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Tara Donovan: “I don’t map it at all”
Ms. Donovan, why do you leave your artworks untitled?
At a certain point I felt titles to be very unnecessary. I think once we make a work and put it out there, we have very little control over what the viewer experiences. A lot of conceptual artists intentionally inscribe meaning into their work or write it out on a wall text next to it to explain it, but that often feels like a forced message, which has never really been something that I’m interested in. Viewers bring their own associations when they experience a work of art — and then they read a wall label that could contradict their own interpretation.
With no titles to guide your viewers, you must have heard some surprising associations about your work over the years.
This was a long time ago, but I remember there was this group of young people — I think they were around seventh graders and, you know, kids that age say exactly what they want to say. All of the kids had a very different take on my paper plates sculpture they were looking at. One of them was like, “It looks like snakeskin!” and the other, “It looks like garlic!” (Laughs) A lot of things that I certainly hadn’t even considered.
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Life
“I’m trying to not play it safe. I learn more when I fail than when I succeed, so if I push myself to do something that’s really difficult, I could fail and I’ll learn a lot. But if I don’t fail, then I’ll be in a great movie. I hope to be the kind of actor that isn’t always great.”
“I think my love of pushing the boundaries in film comes from my desire as a kid to do something artistic that would amaze people. I wanted to do nothing less than that. Those are the projects that I love: figuring out what might just be possible but hasn't been done yet.”
“It's just so boring listening to false modesty. I've worked for many, many years so I'm really enjoying that my hard work has paid off… I think you should know your worth!”
“I don’t want to be good. I want to be the best. Even in failing that, you’ll hit a higher mark than if you never tried.”
“Writing itself should be so extreme, so wild, and so much fun that it doesn’t matter whether or not you ever sell the book.”
“I work till the breath goes out of me, and that might be at one or two or even four or five (in the afternoon). The point is that you must work every day if you ever expect to let the vision take hold of you.”
“Making something or creating something is about looking and exploring the potential, and I want to do that right up until the day of the performance. And then when we’re performing, I want to do it a bit more. There’s no reason we can’t.”
“Failure is more interesting. Success only comes in one form. It doesn’t teach you anything. Failure kind of comes in all sorts of ways, and teaches you all sorts of things. You learn by failing.”
“I think my photographic career has been one of growing, learning, experimenting and trying different things. That was a big journey for me! It’s always a progression, it’s about challenging the idea of what photography is.”
“Even though I wanted to be minimal, for the first 20 years in my career all I did was add things; more courses, more ingredients. Only three years ago I was confident to start focusing on removing, and this is when I finally created a dish where I felt like I achieved what I tried to do for 23 years.”
“At what point do you feel you’ve achieved it and you can move on? I think you usually have to start thinking, “So what’s next?””
“When you’re young so many things happen and it’s really hard, but you have to fight. Sometimes to get what you want you need to have a really strong past to make sure that you become a warrior and you are not scared about anything and you fight through the night.”
“I give my best performances when I am almost snapping. It is like tuning a violin. You want that note from a string so you tune it until it almost breaks – but then you get that note. It is dangerous, but it is also sublime.”
“I always say ideas drive the boat. Ideas are a huge, huge blessing. That’s the thing you try to catch – an idea that you fall in love with. The whole thing doesn’t come at once, but fragments of things come and these fragments form themselves into a script. It’s a process.”
“For me it’s a lot about physicality, about how I feel. When you have these hardships or when you see someone you love in pain or you struggle, all the petty shit goes away. You are like, “I can’t believe I was worried about this other thing,” when you see what really matters.”
“I try not to look back. I’m looking forward. I’m worried more about what I’m going to do next week than I am what I did last week. There are too many things to do. Looking back is for everybody else.”
“If you are ambitious, you are running in a tunnel that never ends. You will always find something new to go after.”
“I think that when you’re a creator, you set out to create the perfect thing, but the idea of reaching that kind of creative nirvana — that’s something that you should never quite reach.”
“When you are at a crossroads, mistakes can help you decide the right way forward, and I think I really grew when I understood that I need to accept my mistakes.”
“The journey of an artist is a journey of discovery and some engagement with the nature of material, with bodily things and all that has led me to this place. I’m really interested in that as a process because the process moves you in directions that you couldn’t rationally put there.”
“I’m doing things more personally than ever before because that’s what my project is based on, that’s who I am and I have never been this happy my whole life — but it was a long road to get here.”
“Part of being a designer is to fail every day, to try things that don’t work out. In a way, every project fails every day until it succeeds! That’s what the iterative process of design is about. Timing in many ways is key.”
“If you work with somebody for a long time, you have to challenge them otherwise you jeopardize your relationship. You have to constantly reinterpret your work together and provide a new vision of your relationship.”
“I think the key to having a successful career is to find the thing you do well and do it again and again for the rest of your life. But I’m interested in expanding my language as an artist and as a composer. And I try to expand it with every project.”
“I was always trying to innovate; I don’t like repetition. Time is something that changes every moment, it’s never repetitive — I try to follow this example.”
“You don’t have to please everybody. As long as you and the people whose opinions you respect are comfortable and happy with it, then… keep going! Keep making that weird stuff.”
“The recognition of luck is extraordinarily important — as well as making the best of it and creating to the best of your capabilities on that one opportunity you’re given so that it doesn’t end up in the museum of errors.”
“Art is something about everyday life. Art is about finding creativity in the normal gutter next to you. To see the potential in something where there is no potential is often where art or creativity is a great tool. It’s about making the impossible possible.”
“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward! If you’re feeling that, maybe other people need that to.”
“To be an artist, you must start with a considerable drive; in my case it was a fierce madness, a wildness. I think that’s the mark of an artist, actually, that they are rebellious, unruly… And I was one of them myself.”
“I don’t want to be pigeonholed — I think it’s important to keep evolving and experimenting and reinventing yourself, otherwise it’s like hitting a drum, the same note over and over again. I think you should want to grow, to evolve, change, try different things.”
“You’re always looking for a second chance. You’re always looking to do a little bit better than you did the last time. And you hope that the readers will stay with you.”
“If you have to defend something that you like, it makes you to like it even more. My parents hated the comic strips, they hated rock ‘n’ roll, and when they found out what movies I was going to they also were against that. So everything I loved I had to defend.”
“It’s been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to make the films I really dream of making. It’s heartbreaking when that happens, but it’s all okay. It requires patience.”
“I have a moral standard of my own. I know the difference between right and wrong, I know what I feel comfortable with. And if you live up to your own moral standard, you’re going to have a more comfortable life.”
“I am less anxious to have a successful career. There were times when I was anxious — even in the past, people said, “You make successful films.” But my films were never successful. Even The Godfather got a terrible review. My films did better over time.”
“I think you always have to have risk when you’re creating a piece of art. Without that, I don’t understand really what the drive is to succeed. It’s the risk factor that, weirdly, keeps you feeling safe. It keeps you on your toes.”
“Being creative and keeping your brain occupied is very sensible because if you don’t you die, slowly. Sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don’t want to just retire. I enjoy it all.”
“Architecture is the oddest profession. In the beginning you're very much involved in finding your voice and locating yourself artistically. For 25 years you're working with small projects, domestic projects. And then you mature at 50 and you're given your first projects.”
“I don’t regret anything. I feel that I’ve made what I would call mistakes. But everything you do is a part of you. And you get something from it. The idea and excitement of being in these situations and places — they are more than just memories, they inform your life.”
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John C. Reilly: “We all owe a debt”
Mr. Reilly, which comedians made you laugh as a kid?
At the Golden Globes this year, I got to meet Dick Van Dyke, and that is someone who was very, very important to me as a child. I was also just weeping watching their Carol Burnett tribute and it made me realize that, “Wow, that was a big influence on me.” Another influence would be Gene Wilder, who came up when I was a kid in the seventies, when it was a very macho world for men, especially in movies, it was guys like Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando.
Robert Redford, Harrison Ford, Richard Roundtree…
Right, this kind of uber macho protagonist. Gene Wilder was someone who said it’s okay to be sensitive, it’s okay to have a feminine quality to yourself as a man. That’s not some terrible thing, that’s just a recognition of what it’s like to be a human being. I really latched onto him at an early age, because I thought, “That’s how I feel! I am a sensitive person, I am not up to the task of being as macho as Gene Hackman!” I understood what it felt like to be someone like Gene Wilder. I understood the empathy that he expressed, the care and the humanism.
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