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♪ [Theme Music] ♪
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Hello. I'm Ronnie Eldridge.
Welcome to Eldridge & Co. Audrey Flack is one of the world's
foremost women artists. She's renowned for the photo realist
paintings. She began to show during the '60s and '70s.
Then in the early '80s she started to sculpt her
incredibly beautiful goddess statues of powerful women.
In between she teaches and plays the banjo in Audrey Flack's
History of Art Band. She's also an author and one of her
books "Art & Soul" she tells what being an artist means.
And she's my guest today. You say art- hello.
AUDREY FLACK: Hi, Ronnie.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: You say art is a calling and I knew you when
you were in high school. We were in high school together.
Was art a calling early on in your life? Did you know you
were going to be an artist?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah. It's a blessing and a curse at the same
time and it's a calling. Unlike the way it is today.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I know. We're going to talk about that.
You have a different feeling about it, don't you?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah, I do.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: So you grew up on Manhattan up in
the Washington Heights?
AUDREY FLACK: Washington Heights.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And when you were young did
you always draw?
AUDREY FLACK: I think it started- you know visual acuity,
one of my daughters is a singer/songwriter and when
I used to talk to her I would see her hand going like this
and there was music in her head all the time.
I saw everything. And I think my eyes are so acute.
They pick up an incredible range of color.
So I think you get a physical genealogical ability.
But when I was in kindergarten, I was very hyperactive, Ronnie.
I probably would have been put on Ritalin. But then they just
called me bad. You have to sit like this and I couldn't
sit still and I'm moving around and so when I got asked to
leave class or thrown out of class in first grade, it was
a relief for me to be in the hallway. And I used to sit and
make drawings and the teacher gave me a couple of pieces of
oak tag and it was thrilling. To me seeing is thrilling,
just thrilling to see you. That beautiful necklace.
What is that?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I know you're always so thrilled and enthused
in life. Is it all because you think you see more?
AUDREY FLACK: I trust my eyes more than I trust words.
Sometimes when I listen to politicians I listen to the
voice and I can tell if they're lying.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: So interesting. And you think art-
AUDREY FLACK: I listen to the voice and I see their
faces and see- it's really interesting because words can
lie but vision can't lie.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Interesting. But you hear also.
AUDREY FLACK: I hear and I see-
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And you're' a musician.
AUDREY FLACK: Yes.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: So what can we do? So you started
drawing on this thing, drawing in the corridor and they saw
it so they made you do signs?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah, I did the class pumpkins and
Valentines and Christmas trees and-
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And then we were both lucky enough to land
up at the High School of Music-
AUDREY FLACK: Where did you live, Ronnie?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I lived on the West Side.
I never moved from the West Side.
AUDREY FLACK: Did you take the bus because
we took the bus-
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I took the trolley car to school.
AUDREY FLACK: Trolley?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Which ran up Broadway. But we're not
here to reminisce. I want to talk about you. So music and art
you really- it was an incredible time and almost everybody I know
who went to that school everybody agrees that it
was an incredible time in their life.
AUDREY FLACK: Thrilling. Because I was the odd kid in
the neighborhood as my mother never ceased to tell me.
My hair was not like a suburban girls hair.
I didn't wear bouffant skirts. I wore jeans and I was-
I always felt like I didn't quite belong, which I didn't.
I went into music and art. I was home. It was thrilling.
The talent was amazing.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: It was just so stimulating and it
touched our souls. I mean I was always interested in
government and politics and stuff and even at music and art,
I was really nourished by all those teachers who were either
communist or socialist but sometimes it's alright.
There was one kid in my class that was a Republican
and I still remember his name.
AUDREY FLACK: Who?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: It was Goldstone. Because he stood out
like this. Let's go further. You then went-
AUDREY FLACK: Ronnie, I have to say I voted for
Ronnie when she ran for class president.
I was so impressed with her. She was this foreign
creature interested in politics.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I know it was really fascinating but that
happened early on. But then you went to Cooper Union and
then you went to Yale and then you started-
AUDREY FLACK: Scholarships. Scholarships.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And then you were an artist even then.
AUDREY FLACK: Oh yes.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: It's interesting you say at Yale you
would stand 30 feet away and throw paint at the canvas?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: That was the style then?
AUDREY FLACK: Well when I was at Cooper it was the height- well
the beginning of the height of abstract expressionism and
Cooper Union was on Eighth Street. All the artists lived on
Eighth Street, Tenth Street, on the lower East Side and I
knew them and my teacher took me to the Artist Club.
So I met all those guys. I knew ***, probably even the
last person alive at Newponk. Do you think there are any?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: No, I think there are people who
still do. We're not that old. Go on.
AUDREY FLACK: Oh. I'm not that old. Thank you very much.
So I used to- he dripped and I dripped but I wanted
to go further than ***. I was going to- I mixed
buckets of paint and I would load my brush and I would
fling it at the canvas. One time the brush went through the
canvas. But I also painted and some of those paintings
are quite impressive. I look back at them and they hold up.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Did you go to museums and did you
look at artists and the history of art even then?
AUDREY FLACK: Oh my God so involved. I went to the
Met when I was 14 and I'm going to tell you the name of
an artist. I want everybody to go see him and kind of
genuflect. His name is Carlo Crivelli, 15th Century
Venetian. And you go up the stairs, you go to the right,
you go in there, there's a Pieta that knocked my socks off.
But I think he was the first photo realist. I really do.
15th Century.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: So you were 14 then and you saw that but still
you're throwing the paint at the canvas when you're older.
AUDREY FLACK: Well you know we were brainwashed.
We were brainwashed in music and art. When I say
brainwashed, I forged Picasso's in music and art, Ronnie.
There are probably some around out there, can't arrest me
because I don't remember. And we were taught that
representational art was old hat. I stood up in class
and said I hate Rembrandt. He's old fashioned. I mean I ask
his apology now. So we were brainwashed.
We were a whole generation that was brainwashed
toward abstraction.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: That was the mode or the style.
AUDREY FLACK: And I think there's an inherent need
in human beings to visage themselves. Children draw
themselves or their parents or their friends. You need to see
yourself. And as sophisticated and wonderful as abstract
painting is and can be you can't throw away the other.
So there's a big return by the way and I always secretly
copied the masters while I'm throwing paint.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And you're not- but music and
art were also not supposed to copy.
AUDREY FLACK: That was a sin. That was a terrible sin.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: So interesting. Do most artists do that?
AUDREY FLACK: Rubens copied every old master.
They all- he literally traced. He would buy drawings of
a Greek and Roman art and whatever he would copy
the works and copy other artist's drawings.
That's how you learn. But we were taught you had
to be original. You had to be- and God knows what's
going on today. I think these kids say Rembrandt who?
Tintoretto who?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: So when did you switch?
I mean here you were an abstract artist/painter.
Did you have an exhibit of your abstract work?
AUDREY FLACK: I have had and yes I might have one shortly.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: But you did then too. When you finished-
AUDREY FLACK: No.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Then you went to the Art Students League.
AUDREY FLACK: Well at Yale I studied with [PH] Alberts
who was about [INDISCERNIBLE] You painted squares.
And he gave me a scholarship but I secretly sat on the
steps of Street Hall of the Yale Art School and sketched,
copied Raphael, Rubens, Tintoretto and because Albert's
didn't teach drawing. There was no- drawing you drew a box.
So when I graduated I studied anatomy at the
Art Students League and gradually became a
representational painter. It wasn't a switch because
my photo realist works are very abstract if you look at them.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Well they're compositions and what's
in them and everything and the meaning. So what was the
reaction when you first started painting that?
AUDREY FLACK: Photo realism?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Yeah.
AUDREY FLACK: Oh that was interesting. I had no idea- you
know how you think you're the same as other people or
different when you're a kid but I was hanging out with
all the other photo realists and it turns out I was the
only woman in the group. And I did never think that
until the consciousness rising started but even after that-
what was the reaction?
In the beginning those of us who used photographs
were scorned because that was a bad thing.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: You were copying.
AUDREY FLACK: We were copying. We were cheating.
We were using photographs that are only for low illustrators.
I mean look how far we've come. And the airbrush,
that was even worse. A lot of my friends stopped talking
to me because I used photographs.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Did they think you were going
commercial or they didn't think it was-
AUDREY FLACK: It was heresy. And they didn't realize then that
Vermeer used the camera obscura, that Manet,
Cezanne, Degas they all referenced photographs.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Zarra, didn't he with the streets?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah, they all looked at photographs.
Dugara had made photographs and they were looking at.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Your photo realist painting was
the first one in the Museum of Modern Art bought, right?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: That was thrilling, wasn't it?
AUDREY FLACK: I wish they'd hang it again, high.
Take it out of the racks.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And you're now in every
museum in New York?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: So do you- I mean we talk about
our age and we say we can't believe how old we are.
Can you believe-
AUDREY FLACK: Ronnie, I'm a little younger than you.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Alright, forget it. But can you believe
that you're the artist that you are?
AUDREY FLACK: It's just hitting me.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I think that comes with age too.
AUDREY FLACK: Well some people have that kind of
knowledge of who they are but I never knew who I was-
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Do you think they do or do they fake it?
I think a lot of people fake it. But I'm not sure.
AUDREY FLACK: You think so?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I don't know. I just- the same thing.
As a political being I've come to suddenly think I was really
pretty good when I was working with Bobby Kennedy
or John Lindsey. It wasn't that they were so nice
to have me around.
AUDREY FLACK: You were good.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: They knew I was helping them.
That's just come recently and I wondered if that's-
AUDREY FLACK: Yes. Well do you know me being- you
probably also, a female, I had to be not only as good
as those guys.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: You had to be better.
AUDREY FLACK: Better.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Or talk louder so you had to paint-
I don't know you had to be better.
AUDREY FLACK: Well I'm writing now about how we view
art and art history and those days a work to be considered
good had to be strong, powerful. Ivan Carp used to say it
had to be brutal. Well you know I'm not brutal.
I'm a strong woman. So are you.
But how we see things and how we're judged.
Who bought the art? It was men. Who wrote the criticism?
Men. Who wrote art history? Men. And that's being changed a
lot right now. So the very nature of how we see- I wrote
a paper called "*** at the Met". When we go to the
Met you're going to see paintings of *** and you never
think about it. The *** of the Sabine women,
the *** of Europa. Zeus was a great *** and he's got
like 39- he rapes everybody. He comes down as a swan.
You want to be penetrated by an overgrown waterfowl?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: No.
AUDREY FLACK: So we look at these things and we
just never think about it. It's the glamorization of art.
Women wouldn't make those paintings and when women- when
I started my photo realist work, I didn't paint cars.
I was interested in metallic reflections the way they were
but my metallic would be if this was gold or here,
sparkle reflection, reflection of silver. So they're
interested in the chrome of a car but I didn't see any
difference. Boy.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: But the critics did. You had a lot
to say about the critics. Well first of all,
this book is wonderful. I just love it and-
AUDREY FLACK: Just been translated into Spanish.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Is that right?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: It's just wonderful and
people should read it. But you have a lot to
say about the art world.
AUDREY FLACK: Sometimes I think I shouldn't say so much.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And I don't want to run out of
time so I want you to talk a little bit about it.
AUDREY FLACK: What?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I don't know. What do you complain about
the art world? You have a great- I mean you-
AUDREY FLACK: It's a big question, Ronnie.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: You have great fondness for artists.
AUDREY FLACK: I love artists. I think every time an artist
dies a light goes out in the world. We are the ones that
have to keep everything right.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And you relate it to the world.
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: The importance of beauty or
art in the world.
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah. For us to be sane and when
art goes commercial and gets comodified as it has now,
when it becomes nothing but a dollar sign- what did
Andy Warhol say? The best art is good business.
Come on. When you're suffering or when you're questioning
life, dealing with things, you go to the Met. You look at a
late Rembrandt. You look at a Vermeer. You need something
to fill your soul. You don't go look at a Campbell soup can.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: That's why when you change that to
the world of politics and government that when you go
into poor neighborhoods where you see no beauty and where
we talk about early childhood education and the importance
of school and then we cut art programs-
AUDREY FLACK: That upsets me.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: The need for that in the lives of people is
so important. Then you put people in prison when they're
dark and ugly buildings and what you're saying is so
important but we don't- we're not bridging it enough
into the real world.
AUDREY FLACK: We're cutting it out. And also what's happening
in this world. I think of there are those of us- And I hope
there are young people, I think there are, who are keeping
the flame alive because this whole world is not just art and
I think art is an advance of politics. I think if you study
what's happening and the corruption in the art world it
predicts what's going to happen in politics.
You can imagine how bad it is.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Well art has always reflected-
I mean politics has always been reflected in art, hasn't it?
AUDREY FLACK: I'm not saying that. I'm saying the opposite.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I know you are. You're changing it around.
AUDREY FLACK: I'm like art comes first. I'm not saying that the
artist reflects society. I'm saying the artist almost
predicts what's going to happen. It's a prediction,
not just a reflection.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: You ask the question in the book what would
happen if artists didn't sign their canvases or if they
refuse to sell their work. It's gotten- when you see these
auctions now with the artists with the prices that are
going and the people who are buying them-
AUDREY FLACK: And the work that's being bought.
I mean really, Ronnie, okay I'll take this pen and I'll
suspend it. I mean that's going to go for a couple of
hundred thousand? Million? You really wonder why the person
is buying it. Is he buying it because it's beautiful or it
has a deep meaning for him? It's something cuckoo has
happened. Something amoral and hysterical and money, greed,
power, fame, glory, all of these things. It's across the board.
And art is supposed to get you right back to here.
That's where you go and look at the museums.
They're filled and yet the poor museums have to put on
blockbusters to make money.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: The other thing that I've heard from some
people is the art gets sold for so much money but it never
goes to the artist unless the artist is selling directly.
Is that true or at the auction does the artist get a
percentage of the sale?
AUDREY FLACK: Oh sure. I mean I think who is it,
Jeff *** and Hurst, just bypass their dealers and gone
directly to auction and making a fortune.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: So now you're doing these
beautiful strong women.
AUDREY FLACK: Thank you.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: What was the reaction to that sculpture?
AUDREY FLACK: Well that's another complex question.
The reaction has been wonderful by many people.
But I think if you look out there, my women, the women I
sculpt have powerful bodies. I like them to look beautiful like
they've really done nautilus work. You know they have good
muscles and they're not ashamed if they're nude they'll look
at you. When you think of what's out there, if you think of
Malyon or Gaston Lachaise and you go to the modern and
there's a Lachaise, size 84 triple X ***,
a waste this big, hips like that, little tiny feet like the
bound Chinese women. Now who wants to look like that?
I don't want to look like that. So you get an image from Rodin
on of what a woman is and they're not sculpted by women
sculptors. Camille Claudel did it. She was great.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: That was a great story.
She was Rodin's wife?
AUDREY FLACK: No.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Who was-
AUDREY FLACK: Mistress. From the time she was 16. He was
a bad man. Ronnie, he was such a bad man. You should hear my
Camille Claudel song. You can get it on iTunes.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And you did it on the band?
AUDREY FLACK: The band is performed and I just wrote
another one. Poor thing. Oh what a life.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Audrey Flack and the History of
Art Band is are lectures or songs of history, right?
AUDREY FLACK: Well they're songs about artists. I have
Jackson ***, and then I tell stories about how I wouldn't
kiss Jackson because he was-
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Messy.
AUDREY FLACK: He had a prickly beard that rubbed up against
my cheek and I did not like that and then he smelled.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Cigarettes and liquor or what?
AUDREY FLACK: Cigarettes and liquor and I don't think he
showered. Actually, poor guy who I think was a major figure
in history, I think he was having a nervous breakdown.
I do. And as difficult and impossible as she was
Ruth Kligman in her book describes it and he was having a
breakdown. So what my little band and my band does here
and what I do is like the underbelly of art history,
the real truth about these guys. De Kooning my new song and you
know here he is. I go to see him. Elaine was keeping
everybody away from him. Do we have time?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: We have a few minutes, very few.
AUDREY FLACK: And she was keeping people away from him
because he was getting Alzheimer's or dementia,
whatever you're going to call it. And so I said,
"Elaine, I haven't seen him in so long. I want to see him".
My new book had just come out. And I go see him.
He's clearly a little gone. However, whether somebody's
holding his hand- I mean I hope I don't get arrested for
saying this but he was painting just with a wide brush,
a big streak. They weren't his great masterpieces.
They were dementia paintings.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: But they were selling.
AUDREY FLACK: They are right now in major galleries who I won't
mention for major amounts of money. That's not right.
To me that's an affront to a very great artist.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: To sell that stuff when it's not his-
AUDREY FLACK: That stuff it was nothing stuff.
And I question whether he actually did it.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Do you think there's a whole-
the mysticism with art-
AUDREY FLACK: Oh sure and the glamour by the way, Ronnie.
The glamour is if you drink and screw around, take drugs,
that's very glamorous. If you're married and have children and
lead a life where you're struggling to take care of your
kids, you don't mention that.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: You said that you never mentioned that you-
AUDREY FLACK: Never mention that you have children. Well now
I'm coming out with it. You have children.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Of course I have children.
But your paintings-
AUDREY FLACK: And we took care of our children. You know a lot
of those women abandoned their children
or didn't have children.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: We used to meet in the playground actually.
AUDREY FLACK: We did.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: At 83rd Street.
AUDREY FLACK: I have such amnesia, Ronnie.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: No, it's not amnesia. It was not a very
important time. But anyway-
AUDREY FLACK: We met at 83rd?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Pardon?
AUDREY FLACK: We met in a playground?
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Yeah at 83rd Street. We have met
periodically through our lives. And each time we meet we just go
back as if we've been seeing each other for a very long time.
So it's kind of a feeling that we always have with
each other, right?
AUDREY FLACK: Yes.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: But you are still sculpting?
AUDREY FLACK: Oh yeah.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Do it by commission through
public art basically?
AUDREY FLACK: Public art you only do by commission because
you don't want a 50 foot statue in your living room.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Yeah but are you doing mostly
public art or are you doing smaller-
AUDREY FLACK: Well I only do a commission now if I really-
I'm excited about it. I've done a lot of commissions,
public art. I wanted to put women out there-
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And you've done it.
AUDREY FLACK: And I've done it.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Let's just quickly say where they are.
AUDREY FLACK: Rock Hill, South Carolina, very major work,
gateway to the city, four big goddesses. Knoxville,
Tennessee, South Pasadena. Oh my God I'm forgetting.
There's one here. New York City Technical College.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: The one in front of the courthouse?
AUDREY FLACK: Oh, Nashville the recording angel.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Was the courthouse in Florida?
AUDREY FLACK: Oh Tampa, veritas.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Was your sensitivity and imagination
that you really sense what you're- it just happens, right?
It comes out from inside you?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah. You just know it has to be said and
what the people need, what people need to see.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: Are you going to have a concert soon?
AUDREY FLACK: We just had one at Yale. I'll let you know
when the next one is.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: And are you going to have a show?
Are you showing some of your work?
AUDREY FLACK: I will be, yes.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: In New York? In Manhattan?
AUDREY FLACK: Yeah there's a print that just came out I did
for the Pennsylvania Academy that will be offered on
February 5. There will be a show of my prints at Lafayette
College next year, a show of paintings at the
Garth Brennan Gallery.
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: I look forward to seeing them but also for you
to come back and we can talk some more because it's been
a delight. So thank you very much, Audrey Flack.
AUDREY FLACK: Thank you, Ronnie.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪
RONNIE ELDRIDGE: If there are any people you'd like
to hear and topics you'd like us to explore?
Please let me know.
You can write to me at CUNY TV, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York,
New York 10016, or you can go to the website at
cuny.tv and click on "contact us."
I look forward to hearing from you.