Leonardo

Leonardo,Vol. 6, pp. 239-240. PergamonPress 1973. Printed in Great B r i t a i n . ASPECTS OF REALITY IN MY PAINTINGS Stephen Greene” I have always felt the need as an artist to introduce both objective and subjective aspects of reality in my paintings, especially in the form of signs or symbolsof the mystery and of the passion of human life. Therefore, in my compositions I deal with images that convey conventional meaning and that are enigmatic. My earliest paintings, made around 1947, were influencedby the Renaissance painters but, whereas they were much concerned with the representation ofthe actualvisibleworld, Iwasessentiallyinterested in my own psychological interpretation of it. Also my fascination with the theatre led me to invent a cast of symbolic personages who were depicted on the two-dimensional‘stage’of a painting. At times, the figures were maimed and, in most of these paintings, they took part in events centred on Christ’s passion in a general way. I did not use another period’s esthetic mode but I tried to deal with the possible meanings of hallucination. I was haunted by the practice of genocide in our time and with the guilt and witnessing of crime. I still use coffinshapes, however my concern is in the psychological ‘death’ of the living. In my first works bone forms,bars and the crutch were used as symbolsand I usually divided the canvaswith cross forms. These symbols are still present in my current works but the works are quite removed from illustration or realism, for I would not be content only to mirror aspectsof the moment of historyin which Ilive. My works since 1960moved from public iconography to a personal mythology [l]. I prefer my symbols and their combination to give rise to more than one possible interpretation of meaning. I am not interested in simple geometric forms or in nonfigurativecompositions . Suchworkscan be splendid in having a totally concentrated oneness but they also can through such extreme distillation become over-simplifiedand arid. For me, a form must not only be able to exist independently as one area of color or as a particular circumscribed form but also it must have a psychological significance in the particular drama I want a painting to convey to viewers. Whatever changes have occurred in my work over the years, and there have been many, some of them of a radical nature, a few constants do *Artist teaching at the Tyler School of Art in Rome, Temple University, 15 Lungotevere Arnaldo Da Brescia, 00196-Rome, Italy. (Received 30 August 1972.) remain. They derive from the core of my early haunted concern with crime and guilt. I have been concerned mainly with space that is limitless and free of objects and with its opposite, space that is cramped and cluttered with things. I imagine that an imprisoned man must envision freedom as a vast expanse of blue. In 1954I was in Tunisia and was particularly moved by the sight of Sidi-Bou-Said, a town not far from Tunis. The blue Mediterranean is at the base of the town, each house is white and all doors, balconies and shutters Fig. 1. ‘Night Fever’, oil on canvas, 88 x 50 in., 1971. (Photo:W. Rosenblum, LongIslandCity, N.Y., U.S.A.) 239 240 Stephen Greene are cerulean blue. I think of this incredibly saturated blue color as space, as atmosphere, but I would not want to use it to illustrate a particular place. There is alwaysa differencebetweenwhat may be an artist’s initialinspiration and how he makes use of it. In 1957-58 I began using large areas of one color with incidents or details depicted in corners and at edges. In 1960, I began my seriesof essentially blue paintings. Many believe that drawing has become of lesser importance to the painter than in the past. But it seemsto me that although line is lessand lessused to circumscribe a form it has now become an independent agent in a composition. Therefore, I do not paint lines but draw them with charcoal or pastel colors so that their independence of the painted areas is assured. A line a few inches in length can play an important...