David Novros, 1997, 1 of 2

Introduction--Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, David Novros

Process of Creation and Technical Specifications--Novros discusses the circumstances that led him to paint 6:30, 1966.  He describes how he built the plywood panel stretchers and set up a spray booth to apply rubbery vinyl lacquer and Murano lead pigment, commonly used for its dichroic effects in automobile applications.

Technical Specifications--Novros describes the low-grade cotton canvas that he employed in 6:30.  He mentions that it contained brown inclusions and suggests that the oxidation of those inclusions might be responsible for the brown spots that later appeared on the painting's surface.

Subject(s):

Canvas;

Cotton (textile);

Duck (textile);

Oxidation;

Surface properties;

Unprimed canvas;

Technical Specifications--Novros describes the process by which he heavily spray-painted 6:30 in layers, applying white vinyl acrylic lacquer and clear coats with Murano pigment. He also describes how by alternating painting and sanding, he allowed the painting's surface to show remnants of the canvas weave. That, in turn, affected the way in which light interfaced with the Murano pigment.

Subject(s):

Canvas;

Cotton (textile);

Duck (textile);

Industrial paint;

Lacquer (coating);

Oxidation;

Paint layers;

Solvent;

Spray painting;

Surface properties;

Vinyl paint;

Concept/Nature of Work--Novros explains his rationale for not wanting his paintings to be seen as objects, but instead as portable wall murals.  He discusses the relationship between the depth of a stretcher and the objecthood of a painting, as well as the relationship between a painting and the wall.  He describes the differences between his ideas of his own work and his contemporaries' reception of the work.

Subject(s):

Art commissions;

Dichroism;

Mural paintings (visual works);

Objects;

Paint layers;

Texture;

Walls;

White (color);

Exhibition--Novros describes how a group of white paintings, which included 6:30, was installed in the Dwan Gallery.  He expresses his desire not to make exhibitions, but to make instead works that would "make something of the place."

Subject(s):

Exhibiting;

Installations (exhibitions);

Lighting;

Site-specific works;

Historical Anecdote--Novros tells stories of Virginia Dwan's patronage of artists in the 1960s, Park Place Gallery (1963-1967), and his first solo exhibition, all of which were instrumental to the creation of 6:30.

Historical Anecdote--Novros outlines the provenance of 6:30 after it was sold from Virginia Dwan's gallery.

Conservation Issues and Concept/Nature of Work--Novros and Mancusi-Ungaro discuss the condition of 6:30, including its plywood stretchers and cracks in its paint. Novros describes the factors that led to its damage. They also discuss the artist's attitude toward natural aging in his works, as well as his opinion of the painting's edges.

Concept/Nature of Work--Novros discusses his desire to remake 6:30 and other early works. He and Mancusi-Ungaro discuss the practical and philosophical considerations of creating exhibition copies.

Conservation Issues--Novros expresses his wishes for the future conservation of 6:30 and other similar works after he is no longer living.  He addresses the importance of the artist's hand in restoration.  He and Mancusi-Ungaro discuss acceptable aging, particularly the lack of consensus on acceptable aging for modern and monochromatic paintings, and society's lack of tolerance for aging in general.  Novros describes his own tolerance for aging in his work.

Conservation Issues--Novros and Mancusi-Ungaro discuss the notion of restoration as an interpretive act.  Novros expresses his opinions regarding art's objectification or commercialization.

Subject(s):

Age;

Color (perceived attribute);

Interpretation;

Restoration (process);

Technical Specifications--Novros explains how he began making frescoes, in particular his first fresco, a commission for Donald Judd at 101 Spring Street, New York: Untitled, 1970.

Conservation Issues--Novros describes an oil-related damage to the Untitled fresco mural at 101 Spring Street, as well as his own attempts at restoring the work.

Technical Specifications--Novros details the materials and techniques that he used to create the Untitled mural at 101 Spring Street, as well as other frescoes.

Technical Specifications--Novros details the materials and techniques that he used to create Untitled (Pennzoil Fresco), 1975.

Subject(s):

Drawing techniques;

Frescoes (paintings);

Fresco painting (technique);

Technical Specifications--Novros describes the types of materials, e.g., brushes, that he prefers to use in his paint application.  He also describes some of the unique challenges of painting large-scale murals in fresco.  Novros and Mancusi-Ungaro discuss the unique challenges faced by early painters like Michelangelo and Cimabue, as well as mosaic artists, in transferring images to architectural surfaces.

Concept/Nature of Work--Novros posits that painting involves an intuitive capacity for sensing subtle variations in light and surface, including reflectance and brushwork.  He and Mancusi-Ungaro discuss how that phenomenon factors into the conservator's job of preserving an artist's intent, as well as the importance of the surface.

Subject(s):

Artist's intent;

Intuition;

Observation;

Restoration (process);

Senses;

Surface properties;

Process of Creation and Technical Specifications--Mancusi-Ungaro and Novros discuss the creation of, and materials employed in, the painting Untitled (No. 9), 1972. They also discuss the effects of oil paint on unprimed canvas.

Conservation Issues--Novros discusses oil stains on Untitled (No. 9), as well as oil stains in the work of Jackson Pollock.  He questions whether they are a problem or simply an aesthetic judgment.

Historical Anecdote--Novros traces the provenance of Untitled (No. 9).

Concept/Nature of Work and Technical Specifications--Novros describes Untitled (No. 9) as another attempt to make portable wall painting and elaborates on the materials that he used.  He describes his earlier experiments with ground materials, including acrylic and rabbitskin glue, contrasting his methods with those of Mark Rothko.

Technical Specifications--Novros describes how he had the stretchers fabricated for Untitled (No. 9).

Concept/Nature of Work and Technical Specifications--Novros describes how he drew the forms in Untitled (No. 9). He describes his decision not to use tape to draw lines and contrasts that with his use of tape in earlier paintings.  He also elaborates on his notion of creating portable wall painting, his overall intent, and his opinion of the painting's current condition.

Subject(s):

Brushwork;

Drawing (image-making);

Intensity (color property);

Line (geometric concept);

Masking tape;

Mural painting (image-making);

Paint layers;

Pencils (drawing and writing equipment);

Surface properties;

Exhibition--Novros expresses his preferences regarding exhibition of his paintings, as well as his opinions of how his works look in reproduction.  He describes the lighting conditions under which he typically creates his paintings.

Subject(s):

Drawing (image-making);

Exhibiting;

Height;

Installations (exhibitions);

Lighting;

Reproductions;

Conservation Issues--Mancusi-Ungaro and Novros expresses his preferences regarding how a conservator should treat significant damages to his work.

Subject(s):

Artist's intent;

Damage;

Restoration (process);

Process of Creation--Novros describes the conditions that led to him create a portable, three-room installation that was exhibited at the Rice Museum, Houston, in 1975, Untitled [Rooms 1-3], 1973-1975.

Concept/Nature of Work and Exhibition--Novros describes his intent for the exhibition of his three-room painting installation, Untitled [Rooms 1-3], as well as his conception of them as a single work.

Technical Specifications--Novros describes the materials and techniques that he employed to make his three-room painting installation, Untitled [Rooms 1-3], in particular his experiments with manipulation of paint surfaces.

Subject(s):

Canvas;

Dammar;

Frescoes (paintings);

Linseed oil;

Oil paint (paint);

Paintbrushes;

Painting knives;

Stretching;

Surface properties;

Technical Specifications--Novros explains his decision not to paint the edges of Untitled [Rooms 1-3].  He also details how he had his stretchers fabricated by Jack Tomlin and some of the challenges that the stretchers posed, particularly related to folding and re-stretching canvases. Additionally, he explains his decision to create modular paintings. Mancusi-Ungaro asks Novros about areas of uneven saturation in the paintings.

Exhibition--Novros outlines his preferences regarding the installation of Untitled [Rooms 1-3], specifically the paintings' distance from the floor.

[Speakers (in order of appearance): Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Founding Director, Artists Documentation Program and Chief Conservator, The Menil Collection; David Novros, Artist; Paul Winkler, Director, The Menil Collection; Laurie McDonald, Filmmaker]
CM-U: Today is December 2, 1997. I am here with David Novros, who is an old friend of The Menil Collection and mine. We are very excited to be talking about three – four of his works that we have up today. They represent slightly different periods of his work, so we are going to start with the earliest one and see where we go from there.
CM-U: So, David, you're going to have to tell me about this one [6:30, 1966, The Menil Collection, Houston, purchased with funds from the George R. Bunker Living Trust]. What…
David Novros: This one.
CM-U: This is – we are going to move a little bit.

CM-U: This was started when? Just, can you tell us sort of what stage you were at, and where you were, and so on?
David Novros: Tell you exactly. 1966, the summer.
CM-U: Summer of 19--
David Novros: 1966.
CM-U: --66.
David Novros: I had been living in New York. And then I was going to have a show in the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles. This was the first show I had. And I went back to Los Angeles to make the objects. Virginia had a kind of a studio she let artists use.
CM-U: Hmm.
David Novros: And I worked there. But also, where these things were really made was in the driveway of a guy named Paul Mogensen, who's a really terrific painter, and an old friend of mine. And his family had this driveway, and his father was a spray painter. And his father taught me how to spray paint.
CM-U: Hmm.
David Novros: So this was the beginning of my using a spray gun. I went out there. I tried to find a kind of a paint to paint on these things that would be really flexible and tough and durable. I'd been using this Murano material, which was this kind of pearlescent thing that changes color, prior to that, and I'd seen it on the outside of a can at a paint store. 

David Novros: It would be used for cars and that sort of thing. So I built the stretchers – the panels, actually; they're not really stretchers; plywood panels – in Paul's garage in the back of the driveway, and stretched these things up.
CM-U: And were you always working on this kind of width of stretcher? It looks like it's about an inch and a half.
David Novros: At that time, yeah.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: I'd only really been painting as an adult, you know, sort of what I consider an adult, for maybe two years when I painted this.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: I'd moved to New York in '64, so I painted these in '66. It gives you an idea of how early they were in terms of what I was doing.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: And then I took them over to Virginia's studio.
CM-U: So you actually painted them there outside?
David Novros: And I painted – no, and I painted them inside at Virginia's studio. I set up a spray booth…
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: …and painted them there. Because obviously they were very hard to keep clean. I didn't have a very high tech studio, you know. It was just a plastic cover and a spray gun and a fan. And I found this paint in Compton, in Los Angeles, in a place that made paints for crazy houses.
CM-U: Okay. Now is Compton the name of a section of Los Angeles?
David Novros: Yeah. So that's South Central. It's called South Central now.
CM-U: Okay. Oh, I see.
David Novros: And they manufactured these paints, which – I don't know how I found this place, but they manufactured these paints that went in the inside of rooms where they kept really, really badly deranged people, so that if they hit the wall and stuff, they wouldn't damage themselves or the paint. Because it has a rubbery kind of consistency. It's a vinyl acrylic.
CM-U: Ah-huh.
David Novros: And I thought, "Well, that's great, you know. This will be flexible, and etc., etc. I didn't know much about it chemically. I just had seen samples of it. And they made it clear, and then they made this white.

David Novros: So I painted a white underpainting on it first, and then each of the...
CM-U: Right on raw canvas?
David Novros: Right. Yeah right on the raw canvas.
CM-U: And it was cotton?
David Novros: It was cotton.
CM-U: Okay.
David Novros: And it was a very low-grade cotton, with a lot of – what do you call the brown kind of spots that come up in it?
CM-U: Yeah. Kind of inclusions.
David Novros: Inclusions. Whatever. Which later oxidized, which is why I think the, you know. And you see that brown spot on the corner there?
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: That's probably from some of that oxidation.
CM-U: That's interesting because I've seen – I'm beginning to see it with other cotton – exposed cotton duck paintings.
David Novros: Um-hum.
CM-U: I didn't…
David Novros: It's true of the painting in the Modern [VI:XXXII, 1966 (repainted in 1990) Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Charles Cowles].
CM-U: Did you see it right away?
David Novros: No. No, no, no. They were pristine. I didn't see it, in fact for, oh, a long time. Maybe ten years when the Modern took its painting out to look at it. And I put on lots and lots of coats of paint.
CM-U: But you didn't wash the – you wouldn't wash it. You just stretched it and used it.
David Novros: Just stretched it and used it. Frankly, it was partially out of ignorance, but also it just didn't seem to matter…

CM-U: Right.
David Novros: …at that point.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: So I painted it, at any rate. And then I painted these clear coats of the Murano, which is that powdered pigment.
CM-U: Okay. So the first layer was this rubberized material that…
David Novros: Rubbery white acrylic…
CM-U: Do you have a name? It was industrial.
David Novros: Vinyl lacquer.
CM-U: Vinyl lacquer, it was called?
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: And that went on in white?
David Novros: That went on in white.
CM-U: With a roller, did you say?
David Novros: No, no, I sprayed it.
CM-U: Sprayed it? Right.
David Novros: I, I sprayed it as heavily as I could so that – and I sanded between coats, so that eventually the weave of the canvas developed this kind of – well, you can see it under the trans–
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: Under the transparency, it developed this kind of pebbly surface that I liked.
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: Because I wanted it to really react with the Murano, which was the next coat, which a clear…
CM-U: I see.
David Novros: And it had the same material, same vinyl lacquer, but in clear with the Murano in it. It used a solvent like acrylic lacquers use, the same kind of a solvent. And, uh, I built up lots of layers; and what would occur would be, you'd be painting on this thing, spraying it. I was spraying it flat.
CM-U: And that was __________ [word inaudible].
David Novros: And a hair would fall in it. Or – so I always used these tweezers, and I'd pull out stuff. Because I wanted it to be very pristine.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: Or what I thought of as pristine at the time. It took lots of coats to finally get it to be correct, you know. You couldn't sand the final coats.
CM-U: Five coats? More than five?
David Novros: Oh, there must be 20 coats of paint on this.
CM-U: Ahh (gasps).

David Novros: Each one, you know. Lots and lots. It's very labor intensive.
David Novros: And so what I really wanted to tell you was that I didn't really – I didn't have in mind – it's sounding as though I had in mind to make an objet deluxe here, you know. That is not what I had in mind.
CM-U: Hmm.
David Novros: I wasn't spraying them that way, and doing all that stuff, in order to make a kind of elegant object of any sort. In fact it was just the opposite. I was doing that because I didn't want these things to be objects so much. I really wanted to paint murals, since I had come back from Europe; but I couldn't get commissions. I didn't have any way of getting the real estate to do it. And so I was trying to make these paintings, which would be like portable murals in some way. And the thickness of the canvas, the thickness of the object, was a real problem because I found that, in experimenting with other forms, that I couldn't get the object thin enough to disappear. The thinner I got it, coincidentally made it the more intensely object-like, oddly enough. This form. So I developed this thickness just as a way of projecting the light off the wall.
CM-U: Interesting.
David Novros: But at the same time, having it relate to this white – you know, the white wall most of the time. When I first made these, people said, "What if you hang them on a rose colored wall or something?" I said, "Well, you know, if you do that, you're not me."
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: You know. So –
CM-U: Well, they do take on the texture of the wall. I mean –
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: In the multi-layering, as you described, you have hidden the fabric, and it does kind of take – it does take on that. Very interesting.
David Novros: I mean, it's a long time since these were painted, and it's hard for people to think that there was a problem about thinking of these as paintings. But when I painted them, they were called wall sculptures and all sorts of other stuff. There's a lot of confusion about that. You know, I always intended them, obviously, as paintings, and obviously as wall painting, as mural. And just something that would move. And I felt that this Murano stuff was consistent with the kinesthetic experience with the painting. Because you never saw the painting the same way from any one place. It forced you to move along the painting in order to experience it, to see the way light was going to interact with the material.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And then the drawing of the painting related to the same kind of movement. So that's pretty much the technical end of this thing.

CM-U: When these were installed, they were installed on a white wall?
David Novros: They were installed on a white wall. Beautiful gallery. She had a gallery in Westwood that was a Modernist gallery. It was – had a black floor. It had a domed kind of roof…
CM-U: Hmm
David Novros: …formed. And I had the entire inside, which – the walls were about – I would say it was about a hundred feet long. Maybe 80 feet long. And they were all these white paintings with different kinds of Murano. Some of them were quite big. Two of them were 24 feet. And then just one room in the back, which you would just see, I had one black painting.
CM-U: Wow!
David Novros: So this was consistent with my idea that I didn't want to make exhibitions. What I wanted to make was – I hate the word "site specific," but since I couldn't make murals, I wanted to make something that would make something of the place. And the experience. So that was the first show I ever had.
CM-U: And the light was incandescent light? This kind of canister light that came down?
David Novros: Yeah. It was just like this.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: It was a beautiful, beautiful gallery.
CM-U: Um-hum.

David Novros: Virginia was incredibly supportive.
CM-U: And that was my next question. Just a little bit about her.
David Novros: Terrific patron. She was a really great patron. She is a great patron.
CM-U: Hmm.
David Novros: She was better than any dealer kind of person you can imagine because she was interested in getting things made. So she would pay – she paid to have the stuff made, essentially. And she paid for the studio. And she put me up in her house, and Chamberlain was there. And it was a great, great summer for me. You know, what – I was –
CM-U: You were so young. You were –
David Novros: Twenty-three. Twenty-four, you know. It was an amazing break. It was very, very lucky. And I thought the show was beautiful. I thought it was one of the best shows I ever had.
CM-U: And that was your first?
David Novros: First. Yeah.
CM-U: How did you meet her, to begin with?
David Novros: Well, I met her through Park Place. I was in the Gallery in New York, a cooperative gallery which I was in – around '65, that was coalesced around Mark Di Suvero.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: And she was a great patron of Mark's at that time. And she as a result supported a lot of us who were also in the Gallery. It was a cooperative gallery. We would give her – I think it was two paintings a year, or two objects, if you were a sculptor, a year; and she in turn put money into the gallery along with Pat Lannan and Vera List and the Guibersons.
CM-U: Huh.
David Novros: And so we supported the gallery through our own work, and we weren't dependent on sales to keep it going and having a show. It lasted a couple of years. It had been in another state before I joined it.

CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And she then sort of took some of the artists that were involved with that and showed them.
David Novros: And I showed with her in New York the next year as well, in her gallery in New York.
CM-U: So then what happened to this piece? This remained with her and then sold privately later, or…
David Novros: Actually this painting was the only painting that sold out of the show.
CM-U: Sold out of the show? Okay.
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: And who bought it?
David Novros: Some – Mrs. Gates Lloyd of Philadelphia.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: And therein lies a very kind of strange story. Because she was a really good collector. She had wonderful things. Rothko. Pollock. Really good stuff. And I always thought to myself, "Well, I love this painting; and at least it belongs to Mrs. Gates Lloyd, and someday she'll give it to the museum, and I'm sure it's going to be fine." I never thought any more about it. And then she died, and I heard from the relatives. And they told me the painting was damaged, and would I restore it? So they brought it to my studio in New York, and I worked on it. And I put it back in my own storage. And I didn't take it out again 'cause they never called me. I never heard anything more from them. And then about ten years later after that occurred, the husband, the father died. The husband of Mrs. Gates Lloyd. And the kids began figuring out what to do with the painting. And they sort of – well, I don't say blackmailed me, but they sort of said, "Well, we – you have that painting, and we're going to put it at auction."
CM-U: Hmm.
David Novros: So, "You know, I've had it for a really long time, and you haven't done much about it, you know. And I think you should really reconsider putting it at auction. It's in these pieces. They'll never get it hung correctly at auction. I don't like having my things at auction. I mean, let's try to find a place for it." And at that point I began talking to Paul [Winkler]–
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: –about getting it here. And for a while it was in doubt, and then finally it ended up here. And that's the history of how it got here.

CM-U: It's great. I'm very glad we have it.
David Novros: I'm glad you have it, too.
CM-U: How do they look to you now, compared to the last time you saw them?
David Novros: They are a little more cracked. You mean technically?
CM-U: Yes.
David Novros: They are a little more cracked. The surface is __________ [word inaudible].
CM-U: What do you think the cracking is from?
David Novros: I think it's from contraction and expansion in my storage.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: I had it stuck in a closet that was not heated or cooled or anything. I just think that too much back and forth over the ten-year period probably did it. Plus, it's so heavily painted.
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: And you know the canvas would flex. And even with this very flexible paint that I used…
CM-U: Sure.
David Novros: Yeah, I don't think it is…
CM-U: Well, everything is moving all the time, and – but, you know, overall, they certainly still have that feeling that you're describing. I mean, it's true that they have, you know – you see the cracks. But in a way it kind of imparts a certain kind of aging. I mean, other than the one area where it's really become quite disfiguring.
David Novros: Yeah. Well…
CM-U: How does that strike you about the aging? How do you feel about that in your work?
David Novros: Well, I'm proud of the fact that the stretcher bars haven't warped at all. I built them myself…
CM-U: They're terrific!
David Novros: …and they're really in great shape. I consider that – because, you know, wooden stretchers, over 30 years, are mostly gone.
CM-U: That's right.
David Novros: But these have held up. They have this nice plywood, and it all works.

CM-U: Let's look at the back of one. Can we just turn one around?
David Novros: Yeah, sure.
CM-U: I don't know any way to handle this without gloves. And here we are.
David Novros: That's okay. Here, see. (turns L-shaped segment of painting around to show verso)
CM-U: Oh.
David Novros: You can feel how heavy it is.
CM-U: Yeah. Now is this – is the fabric wrapped right around this plywood?
David Novros: No, there's a quarter round…
CM-U: Quarter round? Okay.
David Novros: …on the side. It keeps it off.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: The other thing was, when I made these, if I had had the money, if I'd had the capacity to do it, I would have made them on aluminum panels.
CM-U: Why?
David Novros: Because I wanted that anonymity. I never liked these interior corners. Do you know, I always – for instance, in Stella's paintings of this time, which I was obviously familiar with, there was this quality of the surface projecting, and no interest in the edge.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: But for me that was unacceptable because the edge was where it met the wall.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: And I had to do something that would keep that believable for me, you know, as mural. So I tried. 

David Novros: You know, I had these – I painted – I set canvas into these corners.
CM-U: Yeah, I see. It's beautiful.
David Novros: And I painted it very elaborately, and I sanded. I wanted that to be as smooth as possible. The point I wanted to make was, for all my intentions to make this thing sort of neutral, physically, they end up being – and I think this is true of a lot of the paintings of people of my generation, that were seen at the time to be unexpressive physically – was that really they look almost medieval to me now. They have a real funky – so when you asked about the cracks and all this stuff, I have to say, I don't really care.
CM-U: Well, I'm happy to hear you say that. Because I think…
David Novros: I'd like to make it again.
CM-U: Right. But I think there is something about natural aging, which is in fact what this is…
David Novros: Exactly.
CM-U: I mean, it's not that it's been damaged. It's just the natural – it's not related to technique. It's just the natural aging of a material. And it does take on a certain character from its aging.

David Novros: I mean, I could make them again. We've talked about this.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: And I would like to. But I would never make them with the same materials. For one thing, I could make these with a hard surface panel like aluminum or something of that sort; and I would only have to use four or five coats of paint. I wouldn't have to develop this whole painted surface to seal off the canvas, and to get it all. It would be there.
David Novros: Now somebody might say, "Well, then you'll lose a lot of the quality of the handwork in it." But that's not true. I guarantee you that I could make one of these today, on panel, and it would be just as pearl-like and just as whatever as this is. It would be different, but I think it would be actually superior.
CM-U: Hmm. So have you thought about it? But you're not in that anymore, in terms of your own work.
David Novros: That's not true. I'm in it all the time.
CM-U: You're in it all the time! Good.
David Novros: I think about it often because a lot of my early work, especially the bigger things, and things that I liked very much, were damaged beyond repair and had to be destroyed. Really big paintings.
CM-U: Why?
David Novros: Poor storage.
CM-U: Um-hum. I mean, cracks, again?
David Novros: Poor transportation. No, no, no. They were much worse things, like boilers exploding next to them, and…
CM-U: Oh.
David Novros: …really irreparable damage.
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: And I would love to have those paintings back. Especially some of these white ones. And I would paint them again. I'd do it again. I just haven't found the time to do it.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: Yeah, for – but it's on my mind.
CM-U: That's interesting, that you're still – that's…
David Novros: There may be four paintings, five paintings – all of them really huge – that I would like to have back again.

CM-U: Well, you know, there's an aspect of looking at work like this and feeling that your original intent was that the surface be absolutely perfect, and you worked very hard to do that.
David Novros: That's true.
CM-U: That's fair to say. But over time they've cracked and aged, and yet the overall feeling is still, however, there. And so one does wonder. I mean, you know, one can continue, I suppose, to resurface as long as you're alive; but how about when you are no longer alive?
David Novros: When I'm no longer alive…
CM-U: And I'm no longer alive. Sorry, I didn't mean to make it personal, David.
David Novros: We are going from technology to theology.
CM-U: No, not really. Yes, they are related in a way. I mean, when you are no longer able to do it, I guess, is my question. I mean, if I – you said to me, "Okay, Carol. I can resurface these. I don't really want to accept the aging right now. Let's talk about this…"
David Novros: No, no, no. My idea would be, leave this one. You know, get somebody to make a panel this size, you know, out of aluminum. And get somebody to spray it. That would be my solution.
CM-U: That's interesting.
David Novros: I don't think I have to do that.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: I don't think there's a question of touch involved here. To me, there never was with these paintings. I would be quite happy to have it done…
CM-U: So you'd be comfortable with someone else?
David Novros: Be very happy to have someone – I'd love to give somebody, for instance, drawings of the paintings I described before.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: Make them. Use this material. Spray them. That would be fine.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: See, this painting, these paintings, to me, are dead when they are on the floor like this in pieces. Other paintings have more meaning. 

David Novros: But especially these earlier wall paintings are very linear, and they are – unless you see them on the wall, using the wall, and working as they were intended to work, they don't exist. They're…
CM-U: Maybe we should…
David Novros: You can't put them in the closet and then take them out, and there they are again, you know.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: So that's what I'm saying. Keep this one. This is fine like this.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: But, you know, have this one – maybe have one that's clean to use for other purposes.
CM-U: Interesting.
David Novros: I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but I wouldn't do anything to this one, is my response.
CM-U: Good. I mean, I guess that's what we're all groping for right now because we don't have, as a culture, a professional consensus of acceptable aging for this type of work. We really don't. And so we don't know. If we say, "Okay, of course paintings crack. That's okay. We accept Rembrandts cracked, you know."
David Novros: Well, the Mondrian. It's the Mondrian issue, right?
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: I think Mondrian is the premier artist in this question. He is the first modernist to, you know, use these kind of clean surfaces that, you know, then cracked. And they are clearly painted, and clearly have a certain very specific intention in the way they were painted. And I can't see anybody lining them, or filling them, or painting them. I mean, it just seems obscene to me, you know. It's crazy.
CM-U: I think what impressed me so much in the Mondrian show, the one a few years ago, the retrospective, was how painterly indeed they are.
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: I mean, it's incredible. This tiny little brush. And so we accept the cracks.

CM-U: You don't even see them, you know.
David Novros: I mean, there is Mondrian, and then there are all those other people, [Theo] van Doesburg. What's the difference, you know?
CM-U: Exactly.
David Novros: This guy–
CM-U: I guess I feel that way about these.
David Novros: He was a great painter, you know.
CM-U: But I feel that way about these, cracks and all. It doesn't matter.
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: And now what you did in '66.
David Novros: No, I think if you – for instance, there's that brown stain in the corner.
CM-U: That kind of thing __________ [word inaudible].
David Novros: See, that bothers me because it alters the kind of intention in a way that I think, one, can be fixed easily.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: And, two, it breaks up the drawing too much. But I think if we hung this on the wall right now in its correct ordering, and stood away from it at any distance, there would be no problem.
CM-U: In fact, I think we should do that while you're here.
David Novros: Okay.
CM-U: I think we should put it on the wall, and light it, and let's take a look at it on the wall, lit, and see.
David Novros: Yeah. I mean, what do you think? Why is there this kind of interest in our culture in things remaining – not the same, isn't the word I want, but in some concept of cleanliness, almost. 

David Novros: Is it the Puritanism? I don't know what it is. I don't understand it.
CM-U: It has to do with accepting aging in general. I think we were talking about this very central issue with regard to restoring and conserving this type of painting, which is sort of, "Why don't we accept?" Well, maybe it's not even a question of accepting; but why don't we feel comfortable with aging?
David Novros: Yeah. Well, the "we" is the question.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: Because it depends on who the people are that are doing the observing. Now first, let's say, there's the artist. There's me. And sometimes I see a painting of mine, and I think, "Well, I'd like to restore that." And sometimes I see a painting of mine and I say, "Well, I'd like to work on that some more." Two different things. Sometimes I lie and say I want to restore it just so that I can repaint it, in some instances.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: Not too often, though. And then there are the people who own the painting.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And they have this idea about value that's equated with the painting as an object that has a system of monetary value attached to it. And that system of monetary value is very involved with having the thing look undamaged. Not damaged, you know. "Can I buy that car? It's got a bumper that's all smashed in." You know, that kind of attitude. Well, that's not the way I see painting, and it's not the way – I mean, I'm not interested anyway that much in painting as objects. For me, painting, I prefer wall painting anyway; and that, for the most part, is about image. And if the image is sustained, then I don't think anything should be done to the work. 

David Novros: When the image is so badly defaced or ruined by some damage, then there's nothing that can be done, especially after the artist is dead.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: So, I mean, there's so many examples of restoration in our lifetime. We are living in this technological wonderland, you know. In a country like Italy, with all the great stuff in it. And then in the last ten, what, 20 years, all the restoration that's been done on all those paintings have changed the way all of us have had to think about them. The Masaccios, you know. For me, I always thought of the exchange of the 30 pieces of silver [Masaccio, The Tribute Money, ca. 1427] as a really dark night picture, and it had a great poetic meaning for me. And then to see it cleaned and suddenly real bright and intense. I mean, these kinds of questions are really sociological.
CM-U: They are.
David Novros: And I'm not going to approach them, and I don't want anybody to fool around with them in my paintings. The process of aging is going to be part of the painting. That eliminates certain potential dangers like the cleaning of the Chartres [Cathedral] windows, in which huge damage, irreparable damage was done to the things that didn't need to have been done. I'm not saying don't clean frescoes. I'm saying, clean them when you can clean them and there's no damage possible to be done to them.

David Novros: But accept what you can't change, and don't try to affect it.
CM-U: So I guess what you're saying is, it's sort of – in a way, it's always interpretive. I mean, any kind of restoration or cleaning is interpretive. And Masaccio probably wouldn't like to have seen his colors that he chose to be bright – could have painted muddy but chose very bright – to be seen that way. On the other hand, even in a treatment, you can never remove all of the aging. You can never remove all the discoloration unless you really interfere with the original.
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: So I guess what you're saying is, respect a certain patina, in quotes, that occurs…
David Novros: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. I mean, in the best of all possible worlds, everything could be new and bright; but I'm too much of a humanist to accept that view of any kind of reality. And I really dislike the objectification of art, and the commercialization of it, and turning it into an object which has value only because it can be bought or sold in some way. Now clearly the Masaccio doesn't fall into that field; but at the same time, the tourist industry of Italy has a big effect.
CM-U: Provides a pressure, right.
David Novros: Right.
David Novros: I would rather see a bunch of new frescoes be made.

David Novros: I'd like to see the resources be spent to encourage people to continue making art in public, on the walls, for people to see for free, than have the resources go to restore old work and then to buy new things which are kept in people's houses and bought and sold as chattel, you know.
CM-U: That's interesting. Let's go on to fresco.
David Novros: Sure.
CM-U: After you did these, in '66, then when was the first time you started painting – and you were doing buon fresco? Well, tell me…
David Novros: Yeah. No, the first fresco I made was in Don Judd's place on Spring Street in New York [Untitled, 1970, 101 Spring Street, New York, NY].
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And that came about because Don knew that I was interested in working that way. And he'd seen the oil paintings that I'd made just prior to that, like '68, '69, which were attempts at, again, to be making these kind of portable wall paintings. And he had bought the place on Spring Street, and he was turning it into a kind of expression, architectural, of his own interests as an artist. And he had a Stella, a big Stella up there. And he had a Flavin. And then he asked me, would I come and paint a fresco on this wall that we decided was a good wall. And I said, "Ye-e-s," and it's like I'm dying to do it, of course, you know. "How much do I have to pay you to do it?" It was like that.
David Novros: So we went over there, and I hired a guy who was a plasterer's assistant; but he was from the Islands. He was Caribbean. I don't know if he was Jamaican. I'm not sure. I don't remember. But he was trained in using hot lime and sand as a last coat. So I got him, and I'd read all the books. I'd never done it. I hadn't even done a test. And we took the wall down right to the brick, and scoured it, as the books all said you should do. And then we wetted it down, as the books said you should do. And we did everything just exactly according to Hoyle, you know. Or Theosophus, depending on who you are talking about, right? (laughs)
David Novros: But how archaic. Here I am. I'm in the, like, late 1960s, and I'm reading these Medieval books to learn how to do something. Had I known, there were books published around the Mexican muralists that I could have read and gotten the same information from, but I didn't know.
CM-U: Yeah, but you were sort of – at the time, when that had been hidden, you know, it was hard to get those books.
David Novros: Yeah. That's right. One didn't know. You weren't even taught about Orozco, or Rivera, or Siqueiros. You know, they were considered corny, you know, like WPA-related stuff. Nobody knew. At any rate, I did it. And it was perfect. Two days. We did it in two days. It was technically absolutely perfect. It was heartbreaking, it was so good.

David Novros: And it was perfect. Two days. We did it in two days. It was technically absolutely perfect. It was heartbreaking, it was so good.
David Novros: And then about ten years later, this brown stain started to come up on the top edge because what we hadn't thought about, and what we didn't know, was that the building had contained machines. It had been a machine shop, and the oil from the machine shop was in the walls, and in the floorboards. And after a while it began coming down behind the fresco. Began coming to the surface.
CM-U: You mean from the walls? From the wall out?
David Novros: From the wall out. It was coming from the upper floors.
CM-U: Wow!
David Novros: So you can do everything you can do, and you can have the best intentions, and still have these kind of damages occur. So I was able to kind of seal off that part of the painting and repaint it with – I think it painted it with acrylic and flat medium and…
CM-U: Putting dry pigment in…
David Novros: Dry pigment, yeah. And I've done it now – I've had to do it two or three times.
CM-U: Is it still there?
David Novros: Oh, yeah. And it looks good. I mean, the painting looks good, and it's restored. But it never looked as good as it did when it was pure fresco. I think Don was not happy that we had to do it. I mean, he loved the look of the fresco. So did I. But it's better than having it – there's a case where the restoration had to occur, and I had to do it. But nonetheless I think that maybe if I had it to do again, I might not have done it.

CM-U: So the original one, the first one, was in just the one plaster, or the pigment right in the plaster?
David Novros: Buon fresco.
CM-U: Buon fresco…
David Novros: Right out of the book.
CM-U: And where did you get pigments?
David Novros: There was a place in Long Island City that was an enormous pigment supplier. Schwartz Chemical.
CM-U: Hmm. Schwartz Chemical?
David Novros: Yeah. They're not there anymore.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: And I went out there. And in those days, you could buy five pounds of, let's say, cobalt blue for like $25 dollars, $30 dollars. The stuff was just really cheap. Now it's almost impossible to think about painting large areas in fresco unless you are very wealthy. You have a lot of money.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: You know what the cost of pigment is. It's just insane now, you know.
David Novros: But in those days – and I bought tons of it. I still have barrels of it in my studio, left over from that initial purchase, you know. I didn't really do it for Don because at that point my intention was to keep working in fresco.
CM-U: And you did.
David Novros: Yeah, I did; but not as much as I wanted or want to.
CM-U: Um-hum. How big a giornate would you put on?
David Novros: Well, that was – that first one, because of the circumstances – and we really wetted the wall. I knew I was going to have a pretty long time to paint on it, so I wasn't too worried about it, the wall drying out before it could accept the paint. I did – I think I might have painted it in two days.
CM-U: Wow.
David Novros: So the painting is ten by 13 feet.
CM-U: Wow! Hmm.
David Novros: And since then I paint – I normally paint in fresco somewhere in the range of ten square feet a day, like ten by ten, 100 square feet a day.
CM-U: Wow! And you work from drawings first?

David Novros: In Don's case, I'd done studies. In the early ones, I'd done studies because the work had clear delineations areas.
David Novros: The one in the Pennzoil Building [Untitled (Pennzoil Fresco), 1975, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston], for instance, is the same way. I worked from drawings on that. And then in about – and I always make studies for everything.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: But I stopped using the studies to look at while I was working in the mid-seventies, and I began working directly on the wall.
CM-U: So you'd make your drawings, and then snap lines on the wall or not?
David Novros: No. I measured with – very primeval kind of drawing technique. I didn't like the idea of snapping a line. I didn't like messing around with the plaster because a lot of my work involved leaving areas of plaster, and I didn't want any touch on that, and I wanted it to just be wall. So what I would do is draw it all in with a small brush. And if I had an assistant, I would use straight edges in those days; and the assistant would hold one end of the straight edge, and I would hold the other end; and I would just draw along the straight edge with a brush and then paint in. And then paint back up to the edge once I'd done it. It was a very much like a kind of Mondrian technique, of finding just where that edge should be physically. 

David Novros: And it's true of these paintings as well.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: This is the technique I used for these, too.
CM-U: And what size brush were you using for that? A wide brush?
David Novros: Yeah. I'd found these Japanese Hake brushes, which were perfect because they were very soft. They didn't leave any mark on the plaster. I had been using them in the paintings as well. They could carry a pretty good load.
CM-U: About six inches? Four inches?
David Novros: Oh, bigger.
CM-U: Bigger?
David Novros: Yeah, I had one that was about like that. What is that? About eight inches.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And I had four or five of those. You had to throw them away after a day or two because the lime would just eat them up. But they didn't lose their hair, and they were excellent. And they were inexpensive, and now, again, another instance – you know what those brushes cost now.
CM-U: I know.
David Novros: I couldn't afford to use them in a fresco.
CM-U: Especially with good brushes, I know.
David Novros: You know, they're like a hundred plus dollars apiece, and if you can use them for one (waves hand through air as if painting) and boom! throw them out, it's not – it doesn't work.
CM-U: Oh. (sighs)
David Novros: But they were – I don't know what I would use now. There aren't good brushes for what I do.
CM-U: It's a problem actually.
David Novros: But, you know, I'm not going to use brushes anymore in fresco in that way. 

David Novros: I am trying to stop using brushes. I'm trying to stop the kind of activity of dipping the thing in. Just as I was spraying, you know. I've never been really – I've always thought there was a better way of doing what I wanted to do than the brush. Now I am doing some kind of paintings now for which that is necessary, but I've been working a lot with making these kind of objects which are actually brushes, among things. They are made out of all sorts of stuff. Bamboo, and cloth, and all kinds that can absorb paint. And the next time I do a big fresco, if it's not one of these rectilinear kind of forms, I would, you know, dip these – this thing. I'd plaster up the wall, dip this thing, and establish the drawing right away on the wall by just pressing this thing against the wall and then painting back into it. Those are some of the things I'm thinking about doing.
CM-U: Interesting.
David Novros: It's a way of drawing that's apart from this idea – and also, if you're working on a big scale in fresco, and you're on a scaffold especially – this is something I never understood about the Medieval painters whom I admire beyond admiration, was, how did they know what they were doing? How could they see it? They were painting up like, you know, a foot away from the wall, in these great ceilings and scaffolding. They couldn't even go down and see it from the floor.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: How did they know how – and what's more, they were working on complex, compound surfaces. Arcs, curves…
CM-U: Look at the Sistine Ceiling, yeah.
David Novros: …how did they know how that was going to read from a distance? Amazing. I think it's an ability that has been lost. It's like one of the kind of skills that have been completely lost. And the only way I can think to do it is to find a way of doing it quickly all at once, and establishing the points.

David Novros: You can always grid it off, but I never found that very satisfactory as a way of working.
CM-U: What you're saying is recalling an experience I had of being invited to see the cleaning of the Sistine Ceiling at the end of the treatment. Just after it had been completed. The scaffolding was still up. So I was at the very end of the ceiling.
David Novros: Hmm.
CM-U: And they cleaned the ceiling in the same order in which Michelangelo painted it. So I was at the end of his job. I mean, he was just finishing. And I was again, as you are describing, about six inches from the surface. And I was astonished by the way he was putting the paint on. I mean, it was these broad brush strokes. He was just quickly and confidently applying this color to the wall. I mean, I was astonished. And it was both from the experience of having been doing it already for at least four years, as I remember. But also just the confidence at this point of knowing the effect he was going to get. And it was quick.
David Novros: Amazing. Just amazing.
CM-U: It was amazing.
David Novros: Free painting on a big surface like that. And no one who hasn't been on a scaffold up really high, and up against – I'm not talking about billboard painting, or something where it's gridded off – I'm talking about free painting. And that is how the Medieval people painted. They had geometric reference points. 

David Novros: For instance, you know, you set up these kind of references. Just as Michelangelo developed the architecture in the Sistine Chapel. So then he could relate an arm to a point in the architecture, and the architecture could be gridded. That gave him this kind of series of relationships that let him know where he was on the wall, pretty much. But it doesn't explain everything. In fact, it explains very little. I am more kind of amazed by painters like [Giovanni] Cimabue and before, Romanesque painters especially, who could do these amazing complex images. I think sometimes they must have had their copy books up there with them on the scaffold. Maybe they were gridded, but for the most part not. And, you know, all the great mosaics had painting under them.
CM-U: Hm.
David Novros: Did you know that?
CM-U: No, I didn't.
David Novros: Yeah. When they've cleaned – like [Basilica de] Santa Maria Maggiore…
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: …when they take off __________ [word inaudible], they find that they had guys going up there and painting in every single place where the mosaics were going to go.
CM-U: Where color was to go?
David Novros: Yeah. It was done in sepia, or it was done in what, you know, red. But at the same time, it was done, and they had to still – because if you are going to do a mosaic, imagine trying to do the mosaic and figure out the drawing at the same time. Not possible. So this whole issue of transferring an image to an architectural surface, and not doing it mechanically like a billboard painter does now, this is really intriguing. It's a…
CM-U: It's the art.

David Novros: Yeah, it's a sense, you know. It's like sensing things. It's like any kind of painting thing. I am very worried that a lot of the things that go into painting that I know about, or that I like in painting, are no longer relevant to people who either make painting or look at it. And I think that's a real problem. It's like losing part of your biological capacity. I mean, we can't – certainly we don't sense as well as we did – humans…
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: …a long time ago. I mean, for instance, we can't sense the – I don't know how to say this without sounding like a New Ager, but we can't sense the properties in rocks, for instance, that the people who built Stonehenge could sense. You know, the electromagnetic forces. Things of that sort. And I think that painting is so much about being able to sense really infinite variations in light and surface that I can understand why it's not popular and not really understood very much anymore. I think that a lot of the biological capacity is lost.
CM-U: I think one aspect of my work that completely enamors me is that, because a conservator has the potential to change a surface of all kinds of materials, that we have to be true to the artist. We have to look so carefully at all those issues of reflectance and brushwork. We look much more closely than others need to. And we're the lucky ones. I mean…
David Novros: Well, I'm going to repeat this for the record now. Because I've said this to you privately, and I just want to say it now. And that's that your piece on the Rothko work [restoration of untitled paintings, Rothko Chapel, Houston] makes that point. And until recently, I don't think most restorers have had the slightest idea about that. You know, I am very encouraged, and you're great – and, you know, the work you did on the Rothkos makes it clear to everybody, or should make it clear to everybody, how important that is, and how really delicate the moment is between the surface of a painting and a person's eye. And how important that is. It's all there is. It's not about the canvas, or the wood, or the – it's that last skin, you know. It's all there is. The rest of it is all just prelude.
CM-U: That's true. 

CM-U: Okay. So you were painting fresco at the same time – let's talk about this piece. It's called Untitled (No. 9), 1972.
David Novros: Yeah. It's not called Untitled.
CM-U: It's not called Untitled? That's good.
David Novros: It's just untitled.
CM-U: It's untitled? Okay. Good. Thank you for clarifying that.
David Novros: That's something museums always do. They always say, "Oh, the title of this is Untitled." (laughter)
CM-U: You're right.
David Novros: You know, it's – gee, that's, "No, no, no. It's got no title. It should be called No Title.
CM-U: Where does the number–
David Novros: It shouldn't be called that.
CM-U: No. 9, though. Is that – that is associated?
David Novros: Well, it's because it was one of a group of – I usually work in groups of things. And this was one of a group that I did out of my experience in New Mexico, and it was a certain period of time.
CM-U: Hmm.
David Novros: And so I gave it a number. Also, it makes it a lot easier, since it has no title, to say "that's No. 9." It's just a way of indicating it for practical purposes.
CM-U: Where did you paint it?
David Novros: I painted it in New York, on Wooster Street, in a studio I had on Wooster Street.
CM-U: And it looks like it's on cotton, again?
David Novros: Unprimed cotton.

CM-U: Unprimed. And the oil, oil paint? Just…
David Novros: Oil paint.
CM-U: …painted right on it.
David Novros: Right on it.
CM-U: Okay.
David Novros: See, I want to say something about that.
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: And I actually want to ask you about that.
CM-U: Okay.
David Novros: You know, I've seen a lot of old objects, Egyptian objects, things that were painted with oil-based material on unprimed surfaces. And the logic has always been, as I understood it, and I was taught as a kid, that you had to prime something because eventually the oil would go into it and eat the material up and destroy it. I'm not sure if that's true.
CM-U: Hm.
David Novros: I know it discolors it. I know it does what it's doing here, for instance – which I like. Which I wanted to have happen. But I don't think it really does any–. How can it do something bad to the canvas? All oil does is coat it and act as a protector?
CM-U: I suppose there's a fear – and this is especially true of the canvases that were used initially, these kind of – in Italy. Kind of loose-woven, hemp-type fabric, where the fear was that the oil would penetrate the fiber, which was already loosely wound itself, and that there would be separation of the fibers. And we've seen that. But I'm not sure that that would necessarily apply as widely to the kinds of fabrics that we use.
David Novros: Right.
CM-U: Machine-made fabrics that we use today.
David Novros: Machine-made cotton ducks. I don't think so.
CM-U: I'm just not sure. And yesterday we were looking at the backs of these paintings, and, true – I mean, as we expected, there is some bleed through. But as even one painter who works here was just saying, "You know, I was taught…" the same thing that you just said. He said, "But these paintings don't look like, you know, this fabric doesn't look like it's been–"
David Novros: I've never seen any damage to the weave. I've never seen – to me, it's a protector.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: You oil – it's just – all it is is linseed oil. There's nothing, you know. Once that's on there, it should act – you know, you put oil on a lettuce, and then you put the vinegar on, right? This is a protector.
CM-U: Yeah…
David Novros: So…

CM-U: The kind of staining the oil – you know, the kind of shape that I suppose that we see particularly in a panel like this. (points toward top of painting) And let's just talk about the one, you know, in here. Up there. That happened initially?
David Novros: Right away pretty much. You know, it's gotten a little darker in relationship to the duck, but it was on there pretty much in the beginning. I knew it was going to do that.
CM-U: And you like, yeah…
David Novros: It wasn't something. It didn't bother me. It was a kind of drawing that didn't bother me. I'll tell you a funny story about this.
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: And it's related to this whole issue, and Pollock, right?
CM-U: Oh. Yeah.
David Novros: Okay. So, you know, all those Pollocks on cotton duck, and they have the bleed away from the paint when he painted them and all of that. And I went to a show in New York at Gagosian's, and they had all those black, late black drawings. Beautiful show. Fantastic stuff. And the owner of one of the paintings was doing this thing, you know, standing in front – you know how, you know, you go to an opening, and the person who owns the painting is always standing in front of their painting. That kind of thing, you know.
CM-U: (laughs)
David Novros: And I was sort of looking around. So this guy was standing there doing that. And I overheard him telling somebody, who was saying, "Oh, what about – you know, yours don't have any stains like the rest of them." And I knew that it had been inpainted. I knew they had done some work on it. And he says, "Ah, yeah, well, you know, this is the one that Pollock figured out how not to make the stains on. When all the other ones, you know, he didn't have this down." You know, it was this kind of thing. Back to the point about a thing not looking damaged in some way. 

David Novros: And then I heard other people saying, "Oh, yeah, well, he intended that stain to do that."
David Novros: Well, neither one of those is true. It's just part of the process, and you accept it when you do the work, you know. And I think Pollock knew for sure that was what was gonna happen, but he didn't – I don't think he considered it a drawing element, and I didn't think he thought of it as something that was going to impair the image that he was making. And I don't think it's something that hurts the physical fabric of the painting. I don't see any deterioration in the cotton. So, I mean, I think there needs to be some kind of understanding about these things. Maybe if you see a painting you don't think is successful because it has this problem – for you, a problem – then that is something else.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: That's an aesthetic judgment. But, I mean, I've seen a lot of – for instance, a lot of the color-field paintings have a kind of a stain thing that seemed kind of irrelevant to me. But then again a lot of the painting looks irrelevant to me.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: So it's not easy to separate. If this bothers somebody, for instance, in the painting, then I just don't think they are really seeing the painting.
CM-U: They're not seeing the painting?
David Novros: Right.
CM-U: Right.
CM-U: It looks very the same.

CM-U: It doesn't look [like] it's changed much in the years that I've seen it. We purchased this in '74…
David Novros: Really?
CM-U: …from Texas Gallery.
David Novros: Is that true?
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: God. I thought it was from '75. It shows you how my memory goes. I guess you're right. Seventy-four…
CM-U: It's dated '72. And, see, I was checking…
David Novros: Yeah, but I thought I had the show…
CM-U: …our records, we bought it from Fredericka and Ian.
David Novros: Yeah, I thought I had the show in '75, but I guess you're right. It is '74.
CM-U: So they bought this before the show. So I guess…
David Novros: No, no, the show was in '74. It was bought out of the show from Fredericka and Ian.
CM-U: Oh, I'm sorry. The show with Frederick and Ian.
David Novros: Right. And I guess I did do it in – I think it's later, then. I think it's maybe '73.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: Because I came back to New York in about '73, and I made these paintings as a result. Came back from New Mexico. But what– you know, '73, '74.
CM-U: Right. And so this was shown at Texas Gallery…
David Novros: Um-hum.
CM-U: …and you think Dominique and John [de Menil] bought it. Or Dominique bought it…
David Novros: Dominique bought it, right, immediately. Yeah.

David Novros: And, again, it's another attempt to make portable wall painting. You can see – I mean, I thought of the – I think of the canvas as a wall surface, and…
CM-U: Is there any priming at all on the canvas?
David Novros: None.
CM-U: Nothing at all?
David Novros: No.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: When I first started doing these, I used to put down a coat of glue.
CM-U: What kind of glue? Do you remember?
David Novros: Yeah. Rabbitskin glue.
CM-U: Rabbitskin…
David Novros: Straight.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: But I stopped doing it. I just didn't think it was necessary.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: I wasn't using a material, for instance, that was very thinly painted, so I wasn't worried about bleed into the canvas from that. I could control the drawing the way I wanted it to be. And I just couldn't understand why there was any reason to put the glue down. It didn't make any sense. For instance, the Rothkos, you know, they all have glue in them, right? Pretty much.
CM-U: Glue. Yes.
David Novros: I don't understand why. I mean…
CM-U: Well, he put pigment – Rothko put color in it, so I don't think he…
David Novros: No, I mean the first surfaces. The primer. He primed them with glue, right?
CM-U: But with pigment already in it.
David Novros: Oh, really?
CM-U: So it was already like a colored surface.
David Novros: That's interesting.
CM-U: So I'm not sure. I…
David Novros: Then that's something else. I take it back because that's already painting in it.
CM-U: Yeah. I mean, I think he certainly appreciated the physical advantage of doing it, but I'm not sure that that was his complete motivation.
David Novros: Hmm.
CM-U: It was part of his motivation.
David Novros: Well, I know that there's a lot of things you learn in school when you're – you learned in school, when I was young, that seemed to be, you know, good at the time. Good ideas. But I don't think that they're relevant, either technically or aesthetically, to the kind of painting I wanted to make. And that had to do with it…
CM-U: As I look at these paintings – excuse me.
David Novros: No, no, it's okay. I experimented – just one thing – I experimented, too, with using an acrylic, a clear acrylic ground.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: But I didn't like it. It was too rubbery and sealed up the canvas too fast. 'Cause I build these things up from the most absorbent surface up to the hardest surface I can make, you know. And the gradation from one to the other was an important part of all my work.

CM-U: And at this point were you making your own strainers?
David Novros: No. I had stopped making my own stretcher bars at about, I think about '73.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: I was making my own in New Mexico and up till then. But then when I began making these really large paintings, about this time I was selling work, and I was making money; and I was able to get my friend Jack Tomlin to make them. He's – I was telling you, he's the guy that made the bars for a lot of people, for Mike Heizer, myself, for Bob Mangold, and all kinds of people. And he did a good job, and he would do it for trade. He liked my work, and he has a bunch of my watercolors and things from this period, and he would make the stretcher bars for me. I love bartering, you know. I loved it.
CM-U: I do, too. It still works, too.
David Novros: The barter system. [Break in video]
CM-U: Good. 'Cause I just wanted to know why this is happening.
David Novros: It seems…
CM-U: In your work it hasn't become a disfigurement…
David Novros: Well, I…
CM-U: …but in other artists…
David Novros: …I think it's something to do with the nature of the cotton. And you see it in – and it always occurs in places – do you know how cotton has little impurities, little spots in it, you know?
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: Then that's where the brown comes up, the oxidation seems to be occurring. I don't know why.
CM-U: No. Neither do I, which is why I was really happy that he was willing to answer the – to begin to try to answer…
David Novros: Yeah. Ask him if it seems – when you talk to him, ask him if there's anything about it that seems to relate to the material that goes on top, or if it's something intrinsic to the cotton itself.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: Would you be able, for instance, just to have a flat piece of cotton, and would that happen over 20 years…
CM-U: Just by its – well, that's the question on these unprimed canvases.
David Novros: …by itself, you know? Right. Right.
CM-U: Are you ready for us to go? Okay.
CM-U: Let's look more carefully and talk a little bit more about this painting.

CM-U: It looks like you have no priming, but you've scored the forms before you painted them.
David Novros: In this painting I drew them with a pencil.
CM-U: Drew them in with pencil. Did you ever use tape to make a line?
David Novros: No.
CM-U: No? Okay.
David Novros: I don't like tape. I used the tape on these larger, old – these paintings from the rooms…
CM-U: Okay.
David Novros: …because, in some instances, because I wanted a really thick buildup of paint.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And it was the only way I could get it that thick. But, again, it came from going from thin to thick, and I'd reached the point where I couldn't just keep painting it thick anymore with an edge. With a line, you know. It was just impossible.
CM-U: And what's so – we were just beginning to talk about this, which is one of the aging aspects of these that I like so much, is that the brushwork is so apparent. And you do have this feeling of the wall. It's an incredible feeling that you've created, especially as it becomes more apparent over time.
David Novros: Yeah. I – you know, it's not about making faux fresco or something. That's not exactly what I mean. The kind of way I'm drawing and painting at this time, and even today, is about the intention of trying to find where the image separates from the object. You know. And because it isn't the wall, you have to find that in a really hit and miss way. 

David Novros: And that's why they are painted this way. I found that I could, you know, kind of modulate it. And also, I don't really like flat surfaces, you know?
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: This idea of flat surfaces is not what I'm about. My work has to breathe. I love the great painting that breathes, you know. Like Cezanne, and the Venetians, and, you know, etc. all the way back. The things that have a kind of internal life, a pulse, you know. Rothko. You know, where you feel this kind of light and dark movement all the time. So just to paint something flat never interested me at all.
CM-U: It's so – I mean, as I look at this today in this light, I am so struck by the edge and the difference of the saturation of the color on the edge, where I suppose you are slowing down, or you are building up, or, you know.
David Novros: Right.
CM-U: As opposed to the other parts of the form.
David Novros: Yeah. I mean, it's come up – almost always the things come up from the edge to a denser center, you know. But sometimes I change that around. It depends on the intention, on the content.
CM-U: So how do they look to you now, over 20 years later?
David Novros: (laughs)
CM-U: Go ahead. You knew you were going to get the hard questions!

David Novros: They look great.
CM-U: Yeah, they look great to me, too.
David Novros: I think they look really great.
CM-U: Are they intended – they are intended to be exhibited completely abut, right? Right up against one another?
David Novros: Against one another.
CM-U: Um-hum. And, again, the stretchers are very much aligned. I mean, we are able to hang them that way.
David Novros: Right. Does this break? I don't think this breaks, does it?
CM-U: No. We never needed to. This has been on exhibition many times here, and for most of the time here, in fact, in our 20th Century Gallery. And we just took it down recently, and then just put it here for this interview. But it's been on exhibition a lot, so it's not even that it's been wrapped and been in storage. And it's in remarkably beautiful condition.
David Novros: I mean, I've been looking at this in reproduction recently because I was doing some other work with people that wanted to ask about some things. And I was looking at the reproductions they gave me. And this one, I looked at, and I was a little embarrassed about it when I looked at the reproduction. Well, the drawing looks a little bit arbitrary to me, you know. I don't know if maybe I shouldn't have been so involved with these little kind of interstices between things and stuff. But, like all my work, I think – I really think my work is lousy in reproduction.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: But I think it looks good when you see it.
CM-U: Well, because of all the subtlety we're talking bout.
David Novros: Yeah. And I think that things like, you know, this thin edge, which...

David Novros: Well, why did I do this? I was looking at it. Said, "Why did I do that, you know? I could have just brought it – it would have been okay." But now that I see it, I see that it was inevitable. I had to have done it, you know. So that's the kind of thing that's encouraging because oftentimes I've seen older work of mine and really hated it, you know.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: But the work here that I'm seeing today, and the fresco we saw yesterday, I am content with. Yeah.
CM-U: Do you have a preference for how high off the floor a work like this hangs?
David Novros: Yeah, I do.
CM-U: Okay.
David Novros: I really do.
CM-U: What is that?
David Novros: Well, my preference is that it – this one – each one's different. All right. I have different preferences for each painting.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: But this painting, I like the idea that this big yellow mass should (stands in front of painting) – it should be high enough so that this mass feels like you could be in it. In other words, it shouldn't be too high off the ground.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: I think maybe a foot off the ground.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: Depending how tall. I mean, I'm giving a general…
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: …idea about that, you know. I think about a foot off the ground. But then again it depends on the physical space that it's gonna be hung in. I always liked seeing it here. I thought it looked very good in this space. The light's beautiful on it. And it always looked okay to me. But generally I think people tend to hang big paintings much too high.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: You know, they are worried about – whatever.
CM-U: Did you paint these in daylight or in incandescent light? Do you remember?
David Novros: Incandescent.
CM-U: Um-hum. But, in terms of exhibition…
David Novros: I'd much rather have it seen in natural light.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: But I painted it in incandescent light. All of these paintings, the oil paintings, were – this one I painted in natural light.
CM-U: Natural light? Yeah.

CM-U: Fortunately, we've never had to deal with this with one of your paintings, but I do need to ask you this in the event that in the future a conservator is faced with this in any museum that has your work. Supposing there were a damage in the middle, or, I mean you know, a central interruption of this…
David Novros: Yeah, sure.
CM-U: …of this form in here. I mean, is that something that you would feel should be definitely attended to? I mean, so that the serenity, or the completeness of this form is preserved?
David Novros: Who's the restorer?
CM-U: Ah. Huh. That's always the case. Yeah.
David Novros: You know, it just depends how sensitive the person is to the intention, and it depends on the damage. It's the kind of generalization I can't…
CM-U: Yeah, that you can't really answer. I understand that.
David Novros: You know, I can't – generally speaking – let's say it was you…
CM-U: Has it happened? I mean, has it happened in other examples of your work?
David Novros: Okay. Well, I don't know how to say this, but I don't think my work has been valued enough for it to come up as a problem. I know my work has been damaged in museums, but unless I hear about it and make a stink about it, nobody ever does anything.
CM-U: Hmm.
David Novros: So…
CM-U: Well, time is a long time, as you know.
David Novros: Yeah. So let's talk…
CM-U: So that's the story of it, yeah.
David Novros: So let's say we're talking hypothetically.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
CM-U: And somebody came in here and slashed this, this area, like right here, you know?
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And it was only about that big a slash.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And you were here. I would love it if you would, you know, fix it.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: Yeah. I think it would have to be fixed. If somebody came and put a thumbprint on it, we're not even worried about that because it is so easily fixed.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: So we are really talking about some kind of radical damage. There is nothing intrinsic in the painting that is going to damage the painting. I can't imagine anything. What could happen, you know? It's not going to explode suddenly.
CM-U: Right. No, and if…
David Novros: It's, you know…
CM-U: Did you paint them stretched? Or on–
David Novros: I painted them stretched.
CM-U: Stretched? Okay.
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: Great. I would love to start talking about the rooms now.
David Novros: Sure.
CM-U: But that's going to require turning around. [Break in video]

CM-U: Okay. Now according to – tell me about these. Were these commissioned? When did you paint these?
David Novros: Made them on spec.
CM-U: Made them on spec! Okay. Here?
David Novros: I made them in New York.
CM-U: You made them in New York? Okay, so explain that.
David Novros: All right. About 1975, I wasn't getting anymore fresco commissions. The whole scene had kind of fallen apart for me. I was really depressed about it. I didn't – the reason for wanting to do it in the first place was to make these things in public, and all I was seeing were these options of doing, like, corporate – you know, like the one down here at Pennzoil [Untitled (Pennzoil Fresco), 1975, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston]. I did these after the Pennzoil painting.
CM-U: Oh, you did these after the Pennzoil painting?
David Novros: Yeah. And I was just really fed up with working in that context. So I decided I was going to make – really put my money where my mouth was, and make rooms. And I was going to make them out of canvas and wood like this, and make them portable so I could show them in a – reassemble them in a gallery of some sort. But yet at the same time they would have this integrity about them as architectural places.
David Novros: About – as I was beginning this, my friend Harris Rosenstein, who is here in Houston, and I were talking. We were talking about the importance of paintings which identified with specific places, and our mutual admiration for Rothko and all of the various things we talked about. Endless. I said, "I think it would be really great to do a show of paintings which were made specifically…" – since I was already doing it, you know – "…it would be nice to see them maybe in another context." And he thought it was a good idea, too. And I talked to my friend Brice Marden about it, and he thought it was a good idea. So, since you had these Rothkos that were the extra ones, and you had my stuff that was going on, Harris thought it would be a wonderful idea to do an exhibition. That's how we ended up with the Rothko/Marden/Novros exhibition that was here. But I hadn't made these things specifically for the exhibition. It was coincidental.

CM-U: OK so – all right. So the [Rothko] chapel opened in '71. You came down and saw it soon after it opened.
David Novros: That's right.
CM-U: And you're in New York, painting. But you knew Harris [Rosenstein].
David Novros: I knew Harris.
CM-U: You knew Harris. You've known Harris.
David Novros: Yes.
CM-U: Was Harris involved in your painting the fresco at Pennzoil? No.
David Novros: No.
CM-U: That was totally separate? Okay.
David Novros: Separate.
CM-U: So you'd already done some work here, onsite, in Houston.
David Novros: Yeah. I'd been showing at the Texas Gallery.
CM-U: And you'd been showing at the Texas Gallery? Okay.
David Novros: But I knew Harris from New York, from the very earliest days when he was a write at ARTnews.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: And he wrote the best thing that anybody had written about this early work. He saw something that nobody else was really involved with in my work, and Brice's work, and in Paul Mogensen's work. And he wrote a piece called, I think, "Complex Color," or something of that sort…[Harris Rosenstein, "Total and Complex Color: Three Young Colorists." ARTnews 66, no. 5 (May 1967).]
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: …in which he really, and on a very high level, approached our work. And so I knew that Harris was capable of dealing with things that were a little out of the ordinary in the way of an exhibition. Then Paul [Winkler] came back to Houston at about that time. So Paul was here, and…
CM-U: Paul Winkler.
David Novros: Paul Winkler, who is, you know, a fantastic overseer and expeditor of these kinds of projects. So it was very easy to do the show here, in a way. And then also Ian Glennie at the Texas Gallery, who was trained as an architect, was an enormous help, you know. A very big help. The drawings, the whole thing, you know. So it was really perfect. I had shown these things – for instance, I showed one of the rooms – or, no, no, two of the rooms at Bykert…
CM-U: Previous to the Rice show?
David Novros: …Bykert Gallery, prior to the show. Yeah. And I showed one of the rooms at Sperone Westwater as well. 

David Novros: So in some sense I'd been making these things – and I made them in a really relatively short time. I worked on them, I don't know, just a few months almost. You know, I made them in the studio in New York.
CM-U: Okay. But when you say "them," you mean Room 1, 2, and 3.
David Novros: 1, 2, and 3.
CM-U: Okay. In our records, we have for dates of this one, '73–75. Is that right?
David Novros: That's not right.
CM-U: I didn't think it sounded right.
David Novros: That's wrong. They were really made in about '75. When was the show here?
CM-U: The Rice show was from April to June of '75.
David Novros: Yeah, they were made just at that point, '75. I guess they must have gone back to New York then after the show.
CM-U: We purchased them in January of '75. So we purchased them four months before the show.
David Novros: Then I did make them before…
CM-U: You made them in '74?
David Novros: Four. Yeah.
CM-U: In New York?
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: Okay.
David Novros: In the summer.
CM-U: So then Dominique or Harris must have seen them. You brought them in January…
David Novros: I don't think that Dominique saw them then. I don't think that they saw them until the show.
CM-U: Until the show? Okay. And the show happened in April and June?
David Novros: Right.
CM-U: Okay. So these…
David Novros: That's right.
CM-U: …these were already painted then?
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: So they were not actually commissioned for the show?
David Novros: No, that's the point I was making.
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: That I'd been working on them, on spec, because I just had to do them.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: They had to be made.

David Novros: I knew I could get them seen in New York through the galleries somehow, even though it was an unsatisfactory way of showing them. And then all this happened here coincidentally.
CM-U: Now the installation…
David Novros: It was very unplotted.
CM-U: Yeah. Okay. The installation, the actual – they were always shown that way, though? I mean, they were conceived in that way.
David Novros: Yeah. I want to make this point…
CM-U: Yeah. Good. Do.
David Novros: …now, for the record.
CM-U: Yes, do.
David Novros: Which is, that I don't think of these as separate paintings. I don't even think of them as Room 1, 2, and 3. That's something that was added on like Titled, Untitled, as a way of being able to refer to them. I really think of it as "a painting."
CM-U: All three?
David Novros: Yeah. A painted place. And in the configuration that we had them here at Rice. That's my optimum expectation for the way they ought to be seen. Now because one is now at [Modern Art Museum of] Fort Worth through an oversight on my part, it's going to be difficult to put it back again in place; but I think that's the way it should be seen. And that's a much more important restoration issue to me than whether it's cracked or not cracked.
CM-U: Yes. I understand that. So…
CM-U: Just like I'd like to see the [Paolo] Uccellos [The Battle of San Romano, c. 1438] all back in the same room.
CM-U: We were deprived of that privilege, weren't we? Our generation.
David Novros: Yes.
CM-U: So do I understand that to mean, then, you always feel they should be shown together? We shouldn't just see Room 3 exhibited…
David Novros: Well, I don't think I'm going to have much to say about it, to be honest with you; but, yes, my preference is not only – I don't think they should be exhibited anymore. I think they should be put somewhere and left in the original way they were meant to be seen.

CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And this idea – if they are only going to show one room, fine; that's better than nothing. But I would rather see them installed somewhere simple. Left there. Not dealt with.
CM-U: When you did the show at Rice – which I didn't see; I didn't get here until after that – the relationship of the rooms to each other, was that very clear in that __________ [word inaudible]…
David Novros: Oh, it was…
CM-U: …that was it?
David Novros: I mean, if you'd understand the organization of the paintings. I don't like to talk about my work this way, but I'm going to say it this one time because it is my intention. If you understand the organization of the painting, it goes from grisaille to the most intensely colored, and it penetrates the walls that separate them. So you have the memory of a color transition. It's one of the important parts of the conception of the painting. It is a very important aspect of the drawing and the idea. And I don't think, you know, people quite understand that. I didn't have them in separate rooms to keep them separate. I had them in separate rooms to create a spatial circumstance that was complex and, to me, interesting. But the idea that you would go from one where you'd start in Room 1, for instance, and it was this kind of green expanse...

David Novros: ...and then it came to a very dark wall on the right; and you would come to the grisaille panel, which is this one that Mrs. de Menil bought, and you would pick it up through the wall on the other side with a grisaille panel, and it came around and ended with the most intense color, which is in the other room.
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: That's the logic of the painting. Just like most of my paintings have been about this transition from dark to light, and from intense color to gray. Consistent in all my work, you know. And if anybody understands that, then they'll see what the logic of the painting is. But they won't see it if it's just seen as separate rooms.
CM-U: I'm glad you clarified that because I didn't see that installation, and I can understand now, looking at the works, what you're talking about.
David Novros: Right.
CM-U: How beautiful, really.
David Novros: Right.
CM-U: I'd also like to make a point, since we are talking – this is on film. These are not installed in this space.
David Novros: Right.
CM-U: We just lined them up on the walls. And this is not the way they are intended to be.
David Novros: But the way we arranged the views of each room, Ian and I, the doorways through, anywhere you stood, you could see parts of the thing.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: The whole. So it wasn't like we were blocking off the view of one room by putting a wall in. We were just using it as a kind of ceremonial separation of sorts. Given the space that we had to do it in. 

David Novros: But that's my ambition for the rooms, is that that be – they be reinstalled so that point can be made clear to people.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And then they can experience the painting that way.
CM-U: This must have been an exciting moment for you, to sort of set these things up. Was the exhibition satisfactory and…
David Novros: Do you know that Tarkovsky movie, Andrei Rublev? Do you know that one?
CM-U: No.
David Novros: It's a really great movie. There's a scene in the movie where this guy is a – and this goes for all the public art stuff, and the fresco, and all the stuff I've done – where this guy is the son of a bellmaker. And there's a commission for making this bell. And his father wins the commission, but in the course of proceedings, the father dies. And the son is a kind of intuitive person, not really involved with the bellmaking. Knows nothing about it. But the committee comes to tell the father that he has won the commission. Instead, they see the son, and he pretends to be the father, and he takes the commission, but he's never made a bell. So how is he going to do it, you know? So he goes out, and he finds this mud flat to get the clay. And it's all lightning strike [sounds like], whatever. Eventually he gets it made after enormous problems, and bullying all the people who work for him, and everything. Just like all people who do commissions do. And he finally gets the thing built. And the last moment comes when they are going to set it up and see if it's going to ring. But he doesn't know whether it's going to ring, or is going to crack into a million pieces. And it rings, and he's become the bellmaker. So that's the way these things get done, you know. You just have to do them.
CM-U: You just have them.
David Novros: Yeah. You have to – you know, like, to do this, to set this thing up here in its full total totality. I never had it set up. I wasn't sure whether everything would fit or anything. But Paul told you we were, you know, hammering on it with a hammer, and getting it to work, and putting it together. And it worked. You know, it came together.
CM-U: So you told me you had already exhibited this.
David Novros: Yeah, but I had never exhibited in toto.
CM-U: In toto?
David Novros: Yeah. Just one room at a time.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: Mostly 'cause I wanted to see it out of my studio, where it was very hard to see.

CM-U: As I look at the surface of these – are we able to go close and kind of look at some of the surface? – it's really quite different from the painting No. 9.
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: Same oil paint?
David Novros: Big change. Yeah, I was at this – let's see; seventy – these were the first ones. Because I wanted to make big rooms, now, I didn't have to show the canvas. I didn't have to show the – I didn't have to suggest a wall surface because these were the walls. And I wanted to paint it in a way that was more solid. But I didn't want it to be flat. So I began playing around with changing the surface using Damar varnish.
CM-U: Added to…
David Novros: Added to the oil paint.
CM-U: …the oil paint.
David Novros: And the linseed oil. And it's a very traditional kind of material. And I was putting on the paint now with both a knife and a brush, instead of just brushing it, which I had been doing before. Almost troweling it on, and then brushing it down, and troweling it again, and seeing when it started to become wall-like. Physical, like that. And that's why these surfaces look the way they do. You can see they are really in some way kind of close to the Pennzoil painting.
CM-U: Um-hum. They are. Except that there's a different…
David Novros: Well, fresco is fresco.
CM-U: Yeah. The surface.
David Novros: So, you know. But, I mean, the drawing in it you can see is similar.
CM-U: Did you paint these upright?
David Novros: I painted them in – yeah, I painted them one room at a time. I had the whole room assembled in my studio.
CM-U: You had it all assembled?
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: You had the canvases hung on the wall…
David Novros: That's right.
CM-U: …as they would be?
David Novros: Yeah. Um-hum.
CM-U: And then you were on ladders and whatever you needed to do?
David Novros: Yeah. Um-hum.
CM-U: Interesting. Yeah.
David Novros: They took up the whole space. And, you know, for instance, the big black area, I would paint on that. It was very hot. It was the summertime. There was so much black paint in that area that the temperature would be about 20 degrees cooler. It was really physical. It was a very physical kind of painting experience. 

David Novros: It was a lot like painting in fresco, only over a long period of time.
CM-U: And the edges are not painted, is that right?
David Novros: No, they're not painted.
CM-U: They're not painted. Okay.
David Novros: I painted the edges on paintings that had – especially I painted them on these kind of linear paintings because I wanted to control where it met the wall. But in these cases, they were the wall, so it didn't matter.
CM-U: Right. One aspect of them that's very nice is, again, the stretchers are so stable. I mean, they line up so beautifully. I mean, that's the only thing I could see in the future if for some reason the stretching became – and I can't even imagine it because they are in such – after 20 years, they are in such beautiful plane.
David Novros: Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
CM-U: You know, that might be a problem if they didn't quite line up, but they just really do beautifully.
David Novros: Well, I have other stretchers that are completely warped, and made by the same person, and much smaller paintings.
CM-U: Hmm.
David Novros: I don't know why. These have been lucky.
CM-U: Maybe it has to do with the storage.
David Novros: Maybe the storage. Maybe the wood was less, you know, green.

CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: You know, at this point, when I made these, the lumberyards were changing…
CM-U: Why don't you stand over here?
David Novros: At this point, when I made these, lumberyards were changing from places where you could go and select your wood, and you'd always get really good dry wood, to a point where they just dump a big pile in your studio, and you had to take what you could get. And Jack [Tomlin] had really good lumber.
CM-U: Jack Tomlin?
David Novros: Jack Tomlin had excellent, really dry wood. It was the thing that he did. It was the best. And, plus he'd come up with a stretcher bar that had stress-related things built in. In other words, he had the vertical and the horizontal so all the weight coming across wasn't going to warp it out.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: Most stretcher bars at that point were just mostly flat, and then they had a little ridge. But his were really built in as one thing. And then when the plywood plates were put in, they really stabilized it in the inside. The only problem with the stretcher bars then, as you know – this kind of stretcher bar – is that the paintings were vulnerable from the back; and I think if I were to do it again now, I'd always have them have cardboard or something in the back of them because most of the damage occurs from the back.
David Novros: The other thing is that you can see here, this is where the stretcher bar breaks. Right? There's a little bump there.
CM-U: Right. You mean for folding?
David Novros: Yeah, for folding. And this is pretty good because, you know, a lot of times that's quite obvious. It's a problem. Now on this panel it's good. What I was talking to you about before, that I'm concerned about is, if these ever have to be broken, or my other paintings are broken, and then they have to be restretched, and if you want to realign this edge with where it is, you have to stretch it pretty hard. And when that occurs, you sometimes get this crazing thing that goes like that.
CM-U: Um-hum.
David Novros: And I want to make sure that doesn't happen.
CM-U: I think folding is one of the most dangerous things we do. We – fortunately, in this museum, we rarely – we don't need to do it because we can get things in and out. But it's people that live in apartments who have…
David Novros: Or artists in studios.
CM-U: Artists in studios.
David Novros: It's really hard to make work that is of any scale, and to get it in and out of your studio. That's why I made things in modules originally, you know, just because I couldn't get a big thing in and out of my studio.
CM-U: So the fact that these are – does that apply to these pieces?
David Novros: No.
CM-U: No? Okay.
David Novros: But I had been talking about the earlier work. No, these are this size because they had to be this size.
CM-U: A part of their conception?
David Novros: The drawing, yes.
CM-U: The drawing. The only other comment I want to make about these is, I see kind of areas up here. I don't know if the camera will get this where it looks – perhaps you went – we have no record of them being treated or gone back into, but I see sort of areas where it's possible they may have been repainted. Or it just may be the saturation…
David Novros: No. These were never repainted.

CM-U: Okay. So it's just the uneven saturation…
David Novros: That's the way it's painted.
CM-U: It's beautiful. Okay.
David Novros: This painting, I've never even, you know, seen it since the show.
CM-U: Yeah?
David Novros: 'Cause it was here, and then it was in – I never showed this one in New York.
CM-U: No.
David Novros: I showed the other two rooms.
CM-U: I see.
David Novros: But since this was a single wall painting, there was no actual place in the galleries that I showed that was long enough to show this particular painting. Because it's quite long. I don't know…
CM-U: This one did not go to Los Angeles [for "The First Show: Paintings and Sculpture from Eight Collections 1940-1980," The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, November 20, 1983-February 10, 1984]. I think it was just Room 3, right?
David Novros: Just Room 3.
CM-U: Is that right? That's right.
David Novros: Yeah, that's right.
CM-U: Okay. Well, we're ready to go in, and – let me just see if there's anything else I wanted to ask you about these. Otherwise we are really ready to talk about what you and I did. Oh, yes, I wanted to ask you again about installation. Is your same feeling about, you know, distance off the floor?
David Novros: Um-hum.
CM-U: About a foot?
David Novros: Again – no, but with these paintings, it's – that thing that I said before is particularly relevant, that it depends on the space it is in.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
David Novros: For instance, if this were in a big shell of a room, like the [Rice Museum] barn was…
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: I can play with the height up and down. But then it has to be lit. And I hated the intrusion of the lights into the space of the painting. 

David Novros: Ideally, there wouldn't be any light on them at all. They'd just be in, like, a room like at the Twombly [Cy Twombly Gallery, The Menil Collection], with the scrim and no light…
CM-U: Right.
David Novros: …and that would be it, you know. But because you have to have some electricity to see them, that determines how high or how low it can be. If, in fact, you even have that choice. Oftentimes you are not even, you're not even given that choice.
CM-U: But you never felt they should be right on the floor? There was always a sense of them (raises hand into the air) __________ [word inaudible]…
David Novros: No. No, they had to be up. I believe – how were they in the __________ photo? They are up about this high, right? Off the ground?
CM-U: Yeah, I think that's about right.
David Novros: I think about knee high.
CM-U: Yeah.
David Novros: Yeah.
CM-U: Um-hum. But I can understand what you mean. It has to do with the proportion of the space, the height of the wall…
David Novros: Right. Plus, you don't want people to come and kick them, and, you know, that kind of thing, which occurs. It is uncomfortable to see them. But now that I look in the other room and I see that painting on the floor, leaning against the wall, it looks pretty good at that height, to me.
CM-U: Let's move into the other room.