2: Visual Art

Myriam Van Imschoot Visual art. When did that connection happen? You’re nearly two years in New York now.

Steve Paxton And I've only been to museums. I haven't been to a gallery yet. It happened obviously around the Cunningham connections. Because there, in the studios, you saw Jasper Johns and Bob Rauschenberg, and loads of other artists. Also in that building was The Living Theatre, and there were loads of artists in and around that.

Myriam Van Imschoot Was that the building on 14th Street?

Steve Paxton Do you know do you know the artist Ray John? Also Remy’s connections. Remy [Charlip] was also an artist.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, I saw paintings of his.

Steve Paxton So, yeah, so he had lots of friends who were artists. Yeah, 14th Street and Sixth Avenue studio.

Myriam Van Imschoot What did they do there? Did they watch rehearsals? The artists you mentioned?

Steve Paxton I don’t know.

Myriam Van Imschoot They hung around?

Steve Paxton I mean, you have in your archives, artists making music there, so they were there presumably to rehearse their musical evenings, and they were just connected. It was a very connected scene. Poets, playwrights, musicians, dancers, painters all know each other and knew where each other drank and hung out, knew who each other was going with, you know. It was a very, very small number of people involved, in the sense of maybe 50 or 75 or 100 people all told, who made the activity that I observed.

Myriam Van Imschoot Seeing those people, they're part of a building, they’re part of a biotope. Does that make you go to a gallery?

Steve Paxton Not yet.

Myriam Van Imschoot [laughing] Not yet. Does that make you want to see their work? Does that make you want to go to their studio?

Steve Paxton Yes, it made me want to see their work. It made me get some idea of what they were doing. The first artists I can remember are people like Ray Johnson¹, who were doing mail art.

So, there was this radical element. Then, I started getting on mailing lists, and so I was invited to a Red Grooms happening. I was invited to various other openings. But I didn't really start going, I think, until…I think, as a member of the Cunningham Company, when to support Jasper and Bob, we would go to their openings and various other artists that Cunningham and Cage sort of mentioned or approved of, you know. I’d go to see what they were talking about. Then, I started feeling comfortable in the gallery. I realized it was just another browsing land, you know, go and see what was there. So, then I started going more. Still, to a limited number of galleries, you know.

Myriam Van Imschoot Probably uptown galleries.

Steve Paxton Yeah, mostly. There weren’t so many downtown at that time.

Myriam Van Imschoot When did the scholarship shift into becoming a member?

Steve Paxton It happened via a work called Aeon², so I think that's ’61. And I was in that one work, and then that, and Remy was still in the company, and then that autumn, Remy left, and so, I started learning his roles.

Myriam Van Imschoot Did he teach it to you?

Steve Paxton Mmhmm [no], Cunningham did.

Myriam Van Imschoot Because very often the dancers teaches his role.

Steve Paxton Not, not in the world where, you know, people leave…

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah in that way.

Steve Paxton In bad…with bad feelings.

Myriam Van Imschoot With bad feelings.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, before you were a member of a company, you had choreographed A Cook's Quadrille, and Cunningham had contributed a dance to that.

Steve Paxton That was very generous. That was incredible. It wasn’t a very good dance.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, you told me. Why not?

Steve Paxton Because he was actually trying to choreograph it!

Myriam Van Imschoot Wait a minute. [laughing]

Steve Paxton You know what I mean? He was constructing it on my girlfriend and I, bit by bit. He wasn't doing it by chance procedures. He was trying to make a children's dance. This is actually a specialized and not well-appreciated skill, and so, it was a little bit overly generalized, you know, children's kind of stuff.

Myriam Van Imschoot If you say he contributed a dance, what does that mean in terms of the entire piece?

Steve Paxton Well, the entire piece wasn't a piece. It was a series of works, essentially, you know, about an hour long, so we could just not do something else and do the Cunningham. But it was very generous because I think he knew he wasn't very good at it, and I think he knew it wasn't very good. And it was just…he was very fond of us, and we had done things, I think, I don't remember how I got into that position, but Juliet and I helped paint his studio on 14th Street when he first got it. So, yeah, he was fond of us for that reason. We were helpful young people, and he was helping us out.

Myriam Van Imschoot What happened to Julia up to that point? Was she still also a dancer with Limón, and did she stay a dancer there?

Steve Paxton Juliet was a great dancer, but she was Chinese.

Myriam Van Imschoot Is her family name Hurd?

Steve Paxton It’s Waung.

Myriam Van Imschoot Juliet Waung.

Steve Paxton Juliet Waung. W-a-u-n-g. She was Chinese, so she aspired to the Limón Company. She wasn’t…she liked Cunningham, but she didn't aspire to be in that company. She wanted to be a Limón dancer for some reason, and because she was Chinese, it was a little bit difficult because the works were all based on…

Myriam Van Imschoot American history or…

Steve Paxton Different, well, different ethnicities. I mean, they had certainly accommodated José's Latin, Mexican, Indian looks, you know, and they had found ways to do that, and they had found…and when he choreographed, he choreographed mainly for his company, which was essentially white, WASPy-looking people. Maybe a little Jewish, you know, now and then or, I mean, Pauline Comer could look Spanish. She had dyed black hair, so she could braid it and make it look…become an Indian, or she could, you know…she had a kind of, an ambiguous ethnicity, but yeah, it had a kind of ethnic bent that Juliet didn't fit into. So, however good she was and however hard she worked, she wasn't really…

Myriam Van Imschoot The typecasting of it.

Steve Paxton The typecasting. The repertory was based on different ethnicities. There was no Chinese role.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, did that, what happened then? Did she…?

Steve Paxton I don't know.

Myriam Van Imschoot Continue dancing, or?

Steve Paxton I don't know. We drifted apart, and I never found out what happened, you know, with her dancing.

Myriam Van Imschoot You didn’t see her dancing anymore, some place, or…?

Steve Paxton The next thing I heard, she was designing costumes for ads. She was a very skillful craftsperson, and she ended up making money that way. I don't know what happened with her dancing.

Myriam Van Imschoot Did you make A Cook’s Quadrille together?

Steve Paxton Hmmhmm. [Yes.]

Myriam Van Imschoot The two of you? Or…?

Steve Paxton And with at least one other person.

Myriam Van Imschoot Shall I say the names? [reading from her computer screen] There’s like, Julia Hurd and Bernice Mendelsohn.

Steve Paxton Bernice Mendelsohn. Julia Hurd was…I don't think she was in it. I don't know what her name is doing there. I don't remember that we worked together. She was in The Merry-Go-Rounders. So, she would have been a connection from there, but I don’t think she was in A Cook’s Quadrille.

Myriam Van Imschoot The information I got was from the Merce Cunningham “50 Years” book, with the chronology of all these works and dances. So, since he contributed, there are credits. It says a show for children by Juliet Waung, Steve Paxton, Julia Hurd, Bernice Mendelssohn. Duet choreography by Merce Cunningham, music by Merce Cunningham tape, and dance by Juliet Waung and Steve Paxton. So, maybe…

Steve Paxton So, maybe Julia was part of it. I can't remember. It was a very complex and difficult event between us, all trying to make this thing and thinking what a good idea, but not actually knowing—any of us—how to make it work, which was summer touring to summer camps, what we were trying to do. So, it meant getting a car, and I was the only driver, and so I had to take care of the car, and Bernice Mendelssohn was very inspired to do it, but never contributed any ideas and was a very difficult performer. She also was in The Merry-Go-Rounders. So, we were setting off to make a children's company but not having any real skills.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, you didn't produce this piece under the wings of The Merry-Go-Rounders?

Steve Paxton No.

Myriam Van Imschoot That was like another…

Steve Paxton It was a separate…

Myriam Van Imschoot Separate. Trying to make a company.

Steve Paxton Yes, trying to make a little company that would tour in the summer, going to summer camps.

Myriam Van Imschoot Was it the first piece you made for, well, the first piece you made since the workshop piece, Power?

Steve Paxton Yes. I believe.

Myriam Van Imschoot Prior to that, did you feel you were interested in making dances, or…?

Steve Paxton It was sort of expected, but I didn't feel that drawn to it. I really wanted…I really felt I was just a dancer at that point. Barely that, you know.

[tape is stopped for Steve to make a phone call to Boris Charmatz and the conversation resumes]

Steve Paxton I mean, the only thing that's interesting is that we tried to do it, that we actually tried to make something happen. That was a good sign, I guess, but the work was not interesting.

Myriam Van Imschoot Doesn’t matter.

Steve Paxton Probably does matter. I…my philosophy now is that students are meant to fail, and teachers are meant to say, “try again.” And so, it's important to try and even if you fail, you know, it's important to try.

Myriam Van Imschoot Does it feel like, that was clear to you then already?

Steve Paxton Yes. It was very clear.

Myriam Van Imschoot Or are you saying this in retrospect, with other aesthetic standards?

Steve Paxton No no, these aren't really retrospect. I haven’t…it’s an opinion I formed at the time. There were, I mean, it was very, it was full of difficult logistics and getting ourselves in this old bad car around to the summer camps that we wanted to perform at, and there wasn't a lot of interest, you know, probably five or six performances.

Myriam Van Imschoot In that summer?

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot That’s not enough, uh?

Steve Paxton No, you know, we thought it was going to be a summer living. And I think it might have had a chance of success if it had been good, but it was clear to me that it wasn't very good.

Myriam Van Imschoot Was it a shared opinion amongst…?

Steve Paxton Amongst us? Well, I don’t remember.

Myriam Van Imschoot And would that be, like the pieces you have been dancing for children, was it modern-dance based?

Steve Paxton Yes. But also ethnic dance-based and had actually several styles that you had to…

Myriam Van Imschoot Accommodate.

Steve Paxton Yeah, accommodate.

Myriam Van Imschoot But for children, I can imagine that you're looking for variety or diversity.

Steve Paxton Yes, and education.

Myriam Van Imschoot And education, like an introduction into…

Steve Paxton …the Indian dance, you know, an introduction to Hindu mythology and Indian dance styles.

Myriam Van Imschoot Would you link it up with a theme, like an overall theme, like…

Steve Paxton In Cook’s Quadrille?

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton I don't recall. I don't think so, particularly. I don’t think we were so sophisticated as to have a theme. We thought cooks’ costumes would be funny, you know, and cooking references would be funny, and children would enjoy it. I don't know why we thought that, but…

Myriam Van Imschoot “Quadrille”³ is a dance form, isn’t it?

Steve Paxton It’s a dance form.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, what sort of dance form is that?

Steve Paxton Well, it's for four people.

Myriam Van Imschoot Quadrille.

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot Is it a square dance?

Steve Paxton I think it's the original square dance.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, that's an American…

Steve Paxton No, it's a British…or quadrille…maybe it's French.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, but a square dance still.

Steve Paxton Form.

Myriam Van Imschoot Form, yeah, so you would.

Steve Paxton Four sides.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, and…

Steve Paxton Crossing, yeah, corners, but we didn't do a quadrille.

Myriam Van Imschoot You didn’t do it?

Steve Paxton There was not a quadrille in it, no.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, how would Cunningham adjust to that format? I mean, how did he…

Steve Paxton He made a dan…he made a duet. So, the duet would just be performed in the piece.

Myriam Van Imschoot I can imagine that humor is important.

Steve Paxton That's what everybody assumes. […] Kids, I don't think…I think they get obvious. I think they know… They need to know when a joke is being told, and if, yeah, any more subtle kind of thing, they're not sure whether it's a joke or not, they don't know what, you know, they get confused as quickly as they get amused.

Myriam Van Imschoot When you were setting up, making this first piece of…must have been like a test case to see if, indeed, a company could get started and other pieces would…

Steve Paxton I think we just didn't have any idea how complex it was to actually have a company. Inter-socially, artistically, you know, to actually…the craft of making dances. We weren’t skilled at any of these things.

Myriam Van Imschoot So your first experience is one of struggle.

Steve Paxton Struggle?

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, that's that's what making a dance…

Steve Paxton Yeah, yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot …would have been linked to…

Steve Paxton Yes, definitely. When you're, when you actually come to the studio, what do you do? What mechanisms are there? What do you make, you know? How do you know if it's any good? All those kinds of questions.

Myriam Van Imschoot Did you ask any feedback of people who were more…

Steve Paxton Not really. No, not really.

Myriam Van Imschoot Inviting them and saying, “Just give us feedback.”

Steve Paxton I don't think we really did that. No.

Myriam Van Imschoot Why did you say…

Steve Paxton That’s, again, a process that you have to learn. You know, it's not something you intuit necessarily. I wasn't into that much, anyway. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't think of asking for…

Myriam Van Imschoot But Merce proposed!

Steve Paxton Information.

Myriam Van Imschoot He proposed to contribute.

Steve Paxton Yeah, yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot Like, I’ll make a dance for you.

Steve Paxton I’ll help out. Yeah, I think that's the spirit in which he did it. I mean, his time is so valuable. I can't even imagine what fiddling around with these…we didn't rehearse that much. It wasn't that long. It wasn't that difficult. But he…still, he was doing it. You know, he was giving time.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. Yeah, he didn't do that very often. That's like one of the rare occasions when he did that in his overall career.

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, he must’ve indeed been very fond of you, or grateful.

Steve Paxton Well, he was fond of us. We had helped him, you know? We had pitched in, and I don't know, I was sort of raised that way. It never occurred to me that it was unusual, but now, I realize it is unusual for people to help. There's something about it. Maybe it puts somebody in your debt or, you know, it's like an assumption, somehow, of closeness that people socially often don't do.

Myriam Van Imschoot Why did you say last time I was here…you said like, all the dances before Proxy, never-mind about them, but there's not that many dances. I mean, it's like, the only dance I know of is A Cook’s Quadrille.

Steve Paxton There aren't many dances. There were some other dances for that course that I made.

Myriam Van Imschoot The Louis Horst?

Steve Paxton No, the Robert Dunn course in which I made Proxy.

Myriam Van Imschoot Before Proxy, like assignments prior to Proxy?

Steve Paxton Yeah, yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot I see. Although there’s very few references to any of your…

Steve Paxton ...contributions.

Myriam Van Imschoot ...contributions. So I wouldn’t have a clue…

Steve Paxton Yeah, that's quite right. [laughing] There’s not much to know.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. Okay, so I…so, we are [sound of Steve trying to hit a fly] now in the Merce Cunningham Company and…

Steve Paxton Okay.

Myriam Van Imschoot As we said, there's people hanging around and going to bars and finally, you're on the mailing list, and you get the invitations, and you feel like you're supporting artists by…

Steve Paxton I’m seeing artists, yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot …by attending their…

Steve Paxton …their openings and their…going to parties and…

Myriam Van Imschoot I wonder, like, how that works because for many versions and reports and interviews I read or did, the classes themselves have a very formal social pattern in terms of the relationship between Merce Cunningham and his dancers.

Steve Paxton Right.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, it's hard for me to imagine the shift from that social relation to one in a bar.

Steve Paxton I didn't go with Merce.

Myriam Van Imschoot Well, he would…

Steve Paxton I occasionally saw him in those situations. But I went with younger people. I wasn't hanging around with that crowd. No, not in that sense.

Myriam Van Imschoot With the other dancers?

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot The younger people, the younger folks.

Steve Paxton Younger folks.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. The artists were older?

Steve Paxton Yes.

Myriam Van Imschoot How did that…?

Steve Paxton They were sort of paternal, you know. You're talking about the abstract expressionist crowd at this point, de Kooning and Klein.

Myriam Van Imschoot Well, depending on what parties you were going to and what…

Steve Paxton Depending, but I mean, they were the main artists who were, you know, that one saw at The Cedar Bar, for instance.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, like de Kooning?

Steve Paxton Yeah, de Kooning, Klein, who else? Well, and younger artists around them.

Myriam Van Imschoot Would they still be part of that scene? I mean, I know they were like, in the mid fifties, they were like…

Steve Paxton They were still there.

Myriam Van Imschoot For example, John Cage and Merce Cunningham were close.

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot But they were moving away from that sort of art and maybe also those artists.

Steve Paxton They didn't move so far away.

Myriam Van Imschoot Because very often, it seems as if the abstract expressionism was not rejected because there’s always been like a complex relation to it…one of respect, admiration.

Steve Paxton I think the artists themselves started making really a lot of money and started living out of Manhattan.

Myriam Van Imschoot That was the point where their work became very expensive. Late-50s was like expressionism, high market value.

Steve Paxton Yeah, they started traveling more, they started…yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot But still, these would have been artists that were part of your…of that scene?

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot So interesting.

Steve Paxton Barney Newman. Larry Rivers. There was…yeah, they were quite congenial. They hung out a lot together. They were all, you know, into booze and drinking and needed mutual support. I mean, they were also in galleries, and galleries also means that the artist has to fight for their rights and things like that. So, they needed mutual support and…

Myriam Van Imschoot The abstract expressionist gallery circuit I read, was more located on 10th Street, 9th Street…

Steve Paxton And uptown.

Myriam Van Imschoot And uptown.

Steve Paxton Sydney Janice, 57th Street, sort of…

Myriam Van Imschoot How did you look at those works? What sort of…

Steve Paxton With complete incomprehension.[laughing]

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, it’s…it was your first…

Steve Paxton I mean, there were these currents in the society, that was… that, there were the beatniks, there was this new literature and new music, that's, you know, jazz. That all seemed to be inventing themselves completely anew, and one, just, you know, it was a new event in the culture, and this is post-war, right? So there's a lot of money. There's a lot of pride, and whatever people want to do was of great interest. You know, in terms of abstract expressionism, for instance, you know, a completely different way of doing, thinking, painting.

Myriam Van Imschoot You looked at it with incomprehension. What did you get out of it?

Steve Paxton Kind of an invitation to the moment, to mysticism, to the kind of…yeah, like, to the work of Jackson Pollock, you know. What do you do with this if your, if your mind is based on paintings and etchings of a more classical sort, and suddenly you come upon Jackson Pollock? You're invited in to a way of thinking about art that is quite different, quite a different level of thinking…into quite different ways of evaluating it, you know, assessing whether it's something remarkable or something stupid, you know? All of those questions are very strong, and they still exist in the modern arts, you know. Some people will not trust this now quite established trend in the culture, but…

Myriam Van Imschoot Did it make you want to read about it, like art criticism?

Steve Paxton There was a lot of art criticism available. There were magazines, and critics were quite strong in the scene. So, it was clear that painting was developing a vocabulary and a way of assessing itself that was much more developed than dance, for instance. What else about that moment? I liked to read. I was still reading a lot. Mostly nothing to do with New York or the art scene.

Myriam Van Imschoot With what?

Steve Paxton Oh, semi-classics, you know.

Myriam Van Imschoot Literature?

Steve Paxton Literature. I guess I was beginning to ask myself some basic questions about how art gets made, you know. What is ok to do? You know, a kind of sense of…that you get when you're from the edges of a culture, as Arizona is. You get these questions of what is the proper…? What is what is proper to do? What is, you know, what is considered the right artistic behavior?

Myriam Van Imschoot What are the implicit codes?

Steve Paxton Yeah, that kind of thing. What exists here? Why is this a famous city for its art? You know, what…I found out a lot more about that in the next 12 years.

Myriam Van Imschoot I'm really struck by the fact that abstract expressionism had still this attraction.

Steve Paxton It was very powerful then.

Myriam Van Imschoot The later estrangement from abstract expressionism, maybe people have kind of projected upon a time that was much more ambivalent, or much more…

Steve Paxton What do you mean?

Myriam Van Imschoot In the 60s, more and more, you will have criticism of the abstract expressionist aesthetics, and since that happened, probably people dated a little bit too soon…

Steve Paxton Its demise you mean…I think so. Because nobody knew that Rauschenberg and Johns were going to take off, you know. I mean, they were groomed for that role, but nobody knew that it would become so…

Myriam Van Imschoot Different?

Steve Paxton Strong. And then pop art came almost immediately. Something like ’64, it was clearly there, and nobody could’ve predicted what that would become this kind of ‘reverse high art’ into the popular culture thing, that happened, and yeah, by the middle '60s, minimalism had appeared. There were all these new genres to be criticized and to be compared and all that, and I think that had a lot to do with the kind of disappearance of abstract expressionism from the press. But the artists were still strong and commanding enormous prices. In a way, they had escalated to the point where they were no longer public, or as public as they had been when they were establishing. So, I got there at the end of the period when they were establishing, I think, but they were still, you know, behaving as they always had.

Myriam Van Imschoot Sometimes, they say that people like John Cage and Merce Cunningham, although they would find themselves with the abstract expressionists, they were sharing the scene, you could say…

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot But they always felt removed from a particular…like the figure of the artist that abstract expressionists somehow cultivates…a little bit macho, a little bit existentialist, in pain or in torment, the brave solitary figure who faces the world as he faces his canvas, and you know, the struggle with the forces, elements, material…

Steve Paxton Colors.

Myriam Van Imschoot Colors, the gestural temperaments, the girlfriends, the booze, the…

Steve Paxton Yeah, yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, it has a…it not only has products, artworks, but it has a behavior. It has a philosophy. It has an attitude to it.

Steve Paxton But they weren't painters, so they didn't have to do that. They were something else. But I mean, it wasn't just sharing the scene, they played with these guys. There are famous stories about John going to play poker with the painters, so that they, Merce and John, could have enough money for supper.

Myriam Van Imschoot I never heard that one!

Steve Paxton Yeah, yeah, Merce would wait out on the front step, and John would go in and join the poker game and earn enough money for supper, and then leave, but I mean, they were part of the social…

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, That’s…if you can rip someone off, then you’re close. [laughing]

Steve Paxton You’re definitely right there.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton It also suggests they weren't such great poker players, too, doesn’t it?

Myriam Van Imschoot The alcohol was already in the…game…

Steve Paxton Exactly.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. So, you saw those works—paintings—incomprehensible, yet, intrigued…

Steve Paxton Well, have you ever seen a Franz Klein from that period?

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton That's one of the few times I was in a gallery down in that area, you know, down on 9th Street, was for his show. And I walked in and there are these black and white things…I think one of them was for Merce. I think that's why I was there.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton To see this painting for a dancer. But I mean, they're just calligraphies, so what do they mean in American terms? How can an American kid from the cultural periphery assess this thing at all? See, yeah, I had an aesthetic blank. I had a big aesthetic blank looking at all their works, and I'm sure that was good for me. You know? To have an aesthetic blank instead of feeling like there's some answer, a philosophical void to fill. I quite like Franz’s work.

Myriam Van Imschoot I think it’s very strong work.

Steve Paxton I think it's great work. But I mean, we say, with hindsight, I can say that. But at the time, I mean, it filled me with a lot more positive feelings than de Kooning did, for instance, with his acid colors and his distorted figures. Barney Newman, I liked very much. He seemed to be painting essays about the space between buildings. I definitely felt it was a cityscape that I was looking at. It wasn't anything abstract at all. It was a representation of something urban and real. Anyway…

Myriam Van Imschoot Just thinking, this is round about ’61, isn’t it?

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot Does the…did the name Clement Greenberg…

Steve Paxton The critic?

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, did that…

Steve Paxton I knew who he was. I didn't read his work.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. Have you ever?

Steve Paxton I feel like I have. I can't think of a title to give you, but yeah, there were times later when I was more, when I knew the artists better and heard them talking about different writings that I would follow their leads. And Greenberg was, of course, a major theoretician.

Myriam Van Imschoot Of the modernist…

Steve Paxton Yeah, and particularly of the abstract expressionist…

Myriam Van Imschoot And he kind of valued it for pushing a limit and looking for the essence of a medium. So, if the medium is painting, he thought that the essence, and if you reduce it to that essence, it’s flatness.

Steve Paxton I think he was very interested in dropping the Renaissance perspective tricks from painting.

Myriam Van Imschoot And in moving all the optical illusions until you really go to the medium.

Steve Paxton The paint, the flatness, the surface, and the paint…

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. Was “flatness” a concept?

Steve Paxton Flatness was a preoccupation of so many painters.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton They called it “the picture plane.” And they were all preoccupied with…the main riddle seemed to be, what to do with this new flatness that they had invented or re-found?

Myriam Van Imschoot How flat can you get? Or how…

Steve Paxton Yeah. So, for instance, Rauschenberg’s White Paintings, you know. For instance, the joke that Jasper Jones said about putting paintings on an airplane and flying it around, and calling it “The Picture Plane.” [laughing] They…yeah, it was a big preoccupation. This idea of the canvas and what it was for this generation.

Myriam Van Imschoot The paintings of Rauschenberg, The White Paintings. Have you ever seen them?

Steve Paxton Mmhmmm. [Yes.]

Myriam Van Imschoot Because what I wonder is, whether they were…whether it was just a blank canvas, or whether it was covered…?

Steve Paxton It was covered with white paint.

Myriam Van Imschoot By paint. I see. Interesting. I hoped it was the white, just the canvas.

Steve Paxton The canvas. Canvases are not necessarily white. I mean, they can come pre-primed, but, anyway, he painted them.

Myriam Van Imschoot He painted them. There were several of them, weren’t there?

Steve Paxton There were seven of them.

Myriam Van Imschoot You would probably have seen it in the studio.

Steve Paxton No, I saw it in, at Castelli gallery.

Myriam Van Imschoot Let’s see if I can…because they were older. They were from ’52 or ’51.

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot He had even used them already in the first theater event at Black Mountain College, so I was just wondering whether it…they were re-exhibited or…

Steve Paxton Yeah, they must have been, or they must have been there in the back room.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton Unhung. But I seem to remember seeing a show. Now, there wasn’t…what was it? ’63. The retro…the Rauschenberg retrospective. So I certainly saw them there.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. In one of the original exhibitions, they were exhibited, in the ‘50s, that must have been, along with black paintings.

Steve Paxton Yes.

Myriam Van Imschoot Black paintings were black paint on top of newspapers.

Steve Paxton Yes.

Myriam Van Imschoot The White Paintings, then…

Steve Paxton …were just…

Myriam Van Imschoot They must have been together in the same space somehow.

Steve Paxton I don't know.

Myriam Van Imschoot What did you think of this piece? The White Paintings?

Steve Paxton I guess I just saw it as the perfect answer to this “picture plane problem,” you know, and false illusion and philosophical statement, in paint, a number. There are seven paintings, and they go from one panel to two panels to three panels up to seven panels.

Myriam Van Imschoot They build up.

Steve Paxton Yeah, they build up numbers of White Paintings per white painting. And so, that seemed like some kind of numerical statement.

Myriam Van Imschoot Ameri…?

Steve Paxton A numerical. And I asked Rauschenberg later, why seven? And he said, that's the biggest number you need to do to suggest…

Myriam Van Imschoot [simultaneousely] …infinity.

Steve Paxton [simultaneously] …infinity.

Steve Paxton Infinity. So, I mean, those are the kinds of things I knew about these paintings, and I like them very much. I found them very troubling because of the lack of imagery. On the other hand, there was imagery there because there were shadows. There was reflection and shadow, so yeah, it struck me as being another Eastern influence on Western [art]…with this “picture plane problem” thrown in and solved.

Myriam Van Imschoot The thing with the “picture plane problem” is that there's like several tendencies happening at the same time. There’s the expansion of the canvas, or the…

Steve Paxton The size, you mean.

Myriam Van Imschoot Sorry?

Steve Paxton The size.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, and then from the size, even leaving the wall…protruding…you get assemblages, and then suddenly, it even expands into the room.

Steve Paxton It loses flatness.

Myriam Van Imschoot And it loses flatness, so there’s objects, and there’s semi-sculpture.

Steve Paxton Yeah and in the Rauschenberg “combine thing”…where all kinds of things were attached.

Myriam Van Imschoot There's like either, nearly, like going to the ultimate flatness, and yet also going to leaving flatness altogether.

Steve Paxton Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're all dealing with the same

problem: how to reduce illusion. And how to create a new medium at the same time, cause so much of painting had relied on the illusion of perspective. So, I mean, you saw paintings with paint like cake frosting, you know, really thick, squirted right from the tube, kinds of elements, and the White Paintings and sculptural paintings, where the surface was torn. From Europe, Fontana was slashing painting canvases. Yeah, the canvas was being treated as a material. Not just a kind of surface to put the painting on to. It was being treated as part of the material.

Myriam Van Imschoot It's good to say, to me, that it's actually not a contradiction that those things happen at the same time, or that they deal with the same…

Steve Paxton Issue.

Myriam Van Imschoot Issue.

Steve Paxton I think they do. I think. Or they can be grouped into that. Yeah, I think so. I don't see why not. There are probably other issues, as well, but getting some grip on a reality that had been reconfigured, a new paradigm had come, and they were trying to figure out what, you know, it suggested.

Myriam Van Imschoot How flat can one get?

Myriam Van Imschoot I had another question, but it’s gone. Ramsay Burt, he wrote like a paper-in-progress, and he really makes a connection between the work of Jasper Johns and your work. Maybe because…Jasper Johns, in terms of imagery…he found a way to both include imagery, and yet be literal.

Steve Paxton Yes, yes. I think that's true.

Myriam Van Imschoot And a flag. Painting or writing a word is not painting a word, it's writing a word. You actually…

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot Painting a flag with the same proportions is not representing a flag, but it is a flag.

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, this…

Steve Paxton Yes. That would have appealed to me. I mean, it did appeal to me.

Myriam Van Imschoot Can you tell something about that appeal?

Steve Paxton Oh, I don't know, but I think it exists in my mind to this day, as a place of real balance between what's represented and what the representation is. When you represent something, you do change it. That is the nature of the thing. And maybe this is a particularly dance issue of this century, but a lot of dance was reproduced. So, to find out if there was a possible way to not reproduce dance, but to make dance. Maybe that's the question that his aesthetic raised.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. So what would be like an equivalent to…

Steve Paxton To a Jasper Johns?

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton [laughing] Oh, perhaps Flat is a good example since it's a well-known, fairly well-known example from my early days. But the whole problem of pedestrian movement is a bit based on that question: how can you be both real, and performing at the same time?

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. You can’t.

Steve Paxton How can you not…

Myriam Van Imschoot Represent walking without walking.

Steve Paxton Yeah. Exactly. You walk, although it's changed by being in performance, I have to say. We have to look at the issue of performance as being different than showing a painting or even playing music, you know. To have your entire body scanned for all it’s messages at once, you know, and quite intensely, is something that…

[phone rings]

…sort of makes everything unnatural about you, because you don’t normally…

[phone rings]

…work under those, or exist under those circumstances. Only a few hours a day, at most, you know, is it like that.

[beep for voicemail recording]

Myriam Van Imschoot Someone hung up? I think the other connection he saw with Johns was maybe in the titles, the self-reflexivity.

Steve Paxton Johns’s titles aren’t self-reflexive, are they?

Myriam Van Imschoot No the flag, you know, it being what it…you know, this kind of self-reflexivity in the imagery.

Steve Paxton There was one title that I very much admired of Jasper’s, which was Zero through Nine.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. Zero to Nine.

Steve Paxton Zero through Nine.

Myriam Van Imschoot Is that…what…the painting with the numbers?

Steve Paxton It's a painting with numbers all…it’s a small painting, and all the numbers are done one on top of another, so Zero through Nine is both the way you can describe a sequence and the way you described viewing a situation where you have nine. What would you call them? Nine separate images…that you compress the view into just one square, you know, for all nine. So, the complexities, the graphic complexities between the numbers, create the spaces of the painting. I like the painting, too, but I very much like the title because of the double…

Myriam Van Imschoot The double…?

Steve Paxton Yeah, it's reflexive in a way. The difference between the reflexivities, maybe I should talk about, because it seems like there is some kind of difference being made here, that we haven't been very clear. Jasper’s titles referred to the paintings. My titles refer only to themselves, of that kind of title. There are other categories and titles, but that kind of title.

Myriam Van Imschoot Within that series of titles.

Steve Paxton Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot But the title is a funny thing because it's like the frame of a canvas. It's already part of it and yet stands outside of it, and so, it can play both ways.

Steve Paxton Yes, yes.

Myriam Van Imschoot It can say like, “I'm not the piece and yet you are.”

Steve Paxton It can be the piece. It can sum up the piece in some way.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton So, Flat is a good example of a title which I consider self-reflexive in that the print is flat on the page, and so, the word itself was flat. It is, by having been printed, you know…that it was on a program meant that it would be part of the flatness of the paper. At the same time, in the performance, I think it very much influenced the nature of performing that work because, in fact, that's one way you would describe the behavior of that dance, is that there’re no highs and lows of personality display. So…

Myriam Van Imschoot Since we talked about the flatness in the pictorial plane… […]

Steve Paxton It was not described as flatness so much as it was described as the problem of the “picture plane.”

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton Or, dropping illusion or dropping perspective.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton So, the word flat was not…that. It wasn't that current. I, the…when I first got the word, I just felt like it was a wonderful word to describe a kind of performance style that was quite used by all of us, this blank face kind of style. And then I realized that it had this…that I could use it as a title in that series because it…like “English” is an English word, it was self-reflexive. So, eventually, I found…first, I thought of the title, and then the dance…

Myriam Van Imschoot Came.

Steve Paxton Came, and then I applied the title to the dance, you know.

Myriam Van Imschoot I think that if you would make like a history of the concept “flat,” “flatness,” like in art history, at a certain time, it would just really have this Clement Greenbergian ring. It’s about the reduction of a medium to its proper self and that sort of culminates in the flatness of the canvas, but that as the ‘60s moved on, it more and more was attached to an attitude more than just to being a property…

Steve Paxton To the physical canvas.

Myriam Van Imschoot And then attitude then was called a “sensibility.” Or “an attitude,” as you say, performance style reflects attitudes, and that's an important shift somehow in terms of…

Steve Paxton …flatness…

Myriam Van Imschoot …flatness.

Steve Paxton …what it meant. Just, I mean, it's important to note that these ideas change. That we don't hold on to a certain definition for very long. We keep it while useful although it can be centuries, too, you know…centuries of undeviating allegiance to a property.

Myriam Van Imschoot But when Flat was made…though that already had…that shift had already materialized a little bit in writings about a new sensibility, and just referring to the abstract expressionist caricature I gave, like the macho and gestural and temperamental, you could say that the new attitude was very opposite to that the blankness, lack of effects or don’t reveal the effect. So, people were trying to find ways of describing that or naming it, and then you would have like something like, “cool,” the “cool” came out, or “cool arts.” So, it’s interesting that you, that I think your piece is very much a piece of its time, as well, and that it really is a very good example of a new sensibility or a new attitude, but I definitely wouldn't compare anymore with abstract expr…temperament, or whatever.

Steve Paxton No, not at all. I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this exactly, but yeah, it seems to me like it…I just wrote to somebody in an email that artists either have to have someplace to go, or they have to have something to show off from, and I think that Flat is one of those pieces where I use the prevailing aesthetic as I understood it to, to push away from and find out what I had to do to maintain that position, which basically, since I had no goal to make something different, I had…I employed very little. I employed as little as possible. What… How little could you do? How little could it be, you know? Well, it was walking, and it was standing and sitting. It was a few almost like little islands, you know, in a very quiet sea, images, and the clothing event…the undressing and dressing. Putting it on my body made it into a slightly surreal event, but I was aware of the strip-tease aspect of actually disrobing on stage, and I was also aware that, you know, having, at that point, danced in just a G-string, you know, and remembering the kind of humiliation that felt like afterwards, and it just felt so, exposed as one is [laughter]. So, I realized that the hanging on the body was going to solve that problem, that I wouldn't feel exposed, and it would be a kind of commentary. It would be a kind of practical solution to what to do with the clothes when you take off your clothes. I mean, I saw all that work as humorous and nobody else did, and that was [laughter]…caused a great division between myself and my public, I have to say.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, well, you’re getting closer. The gap is getting…

Steve Paxton The public is finally getting my sense of humor.

Myriam Van Imschoot Minimalism. When did you first become aware of the fact that it could also be like a new aesthetic or…

Steve Paxton It didn't apply to dance. It didn’t apply to dance.

Myriam Van Imschoot Maybe not even thinking about dance now, but like in visual arts, when did it strike as…

Steve Paxton With Robert Morris and Donald Judd and a few other people, a few other artists…

Myriam Van Imschoot Robert Morris. You knew him from really early ‘60s, yeah?

Steve Paxton Yes. I don't recall when I met him, but I met him when they were married.

Myriam Van Imschoot They were married when they came to New York.

Steve Paxton Mhmm. [Yes.]

Myriam Van Imschoot Simone said that Robert Morris was a friend of Robert Rauschenberg.

Steve Paxton Yeah, they did become friends.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah and that, that's how she met you, so if…

Steve Paxton I don't think that's the case.

Myriam Van Imschoot You’d come together…

Steve Paxton I don't think that's the case. I think we met at the Cunningham studio.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, in a class.

Steve Paxton Mhmm. [Yes.]

Myriam Van Imschoot Robert Morris…it took a long time, like until 1963 before he could contribute into an exhibition, and that wasn't a solo show. It was a group exhibition, and prior to 1963, he showed his work in more like a fluxus event of Yoko Ono⁴, or more like a performance⁵ context in which he would contribute an installation or something. Have you seen those early works?

Steve Paxton The first works that I was aware of were Gray Paintings. So, they were a lot like the White Paintings, but they were gray paintings.

Myriam Van Imschoot Gray Paintings? Yeah.

Steve Paxton They were canvases painted gray.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, like monochrome?

Steve Paxton Mmm…

Myriam Van Imschoot Monochrome?

Steve Paxton Yes.

Myriam Van Imschoot Well, that’s good. I can look for them. I know he has boxes and stuff and a lot of those things.

Steve Paxton But, yeah, so he didn't strike me since there were the White Paintings, already. He didn't strike me as such a strong figure. But then, he started making felt pieces, which were the same color. They were gray and sliced up in various ways and made into marvelous, fluid fabric.

Myriam Van Imschoot They hang.

Steve Paxton Yeah, they hang. Sculptures.

Myriam Van Imschoot That’s late 60s, that’s like 1968 that he, after his minimalist period, actually…

Steve Paxton And that's not considered minimalist anymore?

Myriam Van Imschoot Well, for him, it was already like a critique because he thought that maybe minimalism still had like, a-too-strong-a-formalism in it, so he was looking for what he called ‘anti-form’, and by focusing really on the materials as such, and materials that you just don't have any control of because they…like felt, you know, it hangs. It’s not that it doesn’t have a form, but it’s not composing that form to such an extent.

Steve Paxton It can have a recon…like a…

Myriam Van Imschoot It really became more and more like putting dirt in the gallery and, and that changes every day, and so it would become more and more abject and really away from the pure aesthetics of the minimal objects, and he also wanted to remove, to move away from the objects’ solidity, and the…so, yeah, so that's why I was thinking it was…it’s later, later on. But is that what you're saying? That you remember these gray monochromes? And then you go to later — really later on — and you go to the felts? Because in between, you have all these pure, minimal boxes and cubes and L-beams and…

Steve Paxton Which I saw, but I mean, I didn't find them that stimulating. I mean, they're not meant to be stimulating in the normal way, anyway. They're stimulating for the lack of stimulation, you know, kind of thing.

Myriam Van Imschoot Isn’t that similar to the little, when you say like that was…

Steve Paxton How little could I…

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah.

Steve Paxton Yeah, it is.

Myriam Van Imschoot Because that was so troubling to many people, like it’s…

Steve Paxton It still is!

Myriam Van Imschoot Near to nothing. So how am I, how I'm supposed to look if there’s no…

Steve Paxton That's the problem.

Myriam Van Imschoot But still that didn’t…even though you had like a similar interest in that proposition…

Steve Paxton I can't remember ever discussing with him.

Steve Paxton I thought one of Yvonne’s works, Parts of Some Sextets⁶, was very much influenced. She was at that point, living with Morris, very much influenced by his theories, and I thought that was a little bit too loose, you know, in terms of her own aesthetic that…why was she taking on these…

Myriam Van Imschoot Why would she apply it or why would she take?

Steve Paxton Yeah, why would she take somebody else's work and apply it to dance?

Myriam Van Imschoot How did you feel about her manifesto? Could you relate to that?

Steve Paxton I thought it was a big mistake.

Myriam Van Imschoot You thought at the time?

Steve Paxton Only because it was a manifesto. Yes. At the time. I thought, boy, she's gonna have to live with this for the rest of her life [laughter]. Because, you know, manifestos are known to hang around. They don't just disappear, you know. You make a manifesto, then 50 years down the road, people are still saying, “And you made this manifesto!” Yeah, it was a manifesto, of hers. And, yeah, I thought it was a mistake.

Myriam Van Imschoot Could you relate to some of the ideas that were expressed in it? Maybe you didn’t like the manifesto but you would, you would…

Steve Paxton I saw that she was trying to talk about what she thought, you know, she did try to think those thoughts and, you know. Thing is, that, all the things that she says “no” to at the end, I thought, were really quite strong in her work. […]

I mean, I said I didn't really approve of her doing it, you know, which is none of my business, and that I thought that it was a mistake. And at the same time, now that I'm older and wiser, and I've seen a bit of the art world and a bit of the dance world, it seems very clear that things kind of flow from one thing to another, and that great leaps are made by one art form because they absorb the ideas from another medium, you know, and apply them, and it gets more and more clear when we get into multimedia. As though, as I’ve said, as though, we didn't already have multimedia in opera and theater, of various kinds.

Or, the Experiments in Art and Technology Organization, you know. It was deliberately trying to bring ideas from one medium into and to another, indeed, from the arts into the sciences, and the sciences into the arts. They are deliberately trying to mix them, the two things. So, I see now that that's really pretty much normally the way things work. Yes, Yvonne is, and was dogmatic, I mean, she has very clear views. That was actually quite refreshing that somebody had views and was stable enough to get them out. I didn't have any such clear views.

Myriam Van Imschoot No?

Steve Paxton No, and I don't think many of us did, at least not things we were ready to make public and, you know, considered part of our career. Hopes and ambitions, but everybody had those in our circle, you know. Mystical leanings, you know, toward one way of making art or another but not anything that you could proclaim.

But I was going to say about Flat and about other aspects of my early work, that I did have mystical leanings, and I was interested in ideas of the void and the kind of emptiness that we assume exists in some people's philosophical or religious discipline, or in space itself, some place or, you know, emptiness, void, the ultimate mystery, the ultimate ambiguity kind of thing, ultimate, you know, a youthful kind of philosophical leaning, which made me want to make my pieces in a certain way, and Flat has somehow more to do with that. How, I mean, it says a lot about what I thought the other, the normal dancing was like. That it was incredibly three-dimensional, heightened, performed to a ridiculous degree. Nowadays, I mean, overboard, it would be…most of the modern dance performing was ultra-pushed, dramatized. So, for instance, the Cunningham performance mode seemed quite refreshing, that they didn't try to make the audience feel things and think things or notice things. They sort of just did things, and let the audience watch. It was a big shift in audience protocol, and that was going on as well with the painting and as well with the music, and a lot of it based on Cage’s writings and lectures and, you know, just what he was doing. That's the kind of thing though that I think I would tend to avoid. I tended to avoid other people's aesthetic. I was trying to forge one of my own.

The person that I felt a strange affinity with was this anthropologist, Birdwhistell. He was at the Museum of Natural History in New York, and he’d written about walking, and there was something there. I also felt a lot of affinity when I was introduced to Muybridge, and the photography of walking and running and ordinary actions, and how it somehow seemed to turn into a kind of little performance there, just in the photographic plates of things that were both real and performed. You know, again, that interest in that dichotomy. I was interested early on by conversation that I heard painters having, and Duchamp, and again, this real art quandary and…

Myriam Van Imschoot The found object.

Steve Paxton The found objects, yeah, that kind of thing and the, the work of…

Myriam Van Imschoot Magritte.

Steve Paxton Magritte. How did you know? I must’ve told you already.

Myriam Van Imschoot Well.

Steve Paxton I was gonna say, who is that Belgian painter? [laughing] You know, with his apples and his ordinary objects and unusual juxtapositions. So, if you talk about a painter that would have influenced me…Jasper Johns definitely, but Jasper just was somebody alive and around who was articulating something that was already quite strong in the art world through the century, which had to do with…maybe it has to do with surrealism. So, I feel like Flat is more a surreal piece than it is a minimal piece. It's that figure that walks around in a bowler hat in Magritte paintings, you know, and what he does in time as opposed to just the one slice that a painting gives you.

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah. I read Suzi Gablik’s book on Magritte⁷ some time ago, and I was very struck by these ideas, also. I didn't know that much about…I mean, I know his paintings, of course, as a Belgian… [laughing]

Steve Paxton You must. Yeah, it’s obligatory.

Myriam Van Imschoot He thought of his paintings as philosophical riddles. He said he wasn’t so much into enjoying the paint and the smell of the brushes and, you know, the whole thing. He wasn't also interested in painting that much. He waited for something to paint and to have a certain kind of juxtaposition that would be like a puzzlement, or maybe visual poetry.

Steve Paxton Visual puzzles.

Myriam Van Imschoot Or visual paradoxes.

Steve Paxton There's some kind of a relationship with Escher, which I can't quite pin down, but it’s something. Again, it's about the plane, isn't it? In a way, Magritte is playing with perspective, but he's playing with it. And Escher is doing two-dimensional graphics of three-dimensional objects that, because they're actually only two-dimensional representations, can be tiled or twisted in some way.

Myriam Van Imschoot True. Magritte has many of the paintings that fit into the landscape, so you don't know whether…

Steve Paxton …a painting in front of a window of the scene, outside the window kind of…

Myriam Van Imschoot Yeah, yeah, so, really, questioning representation.

Steve Paxton Yeah, yeah. So this was all part of what Greenberg was on about, too.

Myriam Van Imschoot  How would you have had access to Magritte? Through books?

Steve Paxton Books and posters at first, I think. Then, I found out that Jasper and Rauschenberg were interested in him and Cage.

Myriam Van Imschoot I didn’t know about Cage…that he had an interest in Magritte.

Steve Paxton Yeah, he…well, he was interested. I don’t know how deep it went, but I mean, yeah, there's a kind of Satie/Magritte side to Cage that isn’t particularly strong but that he felt some sympathy for. Cage just liked composition, you know, and he - I'm sure - saw what Magritte was up to as something different than, and aside from normal art. Anyway, and then Susie, whom I also knew…

Myriam Van Imschoot You knew her?

Steve Paxton Yeah, and she had lived with Magritte and all that. She had Magrittes.

Myriam Van Imschoot No, really?

SP Yes. Yeah.

Myriam Van Imschoot So, you saw real…

Steve Paxton …Magrittes, yeah, hanging in somebody's house kind of thing.

Myriam Van Imschoot That's a great way of seeing a painting, actually.

Steve Paxton Oh, boy, I mean, then you see what a painting really does because there it is. Even the Morris Gray Paintings, you know, you put them into a formal house or anybody's house, and it…they say something very powerful, than in the studio or in the gallery, you might wonder if there's anything to be said, but they say something very powerful.

Myriam Van Imschoot Do you remember what paintings she had?

Steve Paxton I do remember that she had a triptych of a nude.⁸ I think it was a torso. So, she had breasts and hips and legs or something…basically, the knees. I don't know if she had others. I can't remember, but she would have had pictures and things like that, and she would have discussed…

Myriam Van Imschoot Did you ever talk to her about Magritte, since she had lived there, or about writing the book? The book appeared like, 1971, or something.

Steve Paxton Oh, really? That late?

Myriam Van Imschoot She must’ve been in the process of [writing the book].

Steve Paxton Perhaps. I don't know when she started the book. No, she just described, you know, having shown up on his doorstep, and lived there for a while, and how nice he was and how much he’d helped her and all of that…not so much about the theory of, you know, what he was painting. But the work was interesting. I like the puzzles, the paradoxes that he proposed.

Now, of that kind of thing, I never found an equivalent in dance and didn't feel like…but I did feel like, in a way, I was stealing that figure, or that figure related to the figure in Flat and Proxy. I guess that performance mode came from several directions because it definitely came from Cunningham as well, but Cunningham, of course, had me leaping all over the place, and that wasn't the movement I was into. Still, the blank persona, or the unknown persona…something about that interested me.

Myriam Van Imschoot Something very intriguing or enigmatic about it…opaque.

Steve Paxton Yes. My assumption in the early days was that everything was perfectly obvious, so you didn't have to say very much to have said a lot. My assumption nowadays is that things are not very obvious and that people are all incredibly different and to make an assumption that we all know the same thing is a big mistake, you know. It's very rare that you actually have that kind of communication with somebody. But I knew fewer people then than I know now.