Petah Coyne Interviewed by "Bomb"
  Petah Coyne redefines energy, or maybe defines it. I met her in the summer of 1993, when we were both teaching in Bardâs M.F.A. program. We lived in the same house but I never saw her. She was the proverbial mouse; I knew she was there because there were traces of her existence, like an empty can of tuna in the garbage. When I did see her, she was rushing out or to her room, to sleep or read. Sheâs a burst of drive, and grace, too; of humor, delight and fun, when you can catch her. Back then, she told me the story of how she met her husband, Lamar, when she was 14. She saw this boy and told him, âIâm going to marry you.â Then he ran and hid in the garage. She waited for him for two hours. She called to him, âDonât be scared of me, I wonât hurt you.â When his mother came home, she wanted to know what Petah was doing hanging around. Petah said, âIâm waiting for the boy in the garage.â
When Petah and I spoke the other day, I reminded her of the story. She said, âI loved him. It was one of those instincts. I knew I had to get married. I had to take care of that to become an artist. And I donât know why I thought that.â
And I said, âIt was either marrying Christ or Lamar.â Few artists, or people, generate as much good feeling as Petah does just by existing. And then thereâs her expansive work. Her usually bigger-than-life sculptures might borrow from natural elementsâearth, hair, trees, waxâand hang from the ceiling or lie on the floor. She constructs environments, or habitats, in which single objects act and interact with each other, are entangled in space to compose imagined, fantastic worlds. Her recent photographs of brides are like dreams: concoctions, fragments of moments, moments already lost as theyâre lived. Petah lives and works in frenetic, long moments, with tremendous discipline, slipping in and out of view. Itâs amazing to have been able to sit her down for an hour or so, to talk.
 Lynne Tillman Iâm always interested in what isnât said. Whatâs not said about your work? What do you feel is underreported? I donât mean misunderstood, but not talked about.
Petah Coyne Itâs all the associations that I make with the work. I donât know if itâs important that the general audience see it, but many of my associations come from Japanese literature and culture. You wouldnât recognize those associations unless you had read a tremendous amount about Japanese culture or were familiar with it. Recently, Martha Schwendener mentioned that my last exhibition was about obscuring objects by continually adding layer upon layer of white wax. Although the work was made before September 11, she felt it was quite reminiscent of the chalky dust and ash that blanketed the buildings and occupants of lower Manhattan with a premature âsnow.â Her description reminded me of Butoh, the sixties Japanese dance movement, which was drawn from both the energy of death or a life consumed in both sorrow and joy. Butoh is also referred to as the dance of the dark soul. I was dealing with Hiroshima, catastrophes and almost panic.
PCÂ The way in which people panic afterward and then are filled with rage. Right after Hiroshima is when Japanese artists started doing Gutai.
PCÂ Itâs a postâWorld War II art movement. It isnât exhibited much, because the ideas are more captivating than the work. It seems the conceptual intentions were to purge all formal painting of its traditionally rigid scope. It was about making work and destroying it. Theyâd hang large sheets of paper from trees and drive motorcycles through them. My impression was that everything was about rage.
LTÂ When did you become interested in Japanese literature and culture?
PCÂ When I was four years old we lived in Hawaii, where we stayed for three and a half years, an exorbitantly long time when youâre growing up and moving a lot.
LTÂ Were you an army brat?
PC Yes, we traveled everywhere. We lived in a Japanese neighborhood in Hawaii; all of my neighbors, my classmates, everyone was Japanese. I felt I was also Japanese, because they never made me feel there was any difference between us. To this day, I never wear shoes in my house. All the shoes go outside. I felt so comfortable thenâŚ.
PCÂ Oh no, you still have your shoes on!
LTÂ Iâm glad you didnât force me.
PCÂ I would never, that would be very impoliteâthe Japanese would never say anything that would make their guest feel unwelcome. My parents went to Japan and China a lot, and they would always bring back things and tell us exotic stories. I also read a lot of Chinese literature when I was young, and then, in â92, I went to Japan on an Asian Cultural Council Rockefeller grant. That really turned my world upside down; I made radical changes after that. Womenâs writing in the 1950s in Japan was very restrained, but so passionate, it gives me goose bumps even thinking about it. Everything is not what it is, which seems very Catholic.
LTÂ Youâre often referred to as a lapsed Catholic.
LTÂ I wonder what lapsed means. Itâs one thing not to be a practicing Catholic, but to lapse is something else, to disconnect, not be involved.
PCÂ You canât disconnect.
LTÂ Bataille writes sex scenes on altars; only someone still connected would care.
PCÂ But that is what Catholicism is about. Youâre kneeling in front of this naked man up on a crucifix.
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Petah Coyne, Untitled 1017P01, 2001, Gelatin silver print, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Julie Saul Gallery, New York.
LTÂ In an early piece, when youâd first moved to New York, you hung dead fish from trees around the city. Looking at photographs of the dead fish, I think, Hereâs a new girl in town, walking around a strange city, seeing dead fish in stores. Itâs as if you identify with them. You begin saving them, collecting them. Itâs odd, because youâre collecting corpses and trying to keep the corpses from decomposing. What did you put on them?
PCÂ We put Rhoplex on them, which didnât preserve them. Then we used polyurethane, but if there are any air bubbles in it, the maggots still get in.
LTÂ You hung dead fish from a tree in front of a house in the suburbs. Such a weird thing.
LTÂ The idea that some suburbanites would like to awaken to dead fish hanging from trees in their front yard.
PCÂ I never assumed they wouldnât.
LTÂ Thatâs whatâs strange. But you had to get the fish out of your loft; they were a health hazard.
PC After five years of living with decomposing dead fishâŚ. But perhaps first we could talk about the fact that I almost always work intuitively. My mother trained me to trust my instincts. As I get older, I trust them more. Women have this instinctual ability to know stuff we shouldnât know. I donât know how. When I arrived here in New York, I worked at Chanel during the day. I did their in-house advertising. It was the height of beautyâmany of the women were having their legs operated on to make them thinnerâand then at night I would go and buy dead fish. I was like an alcoholic. Iâd say, Iâm not going to spend another cent on dead fish, but I couldnât resist. For me, I was saving the fish from being eaten by someone. I was going to give them a better send-off. And in addition to all that, I was also working with people who were terminally ill.
LTÂ You were working at Chanel, and you were working in a hospice?
PCÂ I was going to Boston every other weekend. I worked for a physician there. My job was to go in and talk to his patients and listen to them, because their families couldnât, it was too painful. I was also looking for something that was more real than what I was seeing in the galleries. I couldnât relate to it, and I couldnât relate to Chanel.
PCÂ This was 1978, 1979. The gallery situation was so intimidating. Susan Lubowsky Talbott, whoâs now the director of the Des Moines Art Center, also lived in this building, and she kept saying to me, âJust keep working. I donât understand what youâre doing. And donât try to show this stuff, nobodyâs going to want to see it.â So for five years, I worked by myself. Susan kept saying, âJust keep going.â In Boston, I was working with people whoâd been given a month to live. They could opt for surgery, and I could often watch the surgery, which was fascinating. There was a mourning, and other rituals similar to both Catholicism and Japanese culture, both multilayered and complex. Just as you left one layer unscathed, what you were presented with wasnât the insight you wanted to attain, but a dozen new thoughts and questions. I was so moved by what people confided to me. The dead fish would then be as close as I could get to their passing. Many of the patients died. A few didnât. I tried to figure out why. What was their strength? Their power? I was trying to put those thoughts and energy into my work.
LTÂ Did you ever figure out why some died, while others didnât?
PCÂ No. But I could tell who would and who wouldnât. Often I could do it by smell. Itâs so animal in a way. You could usually know two days before. The physician said that at that point, a patientâs system begins to break down, so I was probably sensing that. At times the odor was so sweet, like when you smell babiesâ heads. My brother, before he died, smelled glorious. When he died, he turned bright yellow because of all the toxins.
PCÂ Yes. Interestingly enough, at that time, both my brother and I were living here in the loft with my husband, Lamar, and both of us had these lumps. We had biopsies; my brotherâs was negative; mine wasnât. So I wanted to figure out how these other people were staying alive, and I incorporated all this into my work.
LTÂ But when did your brother die?
PC Six years ago. As it turned out, his lump was cancerous. We were extremely close⌠Itâs all so complex. And the art we makeâlife is so complicated, so interwoven, who can make sense of it? I think the only way for an artist to know or understand anything is to make work almost from a blind spot, and what you produce speaks to you; and as you get older, you know it more clearly. When youâre doing autobiographical work, which we all are in some way, because thatâs all we have, how can we make it as real? If we look at a book or a piece of art, can we know more about that person?
LTÂ The sources for work come from our experiences, pathologies, knowledge, lacks; theyâre sources. What we make is different, and as far as Iâm concerned, separate from the source. It doesnât really matter what happened to me.
PCÂ I feel intuitively that it is one and the same.
LT Letâs say, even if it were, when somebody looks at your art, if they feel that they have to know you in order toâŚ
PC Not have to know, but I want them to know. What I would like is for them to feel what I feel. If van Gogh walked down the street, I would recognize him, because I feel him so succinctly in his work. I feel like I knew him, like Iâve had a meal with him. Thatâs what Iâm trying to do with my work, so that the residue of whatâs left is what you were.
LTÂ Maybe itâs a desire for immortality. When I look at your work, I donât think about you.
PCÂ But when I read one of your books, I see you. I hear you saying the words because I know your voice. Even writers whose voices I donât know, I hear what I think is them. Itâs a personal thing, itâs hard for me to articulate. But I want people to feel as if we had a communication. When I look at a van Gogh, I feel, on some level, I actually met him. Iâve looked at his work so much, and he left so much there for me. But maybe knowing isnât the correct word, because actually all I want to do is be in my studio and read. Those are the only two activities I love. Itâs very nunlike to be in my studio and then come home at night to read. I want nothing else.
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Petah Coyne, Untitled 1031S-01, 2001, Mixed media, 36Ă21â. Courtesy of Galerie Lelong, New York.
LT In your catalogue Black/White/Black, you said: âI think of my girls as invalids that need constant tending and constant care.â Itâs intriguing, disturbing. You think of your sculptures as your girls, your characters. I understand that.
LTÂ But the idea of âyour girlsâ reminds me of Henry Darger and his Vivian Girls. Thereâs something perverse about it, especially when you consider them invalids. Do you want to talk about that?
PC Oh God, I really donât. Itâs so uncool to talk about your work as âmy girls,â as part of me, but I do. When I see them in museums, and Iâm not allowed to touch them anymore, I think they recognize me, I think theyâre happy to see me. Iâm certainly happy to see them. And I do think of them as an extension of myself, itâs like pulling off my skin. But as invalids, I also donât want them to breathe without me, which is really getting into the psychosis of it. I suppose thatâs why Iâve made everything so difficult, so that if I donât personally escort one of my girls to their new home, one of my people whom Iâve trained ad nauseam does. Theyâre not difficult to take care of, butâŚ
LTÂ Whatâs the process of making them, the level of difficulty?
PCÂ Making them is the most difficult, because we turn them upside down, we invert them. Weâll spend ten years on a piece, and thatâs a long time. Cost effective, not at all. Iâll work so hard on a piece for half a year; then it can sit for nine years. I just have to digest it, or I put it away, then bring it back out. They can sit there for years, but I need them, I need to know that theyâre there, Iâm still thinking about them. Itâs the same thing with the work, and this is where I differ from a lot of other sculptors, I do not separate the piece from the space. It is one and the same to me. Sculpture is about that space. I have to place my work. Where itâs placed is imperative to everything, and the scale and whole space are involved. I die when these little pieces are hung in big museums. They arenât meant to be. But if youâre always trying to control your vision, which is what youâre trying to do, or always inflicting your passion on that vision, on that piece, it is a huge job. Iâve done incredible note taking of every piece, every place, the height of the ceiling, where we hung it, so that people can get a sense of it, because I need to have this girl be in your face, be aggressive, but at the same time extremely vulnerable. Thatâs part of the process of making it. And I always want to know when theyâre moving. I want to know who has them. I need to know this, because theyâre such a big part of me. Invalids, yes, I like to breathe with my girls. I like people to walk in and be amazed that they are there.
LTÂ You know what I like about your use of the word invalid, is that when I think about work, whether itâs visual or written, itâs the imperfections that matter, our flaws.
PCÂ Theyâre the most interesting.
LTÂ A perfectionist knows you canât achieve all that you want to achieve.
PCÂ The harder you strive for perfection, the greater the flaws. What to me is most interesting is being able to open up your overcoat, be totally naked, cellulite and all.
PCÂ And have your mom and dad standing there. If you can do that, thatâs what makes you the most interesting. Everybody tries to cover up those things. Are you strong enough, do you have enough ego to be able to expose that side of yourself? Because thatâs what it takes.
LTÂ The invalid confounds the idea of the sublime, art, beauty, transcending everyday occurrences, fault and error. I want to ask you about changes in your work, the different materials, your use of colors, black and white. Then get to the bride, which is more recent work. You started out influenced by Degas.
PCÂ Very early, in high school.
LTÂ I think Degas is still there. The girls are sort of dancers, but ungainly; theyâre dancers who canât get up on their toes anymore, who have to be hung from the ceiling. I read that later, in college, you were influenced by Alice Aycock, George Trakas, the earthwork artists, who were doing large-scale sculptures. Itâs almost as if thereâs been a collision in your work between that and Degas.
PCÂ No oneâs ever said that.
LTÂ If you bring your love of Japanese literature and culture into it, with its sense of the extreme, black or white, delicate or harshâMishimaâs incredibly refined crueltyâI can see a trail of influences.
PCÂ I do admire Degas, but I love all the others as well. Itâs very easy to get hooked into one thing, then carry that along, and it makes for a much easier career. Iâve purposely forced myself to change continuously. I always have to invent a new language.
LTÂ How do you see the shifts?
PCÂ When you have the big exhibition, usually in New York, afterward, that process is dead for you. You canât go back unless you reinvent it. The wax sculptures were always hanging from the ceiling; but this time the wax was spilled on the floor and walls, and only one was hanging. Itâs cyclical, too. The sculptures always deal with death, dead birds, taxidermy, dead fish, and yet beauty, too, like the pearls and other things that I use in these pieces.
LTÂ Itâs a terrible beauty, not a happy beauty; one thatâs been achieved at a cost.
PCÂ Like a volcano, where its lava runs over a town. I saw that when I was very little. It just took the town, and it was incredibly beautiful. But we were standing with the people whose town it was, so we felt their emotional horror as well. Itâs nature gone wild and you have no control, so you surrender to it. I think that all plays into the work.
LTÂ But what is the bride? Where did she come from?
PCÂ I think itâs about pretense, all the work is pretense. Theyâre hanging from the ceiling, seemingly very delicate and easily breakable. Instead, what they really are is a threat. Theyâre extremely heavy, and if they fell on you, theyâd crush you. So the work has all these dimensions. Iâm interested in the bride who is really the bride past. Iâm so far from a bride at this point that my white hair could be the bridal gown. I love Charles Dickensâs Miss Havisham, who was left at the altar. Time stopped for her, everything in the house stopped, nothing changed. The wedding cake stayed on the table for 30 years, uneaten. She lived in that bridal dress, withered like grave clothing.
LTÂ Maybe thatâs incorporated into the bride. Sheâs an image representing time standing still. The brideâs always new, always loved, always true. Fifty percent of marriages break up; but the bride is permanence, love, being forever young. Sheâs almost like the cross, having withstood reality. Reality tells us being the bride isnât what itâs cracked up to be. We know thereâs an emptiness.
PCÂ Thereâs the beauty of not knowing. Brides have that. I just photographed all these debutantes and brides; they were beautiful, even when they were at their most self-conscious and showing signs of awkwardness. Iâm really not interested in the fresh, new bride. From my vantage point, Iâm much more interested in being past your prime. All these wax pieces are the parties afterward, the residue thatâs left. Itâs not about fresh, new. Itâs about a type of beauty thatâs long after, which is more beautiful than whatâs promised to the bride. But itâs not a beauty weâre accustomed to looking at.
LTÂ But how do we see that in the brides, that itâs afterward, say, in the wax sculptures?
PCÂ Because the wax pieces are half-melted, the images donât read sharply anymore. The big floor pieces shown in the middle of Galerie Lelong were two âvirginsâ sharing one arm. Most people thought that arm was just a lump of wax, they didnât see that the two brides were each holding a baby; actually, itâs my sister holding the perfect baby, Iâm holding a headless one. Everything was melted into what looked like the floor. If I had made them fresh and new, you would read everything as softer.
LTÂ In the Lelong exhibition, the wax sculptures gave a sense of dissolution of, say, the bride. But your show at Julie Saul Gallery, which was on at the same time and included both sculpture and photographs of brides, didnât feel that way. Especially not the brides.
PC The sculpture we exhibited with the photography was in part made in reference to Mishimaâs Spring Snow. Spring Snow was the first volume in a series of four booksâhis last worksâabout the four stages of life, and it was about innocence and beauty, but with a twist. My exhibition was about youth and vitalityânot from the brideâs vantage point, but from my vantage pointâsimilar to Mishima writing about spring snow, with a little bit of a twist. The snow is beautiful but also Victorian, itâs a repressed and restrained beauty. Or when you read Joyce, itâs like having someone who is Catholic sit on your head. Thatâs the way I felt about the photographs; the brides are beautiful, but they have someone sitting on their heads. The brides are allowed this much running room, but itâs definitely a dog walk. So, Spring Snow was the title for the Julie Saul exhibition. White Rain, one of the wax sculptures at Lelong, mimicked the black rain that fell on Hiroshima after the bomb. The sculptures were meant to be incarnations after everything had turned to ashes, but there was a beauty returning. I donât see them as brides, yet. I call them âthe nunsâ; the nuns are Christâs brides, and it is true I always think of them as virgins. All this Catholicism gets mushed in with all this other stuff and plays a huge role. Iâve read a lot of church doctrine; Iâm fascinated by the twists and turns of how they explain it. Itâs unbelievably sexual and, of course, not supposed to be. The same thing with the brides. That image is not supposed to be about after. Itâs supposed to be about fresh and new. But itâs not at all.
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Installation view of Fairy Tales at Galerie Lelong, 1998. Courtesy of Galerie Lelong, New York.
LTÂ Seeing your work, I feel Iâm in a place to wander, a fantasyland of invented narratives. Your interest in fairy tales is in the work. Youâve said you often go away and just wander around. It connects with your moving a lot when you were a child.
PCÂ Although I never want to move again in my life. Traveling like that is so important, because you become nothing. I was in Japan for six months, and I truly just wandered from one place to another. When I got tired, I stopped; when I was energized, I wandered. There would be weeks when I didnât speak to anybody. It makes you listen differently, look differently, it makes you think differently. No one bothers you, no one cares, which was thrilling. Itâs monastic. It draws you closer to what you are. And also because youâre challengedânot on your home turf, youâre not always comfortable, and you go into these states. The pace in New York is almost killing, and so to wander and see what happens outside is really a luxury. For the trips, my research is to read literature. When I went to Mexico, I read a tremendous amount before I left; then I just wandered around. In Japan, I felt the most comfortable; I was never threatened there at all. It was such a relief to roll into a town at midnight and not be afraid to find my hotel by myself. I donât think you can do that in many places. Itâs very freeing, but it also makes you question everything. You leave this place youâve been wandering in, then go back to your studio, and you see immediately where your work is lacking.
LTÂ What bothers you most about your work?
PCÂ That I donât have enough time. Iâm so afraid Iâm running out of time. Iâve felt that since I was 20. I hardly socialize at all anymore, because I just donât have the time or energy or need, I guess. I have so many ideas in my head in so many different directions, but to actually get them out, well, you have to work with them a long time. Iâm approaching 50. Iâm planning to go to 123.
LTÂ You and I have talked about perfectionism, shooting for perfection.
PCÂ Shooting and missing completely, which is so beautiful.
LTÂ People often say art is making order out of chaos, but your idea is that you make ordered chaos. Whatâs your ordered chaos?
PC I think itâs most clear if you look at my office today. We have three people working. I just do piles for everybody; itâs all these circles working together. All interconnected. Unfortunately, nobody but me knows how theyâre interconnected, but everybody has to do their part; and if they donât all finish all their piles, it throws the whole system off. Everybody has a certain amount they have to do; then thereâs more piles of what Iâd like them to do. We usually all only get to what we have to do, but thatâs the chaos. I have to have everything seemingly extremely organized and in place, because my life is complete chaos, and the travelingâŚ. Iâve now made over a thousand pieces.
LTÂ No wonder you have no time for a social life.
PCÂ Yes, and I care about the pieces more than anything. Isnât that crazy?
LTÂ I donât think so. Whatâs a typical day for Petah Coyne?
PCÂ At my best, Iâm up at 5:30 a.m., but Iâve been very tired lately. I usually exercise, by riding my bike to the studio, get there by 7:00 or 8:00. My studio assistants and I work there until 7:30 or 8:00 at night. Then I come back here, to my home and office, and three to four hours of whatever is boiling over on my desk. One day a week, Thursday, we do office work, same hours. Friday, I teach half a day and look at art half a day.
LTÂ What about the weekend?
PCÂ Saturday, Iâm back in the studio, itâs my only day alone in the studio. And Sunday, I always say Iâm going to take off, but I never do. I end up reading half the day, if Iâm lucky, and then the other half I have to do paperwork. Itâs very, very hard for me to be pleased. I am the most hard-driving woman youâll ever want to meet. Iâm not proud of that, thatâs my nature, thatâs how I make my work, and I expect if you work for me youâll be of the same nature. There arenât very many people who can work for me.
LTÂ I remember seeing George Trakas, Alice Aycock and Harriet Feigenbaum building their work at a museum in Nassau County. They worked 15-hour days. Kiki Smith is always working.
PCÂ She works like a dog. It takes so much labor to make a piece. I wish Iâd been Donald Judd, that would be just heaven. Then I could just dictate. I think his pieces are exquisite and beautiful. Itâs just not my nature.
LTÂ What does the photography youâre doing now mean to you?
PCÂ I used to think it was very different from the sculpture, very separate, but itâs not at all. I went to the Detroit Art Institute after the photography exhibition opened at Julie Saulâs and made what were essentially the photographs in 3-D. For me, the process is different, photography is a faster way of talking. Iâve actually always shot film, but Iâm such a perfectionist about the printing process that only recently have I found someone who can print the way I want. Steve Rifkin, a perfectionist beyond. I can tell him the emotions I want the photo to have and what I want it to look like, and he can do it, which is very unusual.
LTÂ But the flatness of the photograph, itâs so different from sculpture.
PCÂ See, I donât see the photographs as being flat. Especially these, probably because theyâre so black and white.
LTÂ But as an object, itâs flat. Photographs donât take up space the way your pieces do, itâs conceptually very different.
PCÂ I guess. But when I shoot, I run, which is very physical. I chase my subjects, or I run and jump with them.
LTÂ Have you ever seen Bonnardâs photographs? He used them as studies for his paintings, and he shoots people running, an arm in the frame, no head. Just beautiful.
PCÂ He has such a tender place in my heart, because he painted his wife, even when she was 80, as if she were 20. In his head, he saw her that way. Thatâs how Iâm hoping Lamar will see me.
