Philip Guston in conversation with Clark Coolidge, 1972

PG: How would you paint something that you only felt with your hands?
CC: Painting a book in the dark.
PG: Yeah. Or you grab that paw and feel its pulpiness, or its tendon, or whatever you’d feel. So, it’s not just a noun, not just recognition.
CC: You know what, though? The words themselves are masks. That’s another interesting thing.
PG: Yeah, tell me about that.
CC: The word book, let’s just say that. What has that got to do with the real book really?
PG: No. It’s a separate thing.
CC: It’s booooook. Like in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, he takes the spool of tape and he says, “spoooooool,” and he says it over and over again, so it’s like an incantation.
PG: You’re talking about the space between the thing and the word, which we have invented.
CC: Yeah. When we’re naming something we’re really masking it, in a sense.
PG: Of course you are.
CC: Because we’re using this word which doesn’t relate to it, except by acceptance of a meaning. But this thing, this mask, what is it? It’s absolutely fascinating.
PG: Well, then would you say art is a mask?
CC:Yeah.
PG: Art is a mask.
CC: Very strong. Yeah.
PG: And furthermore, to confound this more, frustration is a very crucial ingredient here. The frustration of not being able to make them identical. That is to say, the word book is not the book, because you can feel the book and tear it or cut it, squash it or crumple it. But book is a word. And so my painting of an object has to do with the frustration of not being able to paint the object, either.
CC: Which, to further confound it, isn’t what you want to do anyway.
PG: Of course not. I know it. But I would say that the frustration is a crucial ingredient here.
CC: Absolutely. That’s the resistance.
PG: It’s the resistance. It’s the frustration of the desire to not paint altogether. That is to say, art is the frustration of the desire not to make art, you know?
CC: Wow. I’ve got to hear that, myself.
PG: And the trouble with that . . . I’ve had my lonely winter nights worrying about that, those two lines . . .
CC: That is the desire to make art.
PG: That’s right. And that’s why I had to give it up. That makes art too available to me. And that’s where my fight with Feldman is, and he knows it and that’s why he won’t call me. He wants me to do that.
CC: Well, that’s what I meant. He loved that, right?
PG: That’s right. And he wants art.
CC: You were in hell, and he was loving that.
PG: He was loving it. And he wants art. And I don’t want to be an artist really. But I am and I’m going to be and I want to make these forms.
CC: Well, that’s what you said in your letter, “the irresponsibility to art.”
PG: That’s right. And talk about Melville, boy, he burst those bounds.
CC: He was illegal for all time.
PG: That’s right. He was somewhere else.
CC: I mean, no wonder nobody liked it. It was a punch in the mouth.
PG: Well, you’re not supposed to burst the limits of art.
CC: He was supposed to write travelogues.
PG: He was supposed to make literature.
CC: You’re not supposed to be able to create.
PG: That’s right.
CC: It’s like the original sin.
PG: Exactly.
CC: Don’t touch it.
PG: That’s right.
CC: Boy, this goes a long ways.
PG: You know, I never thought of it before. I’ve got to hear this again. Why don’t we have ourselves a drink?
CC: Okay. We’re about to the end of the tape anyway.
PG: Just let it run out.
CC: I have the feeling I’ve dealt with these things but I haven’t thought about some of them, you know what I mean? I guess you feel that way, too.
PG: Sure. Well, you talk about discontent . . . I think discontent precisely has to do with, and I guess I must put it sort of blatantly, it has to do with the disgust with art.
CC:Yeah.
PG: I think the greatness of Beckett, really, is that deep and lifelong profound disgust with art. And, paradoxically, that’s why he became a great artist. But if you go into this devil’s work, and it is a devil’s work, there’s no insurance you’re going to come out.
CC: Yeah. Right.
PG: And the reason that there are hundreds and thousands of good, safe artists is be- cause there’s a threshold which some are perhaps aware of, others not. And those that are aware of it don’t want to pass that threshold.
CC: That’s why I say, it’s not that I’m so discontented with my friends who are poets. I’m just discontented.
PG: Yes, I know what you mean.
CC: And therefore I’m discontented with their lack of discontent.
PG: Of course.
CC: I feel like: I’m discontented, what’s the matter with you guys?
PG: Yeah. Why aren’t you discontented?
CC: What did you say, “devil’s work”? You know what Melville said, that famous quote? He wrote to Hawthorne, after he’d finished Moby Dick, and he said, “I’ve written an evil book…”
PG: No!
CC: “. . . and feel spotless as a lamb.”
PG: Oh, that’s fantastic! As spotless as a lamb.
CC: Yeah, he saved himself somehow.
PG: That’s right. That’s marvelous.
CC: He went there and he came back. It’s like going into a deep psychosis and coming out.
PG: I know just what that feeling is. Oh, that’s marvelous.
CC: Which is what [R.D.] Laing and those guys believe, that you go through your psychosis. You go all the way into it and you come out. You don’t try to stop it with psychoanalysis or drugs or something. You go through.
PG: Well, isn’t that true? Like we once talked about, artists who settle somewhere. I once made an analogy that, in painting, creating, it’s a court. But unlike a court, you’re the plaintiff, the defendant, the lawyer, the judge, and the jury. And most artists want to settle outside of court. No trial.
CC: It’s a perfect image, because that’s how you do make money in court, you settle out. If you don’t, you lose all your money in the process.
PG: That’s right. Well, in Italian, trial is processo. It’s called process. Or in German, it’s prozess. And in French, it’s procès. The trial is process.
CC: Sure. I suppose that’s even true in English. Like trial by fire. Going through something.
PG: Going through, sure. So that Kaka’s book in Italian would be called Il Processo.
CC: Fantastic.
PG: Yeah. [laughter]
CC: That all makes sense. It’s perfect.
PG: I like what you said about Laing. How some people, in going into psychoanalysis, prefer to stop.
CC: Treat symptoms.
PG: Sure.
CC: That’s what our medicine is all about.
PG: Is to stop somewhere.
CC: Float. Float for the rest of your life.