Richard Jackson had a longer break. The painter never saw his last major exhibition in Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle in 2020 because of Corona, and the entire museum remained closed. Before that, his truly important institutional exhibitions date back several decades. Jackson is considered one of the pioneers of process-oriented painting. He extended the term from the painted stretcher to include sculpture and in recent years has worked primarily with air compressors and pumps that spray and distribute paint through hoses. FuW met him at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Zurich on the occasion of his solo exhibition.
The 83-year-old artist wears a dark blue mechanic’s overalls, the usual green John Deere cap on his head, and dabs of paint on his shoes. A rifle (made of plastic?) lies on his lap. Jackson grew up on the US West Coast in the city of Sacramento and began studying electrical engineering, which he broke off. Sacramento, the capital of California, became too restrictive for him at the time, as he explains. He left Sacramento for Los Angeles, the “world capital of figurative painting”, as he puts it. But he shouldn’t have much in common with this profession.
Action Painting
During the late 1960s and 1970s, emerging minimalism dominated the art world: simple shapes and fields of color, with which the US painter Mark Rothko, for example, was to define an entire genre. «Rothko painted the same thing for decades. His paintings are just as good on the phone screen as they are in real life,” says Jackson dryly as he marches through his exhibition, which is currently under construction, opening and closing a small pocket knife once more and once more.
Jackson’s works from the 1970s challenged the minimalist reduction in painting that was being propagated at the time. In return, Jackson hung his pictures with the painted side directly on the wall and shifted or twisted the picture content, the color traces of which were distributed – not unaesthetically – across the museum or gallery wall. In 1975 he was supposed to exhibit at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam with the minimalists of his time, such as Robert Ryman, Agnes Martin and Robert Mangold. He didn’t feel very comfortable with it. “I was the only non-minimalist,” he says.
Jackson’s work had more in common with the New York Expressionists, at least in theory. “The canvas became an arena, instead of a space, where an object can be analysed, reproduced or redesigned,” was how the art critic Harold Rosenberg described the works of painters such as Jackson Pollock in 1952: the term Action Painters was born. “I was definitely inspired by the Action Painters. I wanted to document the activity,” Jackson admits. A group exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art followed in 1978, with which he officially rose to become one of the most radical US painters of his time. He didn’t make money with the documentation and sketches of his painting actions. “I haven’t sold a single drawing in fifty years. I worked on construction sites to be able to finance my artistic work.»
painting machines
Jackson did not have a close relationship with the painters of his generation, above all Frank Stella, who is consistently reminiscent of the color content on the wall in the “Wall Paintings”. “I spent time with him, but never really thought much regarding things we had in common.” Jasper Johns – his painted flag of the USA is iconic – he “admired”. «Who I like is Barnett Newman. He didn’t do that much art, maybe that’s what makes him interesting.” Jackson’s numerous stacked painted canvases («Stacks») and his early neon sculptures can be seen in the Zurich gallery. Jokes in neon lettering: between Bruce Nauman charm and Joseph Kosuth severity. At one point, Jackson began infusing color into the neon letters. A vocabulary to which he would later remain faithful.
“Painting almost borders on textile design these days. With Pollock, at least, there was still psychoanalytic theory behind it», says Jackson, who lacks the depth of contemporary painting. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Jackson radically developed his artistic language further. He has made a name for himself with the painting machines he has been building since 1996: a painterly object is created with the help of mechanics, often with an air compressor. Freudian undertones can also be suspected in Jackson. The most recent «Rooms», his characteristic space-filling installations, have brutal to explicitly sexual allusions and intentionally narrowly (too narrowly?) miss bad taste.
Between seriousness and humor
Jackson’s fascination with guns and the subject of hunting recurs throughout the work and has political overtones. “We should have a discussion regarding weapons,” he says. If he might talk to a US president, it would be Barack Obama, says Jackson. “Or maybe George W. Bush,” he adds a few seconds later. “I think he still had a sense of humor, at least,” he says, recalling the 43rd US President’s recent painting ambitions. Humor has always been important to Jackson. Bush’s war on terror was processed in Jackson’s room-filling installation “The War Room”. Comic-like duck sculptures in military gear spray each other with paint. Serious analysis of US iconography or just kidding? “A bit of both,” he says.
Jackson taught for several years at the art elite forge UCLA, a public university in Los Angeles. “Most of the money in the budget went into painting,” says Jackson, who also finds similarities with the military apparatus here. He resists the strict hierarchy with a few (well-paid) professorships and many temporary contract positions for assistants and lecturers. “Art is such a business these days. The young students start out with the firm expectation that they will be a part of it.” Were there grades under Jackson at UCLA? Most of the time he would only have given top marks. “How do I get to the point of judging others?” he says, laughing.
Jackson is currently building one of his “rooms” at his east Los Angeles studio in the city of Sierra Madre. It’s regarding the gold rush, as the artist tells us, who owned a gold mine himself but didn’t make any money. Jackson doesn’t have a picture of the new installation at the moment, which in this case he even regrets, as he says. The finished work – the sculpture, the installation, the art product – is less important to him. In general, Jackson has a certain distance to the entire art world, even if he is represented by a few well-known galleries. “Art fairs are the ugly side of art. Collectors change the way galleries behave, and galleries change the artists.” What still drives him at the age of 83? “I want to get up and learn something new every day!” says Jackson.