Hrag Vartanian

Larry Poons in an interview with Robert Ayers.

Poon: Paintings are mistakes. You put a mark on a canvas, and it’s a mistake. Of course it’s a mistake, otherwise it would be wonderful, because it would be finished. But it’s not. After maybe 50 or 60,000 mistakes, you give up. Like Leonardo said, “Works of art aren’t finished, they’re abandoned.” That’s absolutely true, art is never finished. People say, “Oh, that’s a nice romantic thing to say.” But it’s not romantic. It’s like saying that physics can be finished. Real art is never finished. With applied art at least you can say, “OK. You’ve learnt this lesson.” Illustration doesn’t even get into this no-man’s land. But that’s the only place that art lives, if it’s any good.

Read the interview in its entirety on Robert Ayers’ blog, A sky filled with Shooting Stars.

via Poons, Letting it Rip « Slow Muse.

Poons has a show at the Danese Gallery in New York (until March 14).