Anthony Cragg dinge im kopf / Things on the mind skulpturen ...

I can’t pursue every option, so I follow just one
possibility, carry it through, and at the end
of a further chain of decisions, finally there’s
a result. Afterwards I start to consider what
would have happened if at this or that crossroads
I had taken a different direction. somet<strong>im</strong>es
it’s not at all clear to me what direction
the work would then have taken. These de cisions
are often unconscious, and just run on
their own for a few days. Then I think: »Good
God, <strong>Anthony</strong>, you’re a clown. If you had
done such and such at this juncture, something
quite different would have emerged.«
And then I just have to try everything out to
see how the result would have differed.
That’s actually a task you s<strong>im</strong>ply can’t fulfil.
WS: What happens before you start working
on a sculpture? Do you have a drawing?
What <strong>im</strong>portance do drawings have for you?
AC: When I’m drawing I experience an incredible
freedom. Not all drawings have to
lead to an end product. Just put pencil to paper
and the journey can lead anywhere. And
with relative ease compared with making a
sculpture – that really isn’t easy. For sculpture
you need quite a bit of infrastructure, a room,
tools, material and the necessary energy.
When you’re drawing you can change themes
and emotions from one second to the next.
It’s a preparatory phase.
The actual work on the sculpture starts for me
by looking at the material. It is <strong>im</strong>portant to
me that my work develops from a whole variety
of decisions and not just from three or four
schematic decisions. I think one must always
keep open the option of continual alteration
and variation during the course of the work.
WS: So a drawing is not the precondition
for a sculpture? You could also make sculptures
without drawings?
AC: The precondition for the sculpture is unambiguously
the sculpture that preceded it.
The drawing is certainly <strong>im</strong>portant for me, but
it’s an activity woven into the total process.
In the phase where I’m at now, my thoughts
are somet<strong>im</strong>es too complicated for me. And I
only get to understand them by drawing quite
a lot. I <strong>im</strong>agine particular sculptures, particular
shapes, and after a few mental steps they
become difficult to follow. When that happens,
the drawing is the only hope. This has
been much more the case in recent years
than it used to be. The necessity of the drawing
for the process of my sculptural work has
definitely increased.
WS: You’ve been working as an artist,
a sculptor, for 40 years now. How have your
role and position changed over the years?
<strong>Anthony</strong> <strong>Cragg</strong> in Conversation with Walter smerling
m e a n d e r, 1990
110 111
P a s s e r s - b y , 1998
Your attitude to art and your aspirations may not have changed, but today
your œuvre has to be judged differently from 1970. Can we talk about a <strong>Cragg</strong>
tradition, or is it still like it was on the first day, purely exper<strong>im</strong>ental, and tomorrow
may be quite different?
AC: There are always two stories to tell, a personal one and an art-historical
one. When I started as a student, I needed material and looked for it everywhere.
during this search, though, I also found it exciting to see where the l<strong>im</strong>its
of the material lay and where I could still discover something new. Art-historically,
of course, it’s a fact that the path of these new materials had already been trodden
by duchamp and many other art movements. I didn’t register that in detail,
but I picked it up in the cultural atmosphere. Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, I did
a lot of installations. For my first exhibition too I was continually without material,
but then I found the material and themes so that I could work in the context
on the basis of installations. After a few years I ceased to find that satisfactory.
Too often I stood there with an object or some material in my hands and needed
more t<strong>im</strong>e to do something with it, to find a form for it. That was already the case
in 1981/82, a t<strong>im</strong>e when I was doing very many exhibitions with installations,
and in consequence was doing a lot of travelling, which was very nice. even so
I increasingly felt the need to go back to my studio, to learn new techniques, and
to develop new, autonomous forms with the material. That was for me not only
a major change, but also a necessary step. That too is a personal story as well as
an art-historical one. For already in the late 1970s and early 80s it was clear