Untitled - The Chinati Foundation

of materials. I wanted to see what I
would look like if I worked with these
different materials. So I did. I think
foam rubber came in second in that
particular event, which ran on until
around 1972. Well, in 1966 I was
tooling around the West, and thinking
about what I was going to do
when I got to L.A. That’s when I really
liked L.A.—in the sixties. I’m not sure
how it came to be that I discovered
the foam, but I spent six months in
a house on Malibu Beach. I was going
around collecting all these specimens
of materials and the foam rubber
was one that kept coming back
to me. So I tried squeezing them and
tying them. And I thought that was
so outstanding that I couldn’t stand it
too long. They were so instant and so
complete. I thought that it shouldn’t
take anyone long to get it—meaning,
if they’re ever presented to you, you
would “get it,” you know. Well, it
seemed to take forty years. I remember
one instance when I had something
like thirty or forty of them sitting
around. But they were all like seven
to nine inches, and I was quite taken
with them. I was supposed to have
this little exhibition with the Dwan
Gallery, and the guy who ran it, Mr.
Weber, came to see me, and I said,
“Well, there’s the show.” He almost
lost about three inches of intestine
when he thought about this. I said,
“No, no—it’s just like drawings.” I
had to find a place. So he said, “Well,
I went and found out where you get
the foam.” I brought some in there
and fooled around. I thought I was
doing pretty well. Then we had the
exhibition and no one really got it,
which was surprising to me. Because
I thought they were pretty erotic.
K K : They’re really erotic.
J C : They’ve got all these folds and everything,
you know? Like, when you
squeeze here, it opens there. I mean,
what can you say? The only person
that really liked them was Walter
Hopps. Walter came to see me—I
remember this very well—he was
starting to leave, and he said, “You
know, I’d really like to take one with
me.” “Well, take your pick,” I said,
“but you’ve got to pay.” So he says,
“Okay, how much?” I said, “Twenty
bucks.”
K K : That paid for the urethane. Judd
really liked those works as well.
J C : Well, he liked what I did. There
was no competition. There actually
was no competition in art anyway—
sometimes people like the very opposite
of what it is they do.
K K : You refer to these a couple of
times as instant sculptures. Was it
K K : Bien, ¿podemos pasar a hablar un
poco de esas piezas de uretano?
J C : Pensé que diríamos muchas menti-
ras.
K K : Eso también lo podríamos hacer.
J C : De acuerdo.
K K : Ésta es realmente la primera vez
que se han exhibido tantas piezas de
éstas. ¿Podrías hablarnos un poco acer-
ca de cómo comenzaste a trabajar con
el uretano en 1966?
J C : [gruñe]
K K : Eso te llevará tres horas, ¿verdad?
J C : Unas dos horas.
K K : Está bien.
J C : Bueno, para contar la cosa des-
de el principio, mientras me dirigía
a mi estudio un día, en 1965 ó ’66,
tomé la decisión de hacer un cambio.
Cambié a otro conjunto de materia-
les, los cuales eran la extensión de
unos dibujos que estaba haciendo re-
lacionados con la música, y la curva
francesa. Creo que ése fue el inicio de
mi enfoque de trabajar con materiales
raros, un evento que duró siete años.
Quería descubrir cómo me vería yo si
trabajara con este tipo de materiales.
Y así lo hice. Creo que el hule espuma
ocupó el segundo lugar más importan-
te dentro de aquel evento, que siguió
hasta aproximadamente 1972. Pues,
en 1972 me ocupaba en diversas co-
sas en el Oeste y llegué a Los Angeles.
En aquella época me gustaba de veras
Los Angeles, en los sesentas. No sé
precisamente cómo fue que descubrí
11
true that, like squeezing a sponge,
this came from reading Bob Creeley?
J C : I do this all on my own.
K K : You’re kidding.
J C : I never know where influences are.
I just keep poking my nose around
until I find things that fit. And then, if
they fit, this is how you can handle
it, or how long a certain attitude will
last. The foam sculptures were good;
I don’t think it’s a career. I thought the
sculptures were good, and that they
were necessary to be.
K K : Well, the proof of that is how
good they look now. The show is
pretty impressive.
J C : You should’ve seen them before
they got dirty. They’re hard to clean,
like some kinds of fish.
K K : The Stuffed Dogs look like they’ve
all been kept in a vault, all those
pieces from Dia, those small pieces,
some of which have paint dappled
on them, they look pretty fresh.
J C : Well, they were made later, because
by then I had started to do the
things I do with the metal. I always
painted first before I used foam. Then
I saw it, and tried to figure out how
to paint these things, so I threw watercolor
at it. It was how some of that
speckled stuff got on. Then I got interested
in a couple of other things and
went on from there. And then, about
a year ago, I went to Gemini and
they wanted me to cut some more
foam pieces and cast something.
el hule espuma, pero pasé seis me-
ses en una casa en la playa Malibu.
Yo iba de acá para allá, recogiendo
muchas muestras de diversos materia-
les, y el hule espuma fue un material
que continuamente me atraía. Intenté
apretar los trozos y amarrarlos, y eso
me parecía tan fabuloso que no cabía
en mí. Eran tan instantáneos y tan
completos. Pensé que nadie tardaría
mucho en caer en la cuenta, o sea
que si te presentaran una de estas
obras, la entenderías inmediatamente,
¿sabes? Bueno, parecía que se tarda-
ba cuarenta años. Me acuerdo de una
vez cuando tenía de treinta a cuaren-
ta de estas obras acumuladas. Todas
medían de siete a nueve pulgadas, y
me fascinaban de veras. Iba a tener
una exhibición en la Galería Dwan,
y el Sr. Weber, el encargado, vino
a verme y le dije: “Bueno, ahí está
la exhibición.” Cuando escuchó mis
palabras por poco le dio un síncope.
Le dije: “No, no, es exactamente como
los dibujos.” Yo tenía que encontrar
un lugar. Así que él dijo: “Ya supe
dónde encontraste el hule espuma.”
Me llevé una cantidad del material al
aquel lugar y trabajé con él. Luego se
hizo la exhibición y nadie la entendió
realmente, cosa que me sorprendió
bastante. Porque yo creí que eran pie-
zas muy eróticas.
K K : Efectivamente lo son.
J C : Todas ellas tienen pliegues y toda la
cosa, ¿sabes? Cuando apretabas aquí,
JOHN CHAMBERLAIN: FOAM SCULPTURES (1966-1979), INSTALLATION VIEW.