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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LO: What other artists were you thinking of who work in a diaristic way?

MF: Well, Cornell, obviously. I don't think I invent, ever. What I do is allow a lot of stuff to get into my painting. I don't discount what is apt to get into them. It seemed to me a natural move to go from painting little trains to thinking, well, there've been a lot of movie makers doing trains, starting with Hitchcock, or before. I go with associations. I did that in writing, from the very beginning, and I do it in painting. If it seems funny to me to make a side remark while I'm discussing a serious subject, simply because of the sound of the words, or the sound of the thought, I think it's legitimate.

LO: The early to mid '70s, when you first started working hi this way, was a very important time for feminist-driven art. Did you have any particular affinity toward that work, which also tended to be diaristic and personal?

MF: No. That was not an event that captured me. It still isn't. It's beyond me, I guess. People don't realize, until I tell them, how much Patricia is involved in this work. A lot. The paper-backed abstractions, those are 50-50, absolutely. Her areas are definitely marked. It allows me to concentrate on the painting, the work element. Patricia does all the color jobs and intuitives. She decides what colors, she decided on the compartmentalizing, the segmenting into sections. I thought that was a good idea. It provided the paintings with two speaking voices, a conversation going on between the squares or across the squares. The movement from panel to panel to panel--that's my work.

I've had a lot of experience in painting and in other jobs. The paintings themselves sort of duplicate the life. They move, and then they stop doing something, and they go into another area, and they stop doing that. Those little objects I put in the paintings, Patricia bought a lot of them, or gave me a lot of them. They have a weight to them. What I'm trying to say about her job is that the heaviness of the paintings, object after object after object, and the time element that goes around them, and the fact that you as a spectator are involved in moving with the items--that comes basically from the fact that Patricia and I are on the same wavelength.

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