Viewing page 7 of 63

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

with horizontality and edges. Exploring these boundaries creates a newly mobile human scale assaying territorial limits ad equality. Some new work occurs in sets or units which explore multiplicity and dispersal. Works of art are no longer presented as a precious class of objects.
Will a special class of subjects also be relegated to history?  -Jo Baer 

[[Image]]

You have asked what kind of political action should be taken by artists, and I can answer only that any particular artist should take whatever political action he wants to. Political things should not affect the making of art because political activity and art-making have never mixed to art's advantage, and my guess is that most artists are better off out of politics. But it is an individual's choice. As a subject it really does not merit the attention you are giving it. 
- Walter Darby Bannard 

[[Image]]
[[Caption]] ANSWER. DON'T BUY AMERICAN PRODUCTS LEAARN MANY LANGUAGES KEEP MONEY IN FOREIGN CURRENCY AND PASSPORT CURRENT. [[/Caption]]
- Billy Al Bengston 

[[Image]]
I think of myself as a container, and what I do as an eruption of what I am. Where do you get nourished? That's where you have something to do. The body of the octopus is full. Its tentacles need only be directed to the caverns of waiting mouths. 

I have been involved and will still be involved in: peace benefit showed, weekly meeting group encounter Art Workers Coalition meetings, my own studio, and wherever I happen to be. I have been asked to tax my half of sales, which, during this recession, doesn't mean very much, but when money starts flowing, I have stipulated that the art- changers tak upon themselves the tax burden- that dead artists support live artists through trust funds collected by taxing the profits from the auction block. Dead artists support live ones spiritually, so it isn't much of a peculiar demand that they support us financially. In fact our voices would be a lot stronger if our blood was nourished by our dead compatriots instead of the market system. We use the system as a pipeline, directing the fuel to where the need is signaled. Artists are the saints of the world eating the continual last supper. The better the food, the richer the art.

It's all a matter of economics, not politics. Throughout the centuries of art-making there have been wars, investigators, pogroms. The artist does battle on his own field, and resents being forced into combat with strangers, by a government that does not nourish him. -Rosemarie Castoro 

A full statement on the subject you mention and especially at the present moment is quite difficult! We live in a treacherous time. In a most general fashion I can only emphasize that I am first and above all else an artist. This I must emphasize since I am writing now for a magazine which has not once -ever- recognized this fact. If you think about this then perhaps you will better   

[[Image]]

begin to understand.

As for actions, I include two maxims: " The revolutionary is very careful not to do anything that call for a confrontation between him and the enemy as long as he knows he can't win that confrontation. The revolutionary does nothing that will serve only to unite the enemy against him. " Who do you think the enemy is, Phil? 

On May 18, 1895 Jose Marti wrote in a letter to  a friend: 'I have lived in the monster and I know its entrails; and mine is the sling of David."  For him it worked well.

I am sorry I can not be of more help at this time.

——Rafael Ferrer

[[Image]]

I've always thought that my work had political implications, has attitudes that would permit, limit or prohibit some kinds of political behavior and some institutions. Also, I've thought that the situation was pretty bad and that my work was all I could do. My attitude of opposition and isolation, which has slowly changed in regard to isolation in the last five years or so, was in reaction to the events of the fifties: the continued state of war, the destruction of the UN by the Americans and the Russians, the ridged useless political parties, the general exploitation and both the Army and McCarthy. 

Part of the reason for my isolation was the incapacity to deal with it all, in any way, and also work. Part was that recent art had occurred outside of most of the society. Unlike now, very few people were opposed to anything, none my age that I knew. The most important reason for isolation was that I couldn't think about the country in a general way. Most of the general statements 

36