And Now

I am reading Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton, and I'm on the Turner Prize chapter. She's interviewing 2006 Turner Prize nominee Tomma Abts, and I'm amazed by this artist's mysteriousness. She won't speak about artist influences, she won't disclose her German name book (which she uses to choose the titles of her paintings), she refuses to answer questions such as "were you raised on a commune?" and she believes "Painting is so visual that it is very difficult to say things that won't compromise it." She doesn't believe artists should explain themselves.


Not to mention she makes about 8 paintings a year. She'll spend sometimes 5 years on them and makes sure enough time will pass in between each working-session. Taken from a description of Abts on the Tate Britain website, "Abts describes the finished works as ‘a concentrate of the many paintings underneath’, each functioning as an autonomous object revealing the visible traces of its construction." She also uses no source material, no preconceived notions of what any painting will look like in the end. But here is her interview; it's really quite strange and fascinating how she goes about art-making.


http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2006/tommaabts.htm