An emotional interview with the award winning post minimalist Richard Tuttle, known for his subtle, intimate works: “Artists they’re from nature, they come out of nature, they’re like the clouds that just happen.”
Being an artist is not like a disease, and it’s not something, which can be cured via psychoanalysis either. Artists are a part of nature, like clouds that just happen, Tuttle explains. For Richard Tuttle personally art has always been his life, something he could not live without. Tuttle also explains that art is a human invention, a system which produces freedom, and which is necessary for keeping society healthy.
The interview is as subtle and intimate as Tuttles work — the artist invites us in for a glimpse of his childhood pain. Most artists have terrible childhoods, and would die without art, Tuttle says. He was brought up by three women, his aunt and grandmother helped his mother, who wasn’t able to take care of him on her own. His father didn’t understand him. Most artists grown up without the understanding of their families, Tuttle says: “They try to make you like they are.”
Tuttle also tells us how he learned never to trust teachers, and to always trust his own beliefs first of all. Most of us are conditioned by our surroundings as we grow up, the wisdom of society stamps out the inner life, as we learn how to operate in the world. But the artist’s job is to explore the invisible world of nature and emotions.
Richard Dean Tuttle (b. 1941) is an American post minimalist artist who’s works span a range of media, from sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, and artist’s books to installation and furniture. Tuttle is often referred to as an “artist’s artist” and, as such, his work has been influential to a generation of contemporary artists such as Kiki Smith, Jim Hodges, David Hammons, Michael Oman-Reagan, Tom Friedman, and Jessica Stockholder. He was a very close friend of minimalist painter Agnes Martin until her death in 2004.
Richard Tuttle was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen
Editing by Kamilla Bruus
Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014
Supported by Nordea-fonden
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