Farber on Farber: in his more than 50 years as a film critic and painter, Manny Farber has brought an essentially autobiographical sensibility to bear on a wide range of visual idioms, from process-driven abstractions to rebuslike figurative studies. Here, he tells the story straight
Art in America, Oct, 2004 by Leah Ollman

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MF: Well, it stiffens the work I do in painting and makes it seem more methodical than it should be, or could be. The extemporaneous element in the first Abstract Expressionists--they all had it, but I didn't. From the methodical beginning of my early schooling, I should have known better, there was no way that I could become an extemporaneous artist. It's a detriment, not having that extemporaneous element.

LO: Working in carpentry and construction often put you in physically dangerous positions. You've said that you didn't mind it. Do you feel there's enough risk-taking in your painting?

MF: I've never thought that there was enough risk-taking.

LO: The shift from those early abstractions to the figurative work that you've done since then seems radical, like a huge risk.

MF: The first thing that comes to mind is the marriage thing, Patricia. She's a very crucial figure in my making the jumps that you're asking about. We moved into this ratty space over an electric store downtown [in Manhattan]. It brought us into contact with a lot of movie-makers who were living in that area, too, like Michael Snow. That's a crucial moment, because I was doing these goddammned big versions of Feg Murray's sports cartooning still, and Patricia oriented me toward the spatial, the large spatial work, away from that figurative stuff. She liked the spatial work, and I liked it, and a lot of the people around us, the important people, also liked it.

LO: How were those paintings made?

MF: They were made with a ladder, with Patricia at the top of the ladder, looking at the linearity of the work, and my being on the floor, a la Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, etc. She would regulate the craving or the outside structure of the work from her position up on the ladder looking down on me, and I would shift the curvature as she suggested, and then I would cut it with a mat knife. They became huge. They grew like science-fiction items.

LO: The paintings are so much like performances, with the two of you enacting them together. They have a lot to do with texture and chance and process.

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