studio visit

interview by
Susan Walsh

photographs by
Bruce Strong

 

To get to Ruth Ann Fredenthal's studio, located in the Underhill Building, a former printing building located in mid-town west Manhattan, one needs to dodge the bulky concrete slabs dangling from noisy forklifts parked outside her building busy with the construction of three new off-Broadway theaters. The austere freight elevator is not guaranteed to work either, say the other residents. But once inside Ruth Ann's studio, one steps into a sanctuary brimming with the sound of Italian Baroque music, the glow of northern light, and the smell of oil paint. Ruth Ann's steady voice is equally soothing as she describes her art and her self.

Born to social realist watercolor painter David Fredenthal and weaver Miriam Kellogg Fredenthal, Ruth Ann grew up mostly in Vermont knowing she was an artist from infancy. She studied art at Bennington College under Paul Feeley, received a Fulbright Fellowship in painting to go to Florence, Italy, and has lived in New York since. At first glance, her grayish, square, abstract paintings may seem monochromatic and similar, but the patient eye sees, or rather feels, the unique meditative, experiences composed of Ruth Ann's personal vocabulary of curves, structure, and subdued colors.

When we met, two of the five, five-foot square paintings she has been working on for about three years (which will be shown March 7-30, 2002 at the Stark Gallery, 555 West 25th St. in Chelsea) provided an atmosphere of serenity while we spoke. As the critic, Donald Kuspit, has stated in a catalogue essay of a previous show at Stark Gallery, "Her paintings, then, are spiritual and sublime, indeed, a kind of climax of modernist spiritual and sublime painting."

SW: What is your vision for the kind of art you do?

RAF: I have been an artist all my life and have had a clear vision since childhood of sustaining the great master tradition of classical painting begun in the Renaissance. The first visual art I was exposed to, even before seeing my parent¹s art, was a book of reproductions of master art works organized for children in categories such as angels, war, love, and people. I loved these pictures because they had clear strong structure, rather than just being expressionistic. My work from the start had a quiet, serene, centered look even though it was extremely vital. I evolved trying to find my essence as an individual, but making it somehow a universal essence because I realized that painting (the art I had chosen) was an art of stillness. That's what I do. I see myself as perhaps the most contemporary artist in this line of classical master oil painting, which includes Titian, Poussin, Raphael, Piero della Francesca, Mondrian, Cézanne, Malevich, and Matisse.

SW: Do you refer to these Masters for inspiration?

RAF: It's not a question of inspiration; it's a question of communion. I don't need any inspiration, because I do only the work I feel I need to do within myself. It has nothing to do with any exhibition, commission, or anything on the outside. When I do look at [the master's] paintings I'm moved by their great work, the beauty and marvel of human life, and the fantastic ability of human beings and what they can create.

SW: In your studio you have a 1922 Italian cello and an antique piano set aside in an enclosed area. Can you tell me more about your experiences with music and what lessons music has taught you about your work?

RAF: Music has been a major part of my entire life, and I even used to play the cello. One of the most significant experiences of my life was when I was six or seven months old laying in my crib, listening to my parents play a record of the Prokofiev Concerto No.1 for Violin and Orchestra which is still to this day one of my favorite pieces of music. I lived that piece of music in my body and heart. I was feeling the rhythm. In my little baby mind I was the violin and the concerto- the orchestra - was life. I could comprehend, not intellectually, but I had such a sense of myself and what I could feel. It gave me such a strong individual feeling as well as a profound feeling of the structures of the music and the emotions and spirit. All of this I wanted in my painting when I decided to be a painter. I understood from the beginning that that's what art is for, to experience and feel in a whole way. This is something most artists, it seems to me, are not concerned with or even think of, especially today.

I find that music and painting are very similar. At least the kind of painting that I¹m doing, where you have simple elements used in a very complex way. At their best, they generate an intense experience. I also want [my paintings] to be sublime, timeless, and rich, but with a simplicity that is a summation of a complexity. This is partly why I sustain the tradition of composition in my work. I got that understanding from great classical music like the Brandenburg Concertos I heard as an infant. Music is abstract when you hear the structures and live the process of it, but it makes me feel such deep emotions. That¹s what I have to feel when I paint. That¹s why I don't paint very often. It¹s like making love. I have to incubate a feeling of fullness before I go on the canvas, aside from all the heavy preparations in the beginning, to express a ripened, deep feeling and spirituality in a beautifully physical rhythmical structured way.

I have also learned from nature and the importance of the body where all life begins and ends. I have always been very sensuous, very physical. Aside from playing in the fields, forests and brooks of New England as an infant and a child, I played with animals, mostly cows and goats, on the farm. I saw them give birth, I saw them mate, I made drawings about them and all their animal functions. I was a very vigorous child, independent and quite a tomboy later on. So my aim is to get that physical feeling into my paintings, but at the same time, express beyond that something eternal, sublime, rich, still, serene and mysterious.

SW: Do you admire the work of any of your contemporaries?

RAF: There are lots of my contemporaries I like and admire, but I have to be very frank: no one is doing what I want to see other than myself. There are people doing things I like and I appreciate them, but their vision is not the thing I want to see. I would say that the work of Agnes Martin, while it doesn't fully satisfy me, is probably the closest of any other living artist.

The so-called Monochrome painters that I'm roped in with, even though my work is not monochromatic at all, are mostly really monochromatic and are basically conceptual. They also discard the notion of composition, which I sustain even though in my case it's almost invisible. I'm not really moved with what they do, though they do it beautifully and technically very well. It's not deeply felt, and I don't think they mean it to be.

It sounds terrible, but there really is no one that I love at this time. I think that¹s part of the problem of my work not being greatly appreciated in America. My work, though highly structured and formal, is at the base emotional, and the whole thrust of the art world is in the opposite direction. Even when the thrust is in my direction, pro-painting, it's not deeply involved with feeling. It¹s more involved with ideas and concepts where the mind is divorced from rather than united to the body, except in rare instances. Classical art is not greatly appreciated by the general public or even the art world.

SW: But your work is enthusiastically collected by the Countess and Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, major collectors of contemporary American art, and many of your paintings in their collection are on view for the public at the 18th century Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza in Italy alongside Dan Flavins and James Turrells. Why do you think your work is more appreciated in Italy than in America?

RAF: Most of my collectors, thanks to the Panzas, are in Italy. The average Italian responds to my work quite well. I¹m told that at the Villa Panza Museum, my three rooms are the ones that people hang out in most, fascinated with the work. Also, the catalogue from my last show in Italy is the best selling item in the Villa Panza store.

Italy is a beautiful country; it¹s the cradle of the Renaissance. The average Italian is saturated with beauty and sensuality all of his or her life. Even an ordinary person taking Mass will see sometimes a Mantegna or a Piero della Francesca. The Italians enjoy life; they have joie de vivre. They are sensual, emotional people who appreciate the quality of beauty. They experience life in a more complete way and are very smart, but not intellectual. This is how I am, and of course there are many other Americans like this too. But the average American is living an ugly life full of plastic, junk food, and junk products. They have little appreciation of beautiful qualities or feelings. We live in a puritanical country that divorces the body from the mind. People are wrapped up in information and special effects. Look at our arts, even painting today. Most art today is coming off of TV, movies, pop stars, fashion, politics- things that are narrative, literal and of the moment. It is hard for [an American] to respond to my paintings- these quiet, sensual, reserved things. There's no obvious idea here, there¹s no image, there's nothing exciting. They can't slow down enough to feel because they are afraid of their feelings. They are afraid of their bodies. In Italy emotions are a part of life. Eating a good meal, drinking a fine wine, looking at beautiful things is an everyday event for Italians. They are contemporary, but have this great tradition of beauty behind them that resonates with them. And that¹s exactly what it is. I am an advanced artist sustaining this same tradition.

Also, in order to really enjoy my work, you have to have a one-to-one communion with it. The spectator has to work with it. My work does not come out at you and grab you by the throat. You have to open your heart and mind and body to it and go toward it. It will bloom for you. If you don't go toward it you won't have much of an experience. The Italians are able to do that. They are curious. They see this strange thing and want to go toward it. They are responsive to life.

SW: What is the most difficult part of your painting process?

RAF: I am painting multi-layered oil on linen with small brushes, living the process out intuitively, having to handle all the edges of the composition, as well as the tiny pure color differences of the various areas while keeping it all in balance at the same time. Since I have to do each layer in one unbroken session, finishing the top layer is the hardest. I have to achieve the whole painting in this last layer. I end up with about five opaque layers; I try not to go over eight. The layers get harder to do as I get closer to the top because the colors are coming closer together, and the colors I use are even closer when the paints are wet. Lighting also has a big effect, because it can cast still another color on what I am trying to see as I paint. My colors are complex mixtures of about eight to ten pure colors plus white to form the mass color of each painting which is what gives the painting a gestalt of being monochromatic, but at the same time, within that mass color of each painting is a chord of, depending on the composition, from four to seven pure colors sounding together. It is this chord that blooms when one meditates on the painting. As I near the top layer, I start getting very beautiful things and I know that when I put the next layer on its going to be a whole new painting. I worry that I may not be able to do something as beautiful as what is already there. Failure at that point is much more devastating because I have to stop. I can¹t just go on because the physical build up will start to cover up the irregularities and weave of the Oyster linen that I wish to sustain, and I¹ll lose the balance that I require.

SW: How do you know when your paintings are finished?

RAF: I have to live with it and see if it satisfies what I want. I have to see if it works for me in all different lighting and moods. It's not an image; it's an experience. It's a beautiful object, which will hopefully move people into an emotional, physical, even sensuous experience. It takes me a while to see if I've gotten what I want because I don¹t come up with exactly what I¹ve envisioned. There are many surprises and quite a bit of spontaneity in my painting process even though everything is predestined in a way.

SW: Do you see your work evolving into something else?

RAF: It's unlikely. Usually when an artist becomes a mature artist, unless they are a multi media experimental type of artist, they continue to be who they are. But they do it with more depth and intensity. That's where I am. Experimenting isn't interesting when you know something deeper. It doesn't mean you don¹t find new things in the process. Where I see any great invention happening would be in the kind of colors I use. The colors are the prime thing about my work. Everything I do in my preparations and techniques is to lead me into focusing, creating, and living beautiful complex mysterious colors. I don't see the end of what I'm doing yet.

SW: Do you have any advice for young artists?

RAF: If they need advice, they are not real artists. But if they asked I would say, be yourself, take your time, forget the art market, forget the gallery situation. Galleries are commercial businesses. Do not judge art by magazines, critics, curators, and museums because most of this won't survive in time. Are you a real artist who wants to do something great? Or are you just an artist, like a dentist or rock star who wants to live for the moment and use art as a sexier more exciting way of life? Are you looking to be famous right away? Chances are you won't. Sure, we all want recognition. The greatest artist of all wants recognition, but they understand the difference between making great art and recognition. You have to really live your life fully and know yourself. You have to be independent, strong, and courageous. If you worry about what other people think of you and your art, in my estimation, you are not a real artist. You can have many insecurities, we all do. Even Van Gogh did, for example, but at the base of it he knew he was a painter and that he was great, even if he couldn¹t articulate it. Get a studio. Do not take a full time job. Do whatever it takes to be a full time artist. I did it with all kinds of odd jobs. You have to make a choice. Then you just try to make the best, most honest, deepest and timeless work you are capable of. You have your whole life to do it.

For more information on Ruth Ann Fredenthal check out The Means are the Ends: Ruth Ann Fredenthal - Portrait of an Artist, a documentary video by David Sotnik and Paradigm Productions.

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