Audrey Niffenegger in
conversation with Diane Thodos
Audrey Niffenegger
Ophile finds herself watching them secretly and is jealous and ashamed
1985-1998
aquatint etching hand colored with watercolor, 9 x 12 inches
"Time is a state: the
flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul." -Andrei
Tarkovsky
Chicago-based artist Audrey
Niffenegger has always had a strong sense of storytelling: A compelling
grasp of contradiction, humor, tragedy, and fantasy permeates the twenty
odd years of her visual art career. Her work, an affirmation of Chicago's
surrealist-inspired tradition, is marked by her own ineluctable narrative
style and a sense of metaphor, taking the form of prints, visual books,
drawings, and paintings. Last September her first attempt at writing
a novel, "The Time Traveler's Wife" was released by MacAdam/Cage
to considerable acclaim, hitting the #9 position on the New York Times
bestseller list. The fantasy realism of Niffenegger's philosophical
fable uses time travel as a means of exposing the painful, uncontrollable,
but emotionally essential realities of human existence developed through
the two central characters of Henry and Claire. At the time her novel
was released Niffenegger's exhibit of drawings entitled Ferocious Bon
Bons opened at the Printworks Gallery in Chicago where the artist shows
regularly. The following are excerpts from a one hour interview about
the intertwining of her visual and literary worlds, and the kind of
sustained imaginative potential she has cultivated between them for
over two decades.
Diane Thodos: Your
images have a way of giving me a story that I want to know. They have
an inherent narrative quality that draws me in. I feel your visual books
"The Adventuress" and "The Three Incestuous Sisters,"
which have etching prints accompanied by text, have common elements
with your current novel in a basic way. What is the common thread you
see in all three?
Audrey Niffenegger:
The two visual books by necessity tell simpler stories, because when
you are trying to tell something in pictures you can't load on the detail
the same way you can when you write everything. To some extent all three
of them use the idea of lovers who can't be together. All of them ask
for suspension of disbelief. They all involve something implausible
or impossible as their basic premise. The paranormal is a common thread.
DT: I find them all playful
with surrealism.
AN: Yeah, surrealism is my
favorite fun thing. My feeling has always been why make something that
merely replicates reality when you can have reality. My own interest
lies in things that are impossible in some way.
Audrey Niffenegger
Ophile Horrified 1985-1998
aquatint etching hand colored with watercolor, 9 x 12 inches
DT: Who are the artists you
admire, Surrealist or otherwise?
AN: Remedios Varo, Max Ernst,
Charlotte Salomon, Goya, Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley is not so much
about the impossible as he is about freaks and deformities, but those
are interesting to me too.
DT: In Magic Realism as both
literature and visual art the necessity of fantasy is intertwined with
the inescapable condition of the real. In "The Time Traveler's
Wife" I find it interesting that this is the hinge upon which both
the romance develops and tragedy finally unfolds. It's interesting for
audiences - this concretion of the real and this fantasy of escape.
AN: Something which people
seem to miss about the book is that it is actually a very stark view
of the way things work. It certainly does not hold out any utopia or
promise of a better world - it's just to clarify this sort of feeling
I had about time. You live in it all your life and yet you never really
experience it directly. You can only see its effects - you can't taste
or touch it. The novel is essentially a kind of prism to get people
to think about time.
Audrey Niffenegger
Ophile Haunted 1985-1998
aquatint etching hand colored with watercolor, 9 x 12 inches
DT: Can you talk about how
dreams were part of your work and how they developed into your writing
and visual art?
AN: Dreams are important
to me because they are so irrational. I'm attracted to things which
seem to fit together but don't in fact make any sense. Dreams didn't
really have a lot to do with the novel whereas "The Adventuress,"
which was my first visual book, is almost entirely based on dreams.
I had ten more or less random drawings and then I thought well, I'll
make a plot that connects all of them. "The Three Incestuous Sisters"
was kind of the same. The three characters appeared in a dream and I
knew who they were.
DT: "The Three Incestuous
Sisters" has how many etchings?
AN: Eighty.
DT: Which is a phenomenal
amount of work. You must have the patience of a saint to make such delicate
acquatints and lines.
AN: I'm attracted to the
line and tonal quality that acquatint and etching have which no other
medium has.
DT: The Chicago art writer
and historian Franz Schulze has described Chicago art and Imagist art
as narrative and Surrealist in its basis. Do you feel this is part of
your background?
AN: Actually Franz Schulze's
book "Fantastic Images" had a lot of impact on me. Mark Pascale
turned me on to that book when I was twenty years old. It was really
interesting to see all this art in one place and to have somebody articulate
a theory of Chicago art since I already had a real predilection towards
Dada and Surrealism. Chicago is just teeming with kooky, whacked-out
artists, and I'm one of them in my own sedate way.
DT: When I returned to Chicago
after living in New York City I sensed there was something quite distinctive
about being an artist in Chicago and the kind of consciousness you could
carry about who you want to be. I'm starting to think it's a privilege
to be on the periphery because you can create the circumstances of your
own freedom just from the aspect of "benign neglect."
AN: Yes, certainly. I think
that's definitely true. I think anyone who has chosen to stay in Chicago
is embracing that idea, one way or another. The fact that you don't
go to one of the theoretically more important art cities says something
about your independence, your ability to resist the urge to conform.
DT: Current audiences picking
up your book find a lot of meaning in it. It is your first published
novel and has been very successful. It is even currently being developed
into a screenplay for Brad Pitt's and Jennifer Aniston's production
company. I feel like you've connected with something in the present
state of mind.
AN: I think that a lot of
people have a longing to move out of the present. The present is very
constricting. You can't go back to your past, you can't go ahead to
see what's in your future, so you have to put up with whatever is here
now. People have a deep longing to think about something else and move
into a fictional world and also to feel there are other possibilities
than just everyday reality. I don't think time travel is actually possible,
but as a metaphor it is interesting.
DT: In the novel it seems
like there's a definite sense that emotions are the most meaningful
things because they are the only thing that these characters can have
given the fragile and random nature of existence. I'm intrigued by this
psychological use of time.
AN: Certainly if there's
any underlying message in the book it's something simple like "don't
take things for granted" and "be conscious." These characters
are always on the verge of losing each other so they are always extra
conscious of each other's presence. I think that's not a bad thing to
be reminded of . Be aware. Be present. Be here now.
"The Time Traveler's Wife" is published by McAdam/Cage at
$25
"Ferocious Bon Bons"
was seen at Printworks Gallery,
Chicago in September 2003
Diane Thodos is an art critic and artist who resides in Evanston, IL
