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

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I made it a point never to use the word "I" in an essay, an article. I don't actually do it in a painting, either. I make it a point to get rid of all the slowing down elements. You step along with the spaces I set up. There's not a great deal of wastage. The paintings happen with a great deal of force, and they get finished with a great deal of impact. They're carried through with a sort of tenacity. That's something that's very important to me. Leaving out all the empty words in a sentence is very important.

LO: You don't like the word "abstract" applied to the early paintings, and you don't like the word "Pop" applied to anything. How do you feel about caning your works "still-lifes"?

MF: I thought Patrick [Amos] and [Jean-Pierre] Gorin made a very stylish and modish and accurate observation when they called the paintings "still-lifes that are never still" [in the essay "The Farber Machine," A.i.A., Apr. '86]. That's exactly right. People make a big deal that they're tabletop paintings, that the objects go on the board, and that I arrange them like scenes in movies, from point to point. But they don't speak of "tabletop" when they're talking about Chardin or Cezanne. It's a term that oversimplifies.

LO: I'm interested in the way your paintings relate to some 19th-century American still-life painters, like John Pete, who painted newspaper clippings, calling cards and all sorts of studio clutter also arranged against a flat surface--in his case, a door or wall.

MF: I'm very fond of early American paintings. I've spent a lot of time studying them and looking at them. I love them. I don't like the Hudson River paintings much at all. Pete I've looked at a lot.

LO: I like the relationship between your work and Peto's, because they're both biographical or autobiographical. They track internal narratives through clues like writings and art reproductions.

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