This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by carol starr [EMAIL PROTECTED] fluxlist carol starr [EMAIL PROTECTED] /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Celebrate Summer with a NYTimes.com Photo Screensaver NYTimes.com's latest screensaver captures the unforgettable moments from Coney Island amusement park. Enjoy these images every day on your computer, absolutely free. http://www.nytimes.com/partners/screensaver/index.html?eta2 \----------------------------------------------------------/ An Art World Figure Re-Emerges, Unrepentant September 3, 2000 By AMY NEWMAN In 1971, Philip Leider, the founding editor of Artforum, walked away at the magazine's peak of influence. During his almost 30-year disengagement from an art world that grew up during the same period, Mr. Leider never spoke publicly about his Artforum years, nor did he agree to be interviewed about them. His involvement with "Challenging Art: Artforum 1962-1974," a book coming out this month from Soho Press, parallels a resumption of his writing in American art periodicals. In 1994, he began a dialogue with the book's author, Amy Newman, a former editor of Artnews. Following are excerpts from a recent conversation about the professional decisions he has made and about his views of contemporary art.   NEWMAN. Where are you these days? LEIDER. As in where are you physically or as in "where are you at?" NEWMAN. Well, let's start with physically. LEIDER. I live in Jerusalem. I just finished my last of 10 years of teaching here at the Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts. NEWMAN. And where are you at? "Sound for a Silent Movie" by Nahum Tevet (1986) LEIDER. Two places, actually, both pretty interesting. The first place is the Chestnut Tree Cafe, with the rest of the ghosts, drinking Victory Gin and trying to make out what's passing the darkening window. The second is something like where John Lennon was when he wrote that song about "I don't beLEEVE in Beatles, I don't beLEEVE in Zimmerman," etc., etc. Sometimes the two places are different, sometimes they seem the same. NEWMAN. Explain. LEIDER. Well, in the Chestnut Tree Cafe we spend most of our time pondering what it's like to have fallen behind: you get in free when you've arrived at the certain conclusion that you have fallen behind. Then the waiters keep filling your glass without your asking. The TV is on but without sound, and you usually sit with your back to it. There's no fax, no e-mail. The waiters pat you on the back and say, "You guys don't need that stuff." Falling Behind turns out to be a stage in one's career as real as the stages of Paying Your Dues, Getting In, Being on Top of Things, the nice period of Instant Comprehension when you don't need anyone to tell you what's going on, then a kind of Unconscious Withdrawal, then a kind of Conscious Withdrawing, with snarling and anger and the certainty that everything has turned to nonsense. And then, if you're still alive, there's Falling Behind. In the realm I work in, when the smoke cleared, it turned out you'd fallen behind if you hadn't "gotten" Masaccio. You'd fallen behind if you hadn't gotten Manet and Cézanne. You'd fallen behind if you hadn't gotten Picasso and Braque, Pollock and Newman, Stella and Smithson. You were wrong, they were right. Now I don't get anyone from Julian Schnabel to Matthew Barney and realize that it's much more likely that I've fallen behind than that what I thought was real art simply ended, like at a certain point mosaics or stained glass simply ended. I mean by that the possibility that it isn't set in stone that what I consider art is something that people will always make. It's possible that sometime or other someone will hold up a paintbrush and say, "What's this?" But when I look around the Chestnut Tree Cafe and see all those ghosts around me who all saw the end of art, from Clement Greenberg back to John Ruskin, I figure the probabilities, and the probabilities favor Jeff Koons and Kiki Smith and all the other artists I don't get. An untitled installation by Zvi Goldstein. NEWMAN. Why don't you just take the position that it's a bad time for art, a bad period? LEIDER. That's what you say before you take the pledge and confess you've Fallen Behind. First you say it's bad, then you say you're "out of sympathy," and then you say you're out of it, period. NEWMAN. Can you identify what happened to get you here? LEIDER. I think the most important thing that happened was the death of Smithson in 1973. It's possible he was the one carrying the ball at that moment, the way Pollock was around 1946, or Goya was in 1800. If Pollock had died in 1946 or Goya in 1800 . . . well, you'd just see a void. And around the same time, all the good people just walked away: the better critics, the better artists. The void got filled with Warholism. NEWMAN. What's Warholism? LEIDER. Shorthand for everything I've fallen behind of. About the only thing I get, in all this art I don't get, is the sense that it all goes back to Warhol. NEWMAN. Didn't you admire Warhol at one time? LEIDER. Sure I did, early on. I may have taken him more seriously than anyone else. I'm sure I was the first to put him on the cover of an art magazine, and I think I wrote one of the earliest appreciations of his influence. But it turned out that Warhol didn't care about art; he really was into what he called "glamour." And the decline in his art registered that pretty quickly. But the worse his actual work got, the more people he seemed to attract. It was weird. For example, I have the notion that all these "utterance" artists came out of Warhol. At some point people seemed to have the idea that his frequently quoted utterances were art, and started making utterances themselves: Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer. They never seem to achieve that banal brilliance that made Warhol so amusing. Anyway, that's what I mean by Warholism. Is that crazy? NEWMAN. It could be seen that way. LEIDER. Well, there you are. Falling Behind isn't easy: you keep relapsing into thinking you have a handle on things. You sort of have to keep repeating the Vow, like people in rehab programs. I DON'T GET IT. I REALLY DON'T GET IT. I REALLY REALLY DON'T GET IT. And you've got to believe it, not just pretend. Hard work requires constant vigilance against backsliding. NEWMAN. Is this where John Lennon comes in? LEIDER. Yeah. What we've been talking about is passive Falling Behind. Active Falling Behind is sort of like when Winston sneaks behind the television screen and starts writing DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER over and over again in his notebook. Sometimes I find myself writing: I don't beLEEVE in Andy I don't beLEEVE in Haring. I don't beLEEVE in Fischl. I don't beLEEVE in Koons. I don't beLEEVE in Kelly. I don't beLEEVE in Holzer. I don't beLEEVE in Schnabel. I don't beLEEVE in Salle. I don't beLEEVE in Finley. I don't beLEEVE in Kiki. I don't beLEEVE in Vaisman. I don't beLEEVE in Taaffe. I don't beLEEVE in Levine. I don't beLEEVE in Sherman. I don't beLEEVE in Scharf. I don't beLEEVE in Basquiat. I don't beLEEVE in Kruger. I don't beLEEVE in Longo. I don't beLEEVE in Halley. I don't beLEEVE in Barney. I don't beLEEVE in Bleckner. I don't beLEEVE in Gober. I don't beLEEVE in . . . NEWMAN. If I understand you properly, you are saying that you have no understanding of American art and dismiss French, English and German art out of hand. LEIDER. With regard to German art (or literature or anything), I don't just dismiss it out of hand; I dismiss it a priori, before it's even painted or written. I simply will not entertain the idea that a nation can destroy its culture utterly and then grow it again in less than 50 years. Can't be. Human actions have to have some consequence. The French are easy: across the board, in literature, film, philosophy, politics, linguistics, confronting terrorism, they are windbags, who turn and run at the slightest run-in with real life. Derrida's cowardly obfuscation in the de Man affair is mirrored exactly in French foreign policy, for example. And, since as far as I know they don't make art any more, it's easy to try to forget they're even there. The English are a little bit harder because there are real exceptions: George Orwell, Anthony Powell, Philip Larkin, Rachel Whiteread, and there are others. "Out of hand" isn't quite good enough. With the English, one would have to explain, I think, why the kind of operatic overkill of the Bacon-Freud-Formaldehyde art line can't work. Look, these are my opinions, and I wish I were more confident of them than I am. I don't have nearly as broad an acquaintance with this stuff as I should have to sound off this way. NEWMAN. What about the remark about "all the good people" walking away? LEIDER. I guess what I was really referring to there was the breakup of Artforum, or I guess I should say, my Artforum. There was a scene happening, unexpected, unpredictable and unpredicted, but there and real. The scene was the emergence of a coherent group of very, very good artists at the core of which were Smithson, Serra, Heizer, Saret, Sonnier. They were connected with something new in film -- Michael Snow -- and something new in music -- Philip Glass. It was very exciting, and I couldn't get any of the writers I cared about to get interested in it. So I picked up my marbles, like a little kid. I hired someone, John Coplans, whom I felt would not be able to run the magazine, who would not be able to hold the staff together -- in fact, whom I felt was the worst person for the job as I conceived it -- so I could walk away singing, "Na-na-na-na, Na-na-na, Na-na-na-na, Good-BYE!" So they would all say, "This would never have happened if we'd been more receptive to Philip's urging, more willing to take a look, even a second look, at the scene he kept insisting he wanted us to cover." In retrospect, of course, it was irresponsible, but it felt pretty good at the time. NEWMAN. And that's why you quit? LEIDER. No. I quit, as always in these situations, for a complex of reasons, including what I think Norman Mailer once said always includes some "shoddy motive." The shoddy motive I'm aware of was a creeping feeling that I wasn't on top of things anymore, that I was beginning to ask, "What's that about?" and not really understanding stuff. I remember first becoming conscious of this during a visit to Keith Sonnier's studio, when I wasn't even sure where the art was! But there were other things. I was tired and felt the magazine was going downhill. And my life also has seemed to assume a pattern of making major changes every 10 years or so. And I was afraid for my kids in New York. Lots of stuff. But primarily, I'm sure, was that I couldn't get a staff to take the magazine where I wanted it to go. NEWMAN. Was everyone you knew influenced by Greenberg? LEIDER. Oh, sure. At the beginning the artists loved Greenberg's criticism because it was directed against 10th Street -- second-generation Abstract Expressionism -- and the reaction against 10th Street was what all the new artists had in common. And all the better writers praised Greenberg because he posed such a clear alternative to Harold Rosenberg, whose art writing was simply unbearable. Greenberg provided everyone with a language both for not painting like 10th Street and not writing like Rosenberg. NEWMAN. You too? LEIDER. My experience with Greenberg was singular. He was bugged by the magazine since the second or third issue. When the magazine moved to New York from California, we met and didn't take to each other, but it was to our mutual interest to bury the hatchet. He wanted the adulation of the writers, and the writers liked writing for Artforum. So he relented and sort of put his imprimatur on the magazine, though he never wrote much for it. The end between Greenberg and me happened over something quoted in a posthumously printed interview with Ad Reinhardt that we published. Greenberg wrote me a letter calling me a "rat" (he also called Reinhardt a "cur") and would never speak to me again. At the same time, lots of others were having their hands chopped off the boat -- Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss, Barbara Rose, others -- all for different reasons. I think it was best for them; I don't know of anyone who profited from a long-term friendship with Greenberg. NEWMAN. Did you stay in touch with the magazine? LEIDER. Never exchanged another word with Coplans or anyone else until Jack Bankowsky, the current editor, wrote to ask me to participate in the 30th-anniversary issue. NEWMAN. So what was your reaction when you were asked to participate in a book on the early years of Artforum? LEIDER. Normal motive: You came recommended by the most decent guy in the world, Irving Sandler, so I knew you'd probably have no ax of your own to grind, and that you'd be fair. Shoddy motive: Oh, boy, now I can savage all those people I hate. NEWMAN. You had been teaching at the University of California at Irvine after you left. LEIDER. I discovered I was good at teaching and for a while even liked it. And my writing got better: I wrote some good stuff during that period. NEWMAN. Like what? LEIDER. Well, "Stella Since 1970," and the introductory essay to Smithson's writings, for example. NEWMAN. Why did you leave? LEIDER. Well, once again 10 years seemed to have passed and about the biggest change in me during that time was the increasing seriousness of my Zionism. One year Stella was invited to Bezalel and dropped the word that I might be interested in taking a year off there. One thing led to another, and I was there as a visiting professor in 1983. I loved the students. NEWMAN. Why? LEIDER. No junk in their heads. They were also older, it being the custom to go to college after the army and after a kind of Wanderjahr where they characteristically go to the weirdest, most dangerous places on earth. I also found them surprisingly good artists, for the most part. Anyway, after 1983 all my thoughts were in the direction of getting back to Bezalel. The problems were mostly financial: I couldn't really swing working for about 20 percent of what I was making at U.C.I. until 1989. NEWMAN. So you didn't go off on a religious kick? LEIDER. Oh, nonsense! NEWMAN. Are you involved in the Israeli art scene? LEIDER. Well, I'm not sure "involved" is quite the word. I'm very interested in it and keep seeing parallels between what's going on here and what was going on in America in, say, the early 40's. I mean the overwhelming imperative in America then to make an American art is sort of paralleled by the feeling I sense in Israeli art that the only really worthwhile problem is to find some way to give expression to Jewish experience. I may not "sense" this so much as project it. In any event, it's no surprise that I look at Israeli art more seriously than at any other, for better or worse. For what it's worth -- and there may be too much bias involved to make it worth much -- I think I could put together a group of about 7 to 10 Israeli artists spanning two or three generations that I think as good as any similar group in the world. NEWMAN. Care to name them? LEIDER. Why not? Leah Nikel, an abstract expressionist who gets better as she gets older. Zvi Goldstein, who makes wonderful work from the strangest combination of off-the-wall politics, alienation and frustration. Nahum Tevet, whose work simply sparkles with intelligence. Among the younger artists, Amnon BenAmi, Judith Sasportas, Etti Abergel, Judith Appleton, Dalit Sharon, Osnat Avital. They are not a "school"; none of their work resembles the work of any other. They don't sell. They exchange work, buy friends' work. Have small openings in which nothing happens. There's no art press to speak of, no criticism of any weight. Very much like the New York of the mid-40's, with even less hope than those guys had. NEWMAN. Why is that? LEIDER. Well, even the occasional American or European curator or dealer who is impressed by their work thinks twice about a show of Israeli artists. Who wants to hire security for an art show? Who wants to worry about a bomb through the window? On the other hand, maybe that's not so bad: I can't think of anything that would destroy this developing art world more than sudden acclaim from Europe or America.    The New York Times on the Web http://www.nytimes.com /-----------------------------------------------------------------\ Visit NYTimes.com for complete access to the most authoritative news coverage on the Web, updated throughout the day. Become a member today! It's free! http://www.nytimes.com?eta \-----------------------------------------------------------------/ HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson Racer at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
