Malcolm Morley

In conversation with William Furlong

from Audio Arts Volume 11, Number 1, 1991

Transcript

This recording was made in front of Malcolm Morley's works at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, September 1990.

William Furlong: Perhaps we can start by discussing your use of paint.

Malcolm Morley: One of the problems with oil paint is that it’s hard to move without modifying it, so I get small amounts, which means that I can move it without too much of a wetting agent in it. Its energy or freshness is that it’s organised over small areas. If you could imagine oil paint having a kind of a torque, that tensile strength is occurring because you’re not hauling huge amounts over a surface. In a way the paint is going into the canvas rather than on it. The oil paintings are the opposite of the watercolours, which act as exact models for the oils, as a blueprint does to a building. It is essential that they are transparent. I don’t like to use any body colour in the watercolours at all, almost as a point of honour. The sense of transparency that you have looking at the oils comes from painting the watercolour as if it were a still-life object. I’m painting from a watercolour surface that’s been gridded, and the grid has been isolated by a little window that is painted grey so that I can register tones against it, very much like a tuning fork. The oil paint, which is opaque, is painting the still life, which is transparent. If you look at a slide of both of them, it’s hard to tell the difference, but there’s no problem in the actuality of them.

WF: I’m just wondering about the watercolour of the same subject or of the same title of the painting we’re standing in front of ‘Gloria’.

MM: Well actually there are two watercolours because there’s a watercolour, which isn’t here, ‘The Aeroplanes’ and there’s a watercolour of ‘Gloria’ so these two watercolours were....I painted the two watercolours on two different scales also there’s another factor...that in terms of the sensation of the brushstroking is determined by the size of the scale of the grid. If you have a small grid you’ve small brushes and you’ve got a lot of packed surface. If you’ve got a big grid you get a big brush, you have a wider breathing surface. So in this particular picture, which is called ‘Gloria’ the scale of the aeroplanes was a different sized grid than the grid of the Gloria. In fact it was half of that so I’m doing that quite a bit now: that’s mixing scales together.

WF: Could you talk about the combining of elements .

MM: There’s a very good example round the corner, ‘Boat, Night, Tank’ which is three separate watercolours, made in three different places. One was made in Maine, a little house I’ve got up in a fishing village called Port Clyde. The middle panel is from an effigy in the cathedral in Exeter. 'Tank' was made in my studio from the ‘Tank’ sculpture upstairs. 'Night' was painted on the afternoon my mother was buried in Exeter. It works on a private level for me, but for others it could have other meanings.

WF: Is it important that there are numerous interpretations that can be brought to the work?

MM: No, that seems to be a by-product or spin-off, which is a sort of a gift.

WF: There’s a painting called, ‘Agean Crime’ which is very complex in its imagery, and I was wondering whether you had a particular narrative in mind?

MM: I don’t think narratively at all. It’s just what one image will go with another, so there’s always a pictorial determination first. In other words, it’s cadmium red before it’s blood or wine

WF: Obviously you travel a lot and you look at local cultures.

MM: There’s a convention of European artists going to Greece. In fact, Maillol was rather, so I understand, an ordinary painter until he went on a holiday to Greece. Even Picasso did ‘Pegasus’, the flying horse, so I did my version of it, which is very interesting because the helmet comes from Achilles, and Ajax’s shield is from a Navy Museum in Bermuda.

WF: The way you talk about those connections is perhaps parallel to the way the paintings evolve.

MM: Yes, yes, but I don’t have to think about them. The main guide is that it’s coming through pictorially first. It’s very much like the wonderful story about Degas and Mallarme who were supposed to be very good friends. And after many years Degas confessed to Mallarmé that he also wrote poetry and that he found it awfully difficult to express his feelings in poetry. So Mallarmé wrote the poems and he said: You know Degas poetry is made with words not feelings. So only a great feeling poet could say that. You know it’s like the corny painter who tries to paint a likeness. And you’re not going to get that, you know. You’re going to have to see the formal values of it.

WF: We’re standing against another very impressive painting, .

MM: We went to Costa Rica, my wife and I, and one day was very wet, and the restaurant in the hotel had this huge bowl of fruit. As I couldn’t go anywhere I made a watercolour of it. And then we went to another place in Costa Rica where they were building a shack for hotel guests to hang in a hammock underneath... so, there’s a combination of those two.

WF: The use of the medium obviously is very important, but the way in which the images still seem to hold and have space and depth - I mean, the tension between the two things I find very compelling.

MM: Well, that is really the crux of the matter, the paradox of the realisation on a totally flat surface. Because after all, it’s essentially only paint on canvas moved in a certain fashion. If you look at the paintings side by side, no two surfaces are the same, because the subject matter calls for different surfaces.

WF: Could you make an entirely abstract painting?

MM: Yes, I could, but I strongly feel an obligation to include an image.

WF: It is relatively new for you to extend into sculpture. What was the interest in moving away from the flat surface?

MM: They’re made from drawings cut out with scissors and forced to join, so it creates a bulge here and bulge there. They’re made in blotting paper and then covered with wax, brushed on. In a sense they are three-dimensional paintings. This is an interesting point to start on. I was reading Barbara Tuckman’s marvellous history book, and she was talking about the Normans' huge, double-edged sword, which Viking armour could not withstand, so it was like the atomic bomb of its time. At the same time, I was making this pedestal, or plinth, and it reminded me of a double-edged sword. It’s as if you’re living in a circle of currencies and you can pick out this or that or something else. This figure’s made from a World War One model toy. David Sylvester was telling me that Giacometti said to him that he found tin soldiers far more realistic than any military sculpture. In a sense I think the underbelly of culture is shown in its toys.

WF: In fact, the theme of all these pieces is military.

MM: They’re all from something specific. This one was made by wrapping bandages up in plaster and waxing it. It’s got a different pedestal. It reminds you of a watchtower in Stalag 17; it even reminds me of a very early Reg Butler. Somebody looking at it thought it was a huge animal bone.

WF: David Sylvester has talked about your history, your childhood and your toys - there was that story of the balsawood boat that was lost in the Blitz.

MM: In a way I regret that, because it steals the thunder of the viewer. I really would like to say that I had the same kind of childhood that you did and we all had the same stuff. I think one of the problems with creating a reason for why work exists is that you arm people with how to look at it and you preclude their own experience. I’ve had my experience; I want you to have yours.

WF: This piece over here is a battle ship and a long plinth.

MM: This was made from cardboard and you can actually see the rib. You know how when you fold cardboard it’ll break somewhere, such as here, so you can actually feel this is a piece of cardboard that’s been painted with wax. It’s all emotionally involved with the sensation of the material rather than intellectual activity in the process of doing it. It’s really hard to talk about your art without it being personal, that’s the problem with it. You feel that that this has been dredged up, you know.

WF: The actual images don’t illustrate military equipment or boats but somehow evoke them, because of the slightly out of focus way in which they’ve been realised.

MM: Yes, yes, but that’s how they feel and look when you’re on them. But I think it’s a metaphor for a lot of other stuff, which I have just touched the surface of, because they look very archaic and very ancient and classical. When we were talking about the Greek thing earlier, my imagination went, 'I am an ancient Greek sculptor.' Like a method actor, I work that way. As a method actor becomes what that thing is, so I became a Greek sculptor, following the classical lost-wax technique to produce painted bronze, which is what the Greeks did. I want to talk about the other tank around the corner. The foundry gave me back two wax models: that one and this one I took this one into the sauna in my house, I sat down with it for a long time and it started melting and I started doing things with it. So this started off being exactly the same as that tank there, and I ended up with this. I absolutely love this piece. It looks like a big roller skate or sneaker.

WF: The other reference that comes to mind is of Giacometti, and you mentioned him to begin with.

MM: Giacometti and Brancusi, I think, because they both dealt with the pedestal as content. I mean, you couldn’t take away the pedestal in a Giacometti and put a wooden block underneath. For example, this is called , which is the first one that I made. It is of an Eighth Army Desert Rat and it was a drawing. This is drawing paper that’s been glued together and then cast into bronze.

WF: They all have a military theme in common...

MM: There is a strong classical tradition of military sculpture, and walking around the National Gallery today, it was very hard to see a picture that didn’t have some kind of military-ness in it. What’s interesting is how women relate to these, because they become other kinds of metaphors. And I think maybe it’s for other people to get that out. They seem to be benign, neutralised, in the way a child really does use his soldiers. Another factor which is awfully important is the scale of your relationship to the figures. You have a very omnipotent view of it, you’re God looking at tiny figures.

WF: Normally military art is on a monumental scale. One thing that slightly throws one is that although these suggest the idea of the monument they’re smaller than you and me.

MM: I would love to do a huge one; it would be great to have a tower 20 feet high with that on top. I’m hoping the Royal Fusiliers will commission me to do their ultimate monument.

WF: A melted tank.

MM: Take that as a suggestion!

WF: Finally, there’s a relief here on the wall.

MM: This is made with blotting paper; it is hollow, with a wax coating. And this is also made from a drawing, by which I mean that that drawing becomes the piece. This is the drawing made three-dimensional. It's called . I like that, there’s a certain power. If you got all the titles together as a work, you’d get some very interesting concrete poetry.

WF: Do the titles come after the works? They’re obviously very important to you.

MM: They’re important in that they bring it to rest. You might say that I make the work in order to find out what it is. We exist before we are named. The work comes first. The title comes afterwards. And it comes just like that, as if it was waiting, almost like a crossword puzzle.

WF: I’d be interested to know what you’re doing at the moment.

MM: I can’t talk about what is going on now; it’s got to be after the fact. It’s like bird watching, you know, the bird will fly off. Can’t blow the gaff yet.