Who can fuckin draw?

David Levine can fuckin draw…

“I’m a museum rat. I only go to countries where there are great museums. I spend my time thingking a great deal about painting and why I’m not a great painter. I mean that in a serious way; I think I’m a good painter, and I think I’m a good artist in general, but I don’t think I’m a great artist in that there is another step that I understand when I see it by artists of the past, but that I can’t neccessarily do. I’d even managed once to do the thing I have in mind, but the great artist doesn’t do it just once; it’s there in all his work. That is , to have made a world parallel to reality which is, in its formal qualities, full of interest and excitement and vitality in a way that is as exciting as the real world. The pastel applications of Degas are are at one point so exciting, so colorful, and so original that they remake the world in their terms. When you read War and Peace or Balzac, as in great poetry, you get an alternative to the world that’s as exciting and complex. That’s the step I cannot find myself doing. I’m aware of it when I look at Degas, but I’m not aware of it in my own work. So spending time thinking about that is worthwhile.”

David Levine in interview with Gary Groth

Born in Brooklyn, lives there still, at age 80.

0 Comments +

  1. Re: He can fuckin paint, too

    He has some fascinating things to say in this interview I’m reading – fascinating for the materials geek in me, that is – all about erasing and various types of paper and watercolor technique.

    He was raised by Stalinists and it still kinda shows – makes you remember when the left actually stood for something.

  2. Re: He can fuckin paint, too

    He has some fascinating things to say in this interview I’m reading – fascinating for the materials geek in me, that is – all about erasing and various types of paper and watercolor technique.

    He was raised by Stalinists and it still kinda shows – makes you remember when the left actually stood for something.

  3. Re: He can fuckin paint, too

    He has some fascinating things to say in this interview I’m reading – fascinating for the materials geek in me, that is – all about erasing and various types of paper and watercolor technique.

    He was raised by Stalinists and it still kinda shows – makes you remember when the left actually stood for something.

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