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: I read a lot of criticism, I always have, from grade school on. I'm very critical of criticism, the length of sentences and the amount of narcissism involved throws me all the time. People like Proust and Melville please me. They don't waste words. I'm very proud of the speed in those sentences. I believe most of what I wrote, but I'm more interested in the elegance of the word and what it throws up at you.

LO: In a critical piece from 1962, you identified something you called "termite art"--art that embodies a restless energy, that eats away at boundaries. This idea of tunneling through something but never really coming to resolution or definition seems to carry over into your own paintings, their fluidity, and their being a sort of a puzzle that you can never fully figure out.

MF: Yeah, but it's also pretty much what good writers do. A thing should do what it's supposed to do then get out of the way.

LO: You've incorporated writing into your paintings nearly from the start of your representational work. Has what you've written changed over the years?

MF: No, and I don't do it nearly as much anymore, just in places.

LO: Is there anything you feel is too personal to put in?

MF: No, not at all. The porno stuff, I wish I were better at it, at connoting sex or connoting violence. The Japanese in their pillow paintings and drawings did it beautifully. I could never match them, but I get a sort of rugged effect out of the sex moments in those paintings, and it's the best I can do.

LO: In some of the notes in your paintings, you've written about critical responses to your work. In the painting, Batiquitos, there's a scrap that reads "Heaven to be noticed by Roberta Smith or Gopnik." Having written criticism yourself, do you think you regard critics of your own work differently? Are you more forgiving, or maybe less forgiving?

MF: I'm not forgiving in any sense, I find it very painful, what's said about my work. It irritates me, most of the time. I'll read the copy over and over and over again. And I don't feel I'm wasting my time. It used to scare me, talking to Pauline [Kael] about movies, because she was so certain. Her opinions were so strong the moment she left the movie. Criticism is very important, and difficult. I can't think of a better thing for a person to do.

LO: As you've said, the notes in the paintings have a lot of irony and humor in them.

MF: They sure do, and they reverse themselves.

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