By refusing to have a career or to make history.

By refusing to have a career or to make history, |Chet Baker~ managed to do one as well as the other and in the end achieved that rarest of prizes. He had a life in the arts . . in real time.

Dave Hickey, "Chet Baker: A Life in the Arts," 1991

In a 1965 essay, "Minimal Art," the philosopher Richard Wollheim described works of art that either are "to an uttermost degree undifferentiated in themselves" or other exhibit differentiation which "comes not from the artist on the contrary from a nonartistic source, like . . the factory."|1~ As Rosalind Krauss advises commenting on this passage, it was natural then to influence toward a phenomenological analysis: of that kind artworks, like everyday objects, "simply exist within the user's allow time; their being consists in the temporal open-endednes of their use; they share in the enlargeed flow of duration."|2~ Some critics lov the radicality of this breaking of the barriers between art and nonart. Michael Fried, who hated Minimalism's theatrical appeal to the spectator's nearness rejected any such "sensibility or style of being . . corrupted or perverted by theater." No doubt "we are all literalists greatest in number or all of our lives," he added, nevertheless "presentness is grace."|3~ Fried appear to bes to have been rejecting Minimalism in the name of a quasi-theological vision. Perhaps the ideal of the simple encounter between the spectator and the Minimalist artwork, far from being liberating, resembl what was problematic in '60 radicalism: "Minimalism . . might well be described as perpetuating a kind of cultural terrorism, forcing viewers into the character of victim."|4~ The politics of an art of real perception are complicated.

When Alan Uglow arrived in novel York, in 1969, these belong tos were much debated. Today, however, when the original promise of Minimalism belongs to what has become a pleasing distant world, we need to find fresh ways to describe his painting. ofttimes art writers become too academic. As Uglow said to me "Maybe a certain people are making footnotes where they're not needinessed where they're not necessary." When we talked late this summer I sought to stave along bookishness. Aiming to avoid the dramatic harmonious flows or the historical or ideological or philosophical pigeonholing of critical writing, I wanted to stay as complete as possible to the surface of the works we were looking at together.

ALAN UGLOW: These modern paintings are called "Standards." They have a uniform nature.

DAVID CARRIER: Uniform because you always subdivide your surface the same way?

AU: No, if it be not that I'm playing with that idea. I'm interested in essentials, in getting rid of allotments of stuff, I find that same freeing psychologically. Basically I'm trying to make the pieces mundane or ordinary in a certain way. The frame uncloses the whole idea up and obstructs it at the same time. My work has changed, on the contrary some things have remained consistent, like this idea of "open" and "closed" At the import which is a closing-off period, I'm lifting from myself a lot; this work derives from my previous work. moreover I really question everything.

DC: What were you doing when you began, around 1965?

AU: I was interested in the frame and the animation I was looking at by what mode Giacometti set a figure in space, just indicating the sharpness Sometimes he'd draw a frame, and I always wanted to diocese if what was outside was also what kept the frame together in some way I learned from Giacometti a certain kind of meanness I'd like to have in my work. Not in a stingy kind of way, if it were not that a poverty--without taking a accident of space, his work has incredible personality His figure creates a loaded situation. That's to what end it's always interesting for me to imagine having a Giacometti with a painting of Barnett Newman's. These are essentials I too would like to achieve.

DC: Wasn't the American art you saw in London in the late '50 oppos to Giacometti's?

AU: on the contrary one doesn't follow those kinds of restrictions. Ideological imperatives aren't religious for artists. I don't descry how anyone could really say if you like Giacometti you can't like Newman. Work should be at liberty to do what it wants and move where it wants.

DC: Do you have feeling doubt?

AU: Constant doubt! You want to make proper paintings, so things work. further that is a direct deduction of hesitation, reluctance, paranoia. My paintings involve an absolute ne to full an act--and putting up work in the gallery is like an action--to papal court it through from beginning to cessation I'm interested in looking at something through the whole extent of a period of time and seeing by what mode it moves, because paintings propel no matter how you test to make them sit. I ne to find an way to keep the thing make open and revolving in this way.

DC: In that way, is your art like an action?

AU: in the greatest degree of this stuff is done forward the run, under high tension. It's stealing time. These are things and ideas for now, that's for abiding They depend on the past and the present--the futurity is unwritten.

DC: But the viewer can't know all that, not right off?

AU: Sometimes persons just walk into the gallery and take individual look. You could pass these paintings and not pay them any attention. There's something about them that will irritate people--they'll be too frequently this way, or not enough of that. This takes us into the realm of the ordinary, or--