ROSS SIMONINI What's your relationship with the current state of art?
LLYN FOULKES I’ve had a problem with corporate art since the beginning. I had my first exhibition nine months before Andy Warhol showed his soup cans. I just walked in and said, “Oh, that’s cute.” It’s like a joke. That’s all I could think of it. I’m looking at the paintings and, well, anybody could have done them. No reason to treat them with any value as a painting. And yet, I knew that one of my huge paintings which had recently been on display and took seven years to complete would sell for far less than one of his soup cans.
SIMONINI Should price be in proportion to the amount of work someone puts into a painting?
FOULKES Yeah. There should be work put into it. Great jazz players have to put a lot of work into their art. I respect that. I believe in the process.
SIMONINI But so much new art doesn’t hold to that set of values, right?
FOULKES What gives an artist the right to act this way? I know it comes from the whole Duchamp tradition, but suddenly any old piece of shit has value. I get tired of that. And then in the ’70s, because of this whole thing, they declare painting dead! Then all this installation art comes about. And it’s still all going that way. I heard from people who went to the Venice Biennale that the majority of work was installation art. I get tired of installation art because it takes up a lot of room. So many artists can’t show their work because of one installation.
SIMONINI I would say that your work, like Pop [1990], which I saw at the Geffen [at L.A. MOCA], was a kind of installation. It was in a room with a particular lighting and particularly dark cinematic environment. Isn’t that what an installation is? Controlling the whole environment of a work—not just a framed square on a wall?
FOULKES It did not start as an installation, but considering its complexity it ended as one.
SIMONINI That’s an important distinction?
FOULKES Of course! I remember when I went to the Claremont schools and visited all these artists in their studios. There was a girl with all feathers in a room. That’s too easy. That’s not right.
SIMONINI Because it’s easy?
FOULKES Anybody can think. Anybody can imagine. Not everybody can do it.
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