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Interview with Robert
Nickle Part Two
UPSHAW: How has your
work changed over the years, aside from the raunchier paper? What
problems have you set for yourself?
NICKLE: I started out in
a very random fashion, but my need for continuity was such that I found
myself playing games like the stupid one I set for myself, where each
successive picture that I made would have to better than the one before,
and I would have to recognize it to be better. That was great at first,
but I got myself in a terrible knot.
The purpose was OK,
though, in that I was trying to demand of myself a discernible,
directional system. The thing that I consider reasonable about it,
though I now call it stupid, was that so many people paint their hearts
out without much concern for what they've done. And this is fine, except
that this spitting out process is everything for this sort of person.
When he's through, somebody almost has to come and pick out, and say
"this is a good one, and this is a bad one. We'll have the good ones
framed and take care of them for you."
But that person has
something going, in that he is non product-oriented. He's interested in
the process. So I admire that person and what he's got, but I sense that
he lacks the thing that I push myself so hard for. I push myself so hard
that I hurt those qualities that he has and that he protects. Over a
period of time, I've become more aware that one has to be more concerned
about the process of doing or the pleasure of doing, and not so
concerned with how it will end. In a way, this tendency of mine to be so
concerned with, "Is it good?" is both my hindrance and my everything.
The move from the middle
to the late 40's was pretty much a move towards simplification. The
less-is-more kind of stuff. I used to say that if I could make a collage
of three pieces, it would be a great victory. Then it was regularization
I went through, where I had six squares or six rectangles that were
adjacent. It was elimination of form. I was not concerned with form as
such, but with its relationships. I had begun with form carrying me, and
systematically I wanted to take away the crutch.
UPSHAW: What would have
taken its place?
NICKLE: You never get
rid of form, but I was trying to take away the dominance of form as the
carrier of the interest. Albers was doing the same thing when he worked
with only a couple of squares. He was not worrying about form, but about
color, the values, and their relationships. To get back to the basic
problem, I was simply taking a few rectangles and seeing what they could
do. This was OK, but I could only go so far with it. Any further, and I
would have had to go to paint for greater control. The absolutist sort
of thing was not conducive to the collage I was doing.
UPSHAW: I understand
that at that time you would not let pieces overlap or alter their shape
in anyway.
NICKLE: I grew more
concerned about not wanting to manipulate the pieces, not cutting or
doing anything that would destroy their nature. This became more
important as I became more and more partial to the material. I was
pretty stringent about not wanting to overlap. I came to fold pieces
occasionally that hadn't been folded, but I did it with a guilty
conscience. But I overlap abundantly now, and if I have a piece with a
hang-out that bothers me, I just fold it under and glue it down.
UPSHAW: So you moved
towards simplification. Then what?
NICKLE: To more complex
arrangements, and then to freer rectilinear arrangements. As the paper
got dirtier and raunchier, the rectangles became almost secondary to the
organic events that were part of the rectangles. The whole very fluid
thing grew to where I felt at home with it. But this didn't happen on a
steady month by month or year by year basis.
UPSHAW: Why did you
decide to build collages that could be seen from more than one
direction?
NICKLE: In the late 40's
and 50's, it seemed a good thing that an image should be able to
function in four directions. I was working squares as a limitation quite
a bit at the time, and the square field was a natural for four ways.
Besides, when you make a thing, you tend to turn it to see what you have
you've done. So the four-way image was a reasonable thing at the time I
could get the four ways going, there was probably a diminishment of the
best side in order to compensate.
UPSHAW: A blank page can
be seen from four sides.
NICKLE: Yes, a blank
page, or one where little happens. Or one where it happens in a harmless
and pleasant way. So I lost some ground when I thought I was gaining. I
built frames that you could walk up to and turn.
UPSHAW: I noticed that
the Smart Gallery's piece has hanging wires on top and bottom, so that
it can be seen from two directions.
NICKLE: I made frames
with fixed hanging wires, but I also made a panel-type frame. Stainless
steel clips held sandwiched glass, and you could walk up and turn the
whole thing. These were influenced by Moholy, who made a frame of
Plexiglas suspended by stainless steel clips on a background.
UPSHAW: You say in your
catalogue statement, "A work is complete only when framed, a kind of
integral relationship of space and color."
NICKLE: Making the
frames provides a rest from the way I work. I'm like the action painter
who will make a mark and instantly react to the mark. The kind of
intense exchange I try to make in starting something makes me exhausted.
So the frame becomes my knitting, my getting away from my work.
But the frame is
important to me, not only in using the designer part of me, but also
because the nature of the collage materials is such that, unless I
protect it, my picture can easily be overwhelmed. If I try to surround a
picture by anything of its own kind, it doesn't work. I feel like I'm
making a protective environment. I would probably like to make white
frames, but I don't know how. The minute I make a white frame, it works
on white, but then it won't work on something that isn't a white field.
UPSHAW: You mentioned a
poster which you made for your first show which was hung upside down.
NICKLE: It was just a
poster, but nice enough. It was purposely made so that it could be
framed after cutting the announcement portion off the bottom. A lot of
them were framed, and I noticed that several were hung upside down. I
was very upset. I felt that these people had pretty bad vision or
something, but it turned out that these were left handed people. This
was a shock. I realized that I wasn't everybody, and that other people
saw as clearly as I did, but in quite another way.
This was the beginning
of a further minimalization and another set of restrictions. I found
myself working in front of a mirror, so that I could see what I was
doing in reverse. In order to overcome this dominance of one side, the
collage became a pretty passive event. It was OK for me, because in the
passivity I was still hunting for something, I was no longer hitting
people with a sledgehammer. But somewhere along the line, I felt silly
and said, "Am I not to please myself?" I guess it was like when you grow
up and say, "So I'm homely, So what?" So I do load the corner or I do
load one end. So I cut off all of the left-handed people or whatever.
UPSHAW: What are your
plans for the future?
NICKLE: Talking of
Albers reminds me of what a nice thought he conveyed one time. I was
walking him to the Art Institute, where he was going to lecture. This
was when he was pretty old. I said to him "Are you painting everyday?"
And he answered, "Every day. You know, I've got thousands and thousands
of squares yet to paint." And sometimes I come to my studio and I say to
myself, "I've got thousands and thousands of pieces of paper to put
together." I wouldn't trade my next ten years for my last twenty. In a
way, I've spent the last thirty or forty years getting ready. |