Gary S. Vasilash Identification with the bones and the names Reviews Sandra Yolles of former real human beingsis the point — Betye Saar at least it’s meant to be the point of entry into Tom Bills Contributing photographers one’s thinking — and I’m very glad that the Sybil Oshinsky Lucy Bates writer made that connection. The anger ap Douglas Bulka Robert Hensleigh parent in Dolores Slowinski’s response in Art on the Move John Luke dicates that the work struck home. I, too, Yolanda Sharpe/Nadine Slowik Karen Sanders felt deeply angry — that was and continues Art and Architecture of the Birdhouse Gary Vasilash to be my fuel. But I was also expressing op Sarah Wells timism and options: the dedication to Greenham Common is an homage to thousands Letters to the Editor of women worldwide who are protesting through both civil disobedience and creative Editor’ s Note: direct actions, the Anglo-American patriarchal The last two issues of theDetroit Focus machine and its use of brutality as a means Quarterly have included some controversial of dealing with the “ weak” and the “ dif reviews and articles which took challenging ferent” . The reference to Kathe Kollwitz in approaches to the subject matter. the tape and elsewhere in the installation is It is our intention to invite responses on another endorsement of a way to protest: the part of interested parties, artists or through one's art. It is these kinds of observers. The stirring up of debate would courage and commitment which give me be a welcome result of the appearance of direction and which I struggle most of all to certain controversial views, and the lively in communicate to an audience at a time when terchange of theoretical and practical opinion resistance to military and multinationals and is one of our goals. mass media dominance is critical. Please feel free to respond in print to — Carol Jacobsen issues in these pages. — The Editor M H Tom Parish is professor of painting at Wayne State University. In the last few years he has had major shows in New York, painting was on its way already. I began toTP: Yes, Kiefer to me is enormously impor Chicago and Detroit. He received an Artsthink that maps and aerial views are similar tant. I feel refreshed from the Kiefer show (in Foundation of Michigan Award for 1987.things; maps are drawn and aerial views areChicago); some quality of force and meaning Parish’s one-person show opens at thephotographed . and also I thinkThe that and power is back into someone and that per Detroit Institute of Arts on December 17, Medium is the Message, Marshall MacLuhan’s son is giving it to me. I like the way Kiefer 1988, and runs through February 1989. It is book was around, and I read it a few yearsseems to feel about things. He said, for exam the first one-person show offered by theafterward, and then I was reading aboutple, that Europe is a declining place and it’s Ongoing Michigan Artists Program at the DIA. comic books and films and how media interthe archipelago of the East, a very powerful This interview was recorded in March of relate . idea. Another thing he said interested me: 1988. My earlier pictures got so flat that you the job of the Western painter is to create couldn’t really tell the top from the bottom. rules and break them at the same instant. I 0. I see that the new paintings are quite dif0. They didn’t tell a story though. thoroughly enjoy those kinds of thoughts. ferent than the show you had last year at theTP: Those were the dull stories. That’s what As far as influences are concerned, one Detroit Artists Market. caused me to change. has to know what one’ s modus system, and TP: Yeh. Q. You got bored? I thought (the pebble picgestural system, and sense of things is all 0. Is there something about storytelling intures) of the 1970s were about abstraction.about. From that I am going to make some the pictures? TP: They were. It was a very dull thing to be thing and it’ s going to have sim ilarity to TP: Every picture tells a story . In the last about. Because all pictures are abstractions.something else. But influences? Specific in few years I began to think about making theIf you don’t have an abstraction, you haven’tfluences? I was Cezanne for two years, then stories a little more fun. Then the picturesgot a painting . I discovered Georgio Morandi. I then went to became a little more fun to do. 0. What are your feelings about the terms(Morris) Blackburn (When I was a student at As far as them changing, they’ re conrealism and surrealism in terms of your own the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, Blackburn stantly changing. I think the whole thing iswork? was on the faculty) with my Morandi paint like taking a shot at a moving target. As longTP: A lot of art education is lost on people ing and explained thatthis was what paint as the target's moving, it’ s worth shooting.like me with those words . I am aware of ing was all about. He just looked at me and 0. They have a hint, an air of mystery aboutways in which my work is coincidental with said, “ You’ re simply going to have to paint them. Do you fantasize the story out? Do youother things . I feel that it is a sheer acci your way through all of that.” picture yourself there? Do you think aboutdent that the painter Balthus has a vague So while these influences may occur-for a the characters as if it were a novel? sim ilarity to me. Lately, I have been enjoying young artist, we get into them and out of TP: I am never there. I actually don’t exist. looking at Sandro Chia’ s paintings. I just them almost equally as rapidly. We just go The picture w ill outlive me. I probably madefeel a kind of cohesion there. Anselm Kieferthrough them. Something consistently the picture, but the relationship betweenscares the hell out of me. I think he’s the seems to reveal itself. I’ve been interested myself and the picture doesn’t exist. Of greatest painter alive right now. At least I lately in Gerhard Richter. W hat’s interesting course, all stories are autobiographical andsee the differences between myself andto me about Richter is that he’ ll do an aerial all paintings are self-portraits. Those areAnselm Kiefer, but Kiefer, is a neo-Expres- view of a city one day and then he’ ll do a sort givens and there is nothing we can do aboutsionist. and someone else is a surrealist of photorealist painting, and then he’ ll do it, so there is nothing to think about then.

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