Philip Pearlstein, Resident Artist Lecture 1967

Philip Pearlstein gives a lecture talking about his artistic practice which spans drawing, writing, printmaking, and painting. In his paintings, Pearlstein is interested in having a landscape motif that can convey a fully self-explanatory subject, and Pearlstein draws inspiration from action painters to understand this, while staying away from photography due to its inability to give Pearlstein enough information of what he wants to look at. The process of writing is also something that has continued to push Pearlstein’s painting practice over the years, teaching him that an artist must always establish an attitude towards the flat picture plane, and then decide whether to hold it, break it, or work with it. For Pearlstein, this multi-faceted approach to understanding his paintings allows him to approach the picture plane without puncturing it with illusionistic spaces, and to create figures in his compositions that are devoid of compromise and on the brink of abstraction. These risks that Pearlstein takes in his paintings allow him to think about the active compositions and complex figures that inhabit his paintings, while also holding the picture plane accountable. Pearlstein states how he tries to be aware of the tensions that build up between an artist and the work of the past as well as contemporary artists that are making work now. Pearlstein says that it is important for every artist to work with the full knowledge of the history of technical ideas they deal with. When artists build this awareness, it allows them to understand how other artists will view their work, and how they can build their practice alongside the contemporaries of their generation who are pursuing the same related goals, while understanding how their work is similar or different. Pearlstein then states that the degree of an artist’s accomplishment can only be measured directly in these terms. Pearlstein ends his lecture by gently reminding the participants to seize every opportunity as artists, for everything is fleeting, nothing stays the same, nothing is stable, and they will never truly be in control of life around them except their art.