You can't make this stuff up--that's the current phrase--except in this case I did, myself at least (concertina included). Always specific, maybe because I put on those articles of clothing each day. But it's not just the clothes--also the sense (and it is a sense) that this way of standing--this specific, now-and-for-all-time posture--will tell the story. Except that there's no story. A gathering, perhaps--but that's too easy. A gathering isn't a story.
Harold Rosenberg's question, in the old Brownstone on East Tenth Street, in 1974--"Are these scenes..? I had spread out my pale pale drawings--the ones on large sheets of bristol--trekked them to New York, the logistics were demanding, but there they were, spread out on the floor--and the total shift from California to Greenwich Village--how I saw them now--involved far more than geography...
I didn't know how to answer, or why I found his question so interesting (that was only later)--probably mumbled something, no doubt. And in any case, he was in the business of questions--and that was the right one. Out of a genuine curiosity, perhaps. What does make a scene?
If you believe in the meaning of a gesture--Degas's figures in The Young Spartans, for instance--or some of Lennart Anderson, then the story doesn't really matter. We know from the first glance. A story is just pretend. An excuse. It's more a sense of how we take in the world--an interest in this. A kind of exploration...
Which is why these drawings can be spontaneous, but also more patient...
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And thank you again to Tanya and Dave...
