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2008 Spring

Howardena Pindell: No apology for my heart

A former Associate Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art, Howardena Pindell emails with MoMA Curatorial Assistant Alexandra Schwartz.

Howardena Pindell

Photo by A. van Woerkom

Courtesy Sragow Gallery, New York, NY

Alexandra Schwartz: What was the process involved in making your punched paper works, such as Untitled #6 (1975)?

Howardena Pindell: Untitled #6 was part of a series I created with numbered circles placed on graph paper. You see, there was a whole lot of stuff sort of rumbling around in my head. Although I was originally a figurative painter in graduate school, my works had started to become much more abstract. It had already been introduced to me at Yale because Abstract Expressionism was a very big thing there. However, when I began working for The Museum of Modern Art, I started looking more seriously at abstract concepts.
   
In the 1970s, I started making the punched paper works. As a kid, I was fascinated with the circle and later Larry Poons’ work inspired me as he was also interested in the circle. I started making templates to do drawings. I started developing paintings where I used a template that I had created using a hole-puncher. Then I used the holes as a stencil to spray acrylic paint onto the unprimed canvas.

At one point, an art dealer from Cincinnati came to my studio, and as a kind joke, he asked me, “How many circles are on this painting?” I decided I would simply count them. I started using black drawing ink and a rapidograph, which is a pen with a sort of needle in it. I would then hold down the circle with a needle or a nail, and started numbering each circle as if I were counting them. Next I found that I wanted to lay them on flat graph paper, which I did, and I used an acrylic medium. I sprinkled the circles using an archival spray adhesive that the 3M company helped me select. I actually started coloring the circles using acrylic and watercolor for these works.

My father had a B.A. in mathematics, and I was used to seeing him write numbers on graph paper. I think that this memory inspired me to write numbers on circles. I am not a mathematician; numbers are not for me. Functionally, these are drawings for me. I like drawing them; I like writing them.

AS: You were politically active at the time that you made Untitled #6 and related works, but chose to keep activism separate from your art. How did that come to change by the time you made Free, White and 21 (1980)?

HP: I had been through a lot by the time I made Free, White and 21. By then I had been at MoMA for twelve years. I had seen the art world and been part of the women’s movement. I was a founding member of the A.I.R. Gallery back in the early 1970s. I had been part of the Black Arts Movement, raising people’s consciousness about the lack of work shown by black artists. Occasionally I would go to Art Workers Coalition meetings. So I was involved, but my work did not really become issue-related until Free, White and 21. On a personal note, around the same time I had also been in a very severe car accident.

I left MoMA in 1979 and started teaching at Stony Brook University. Free, White and 21 was the first shot, so to speak. I was very frustrated by what was going on in the women’s movement, in terms of it being what I thought to be very exclusive, very racist. I was questioning why some of the women’s organizations were all white. I was really fed up and my political awareness grew as a result of an exhibition at Artists Space in March of 1979.  It was called Nigger Drawings, which caused a multiracial coalition to picket the show and have a sit-in, and so forth. It was very clear the art world was very, very segregated. The attitudes were very archaic. I would say that my car accident, events like the protest of Nigger Drawings, and seeing the art world with all of its foibles and faults contributed to my political awareness. I also think that being in a university environment gave me the opportunity to be more outspoken.

I’ve had people get really angry at me about Free, White and 21, but I don’t care. I really had my heart in it, and I really wanted to get my point across. I’m not going to have someone intimidate me into not showing it because they feel it’s insulting; because it deals with racial issues which may make people feel uncomfortable.