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2007 Summer

Peter Young: Camel Dung Footprints
Conversation between Peter Young and David Deutsch

Transcribed by Megan Wurth

Peter Young

#3 - 1967

1967

Acrylic on canvas

66 x 132"

Collection Mr. and Mrs. James Fitzgerald, Cincinnati

During a studio visit in Bisbee, Arizona, Peter Young and David Deutsch, co-curator of Peter Young: 1963-1977, got into deep discussion about fold paint­ings, Moroccan women and what hap­pens when you leave wet paint to dry on rooftops.

David Deutsch: How did you first start folding paintings?

Peter Young: I took a vacation in Fez, Morocco. I went to the native quarter, bring­ing canvas and paint with me, and rented two hotel rooms. One of which I lived in and in the other, I had them take the bed out so I had little room to work. I started doing a dot painting and I realized…

DD: What kind of equipment did you have?

PY: I didn’t have any equipment—just loose canvas and a box of paint. It was un-stretched you know, but I drew a square and started a dot painting.

DD: How did you make the dots—with a tube or with…?

PY: With a brush. I had a little cup of not thin, not thick paint, just enough to sort of set down and I learned really how to pick up and make the dots incredibly uniform. Like that red box in Untitled Box, 1965—those are all so uniform you know, but here I was just really start­ing dotting as in Untitled #8–1967. This is really right after the star paintings, #2–1967 and #3–1967. I probably did the Philip Johnson #6–1967 and the Museum of Modern Art #7–1967 dot paintings which hadn’t de­veloped this pattern yet and this is maybe the painting when I finally realized this pat­tern.

So anyway, I’m in Morocco and I’m starting a dot painting and I realize that I won’t even finish this painting by the end of two weeks. But two weeks was all I planned to stay and that it’s kind of stupid to spend all of my time making a dot painting here in Morocco, and that maybe I should think of something else. So, I put a piece of canvas down on the floor, threw paint on it and fold­ed it.

DD: Really?

PY: It was the first fold painting I made. I made it in Morocco.

DD: What were you thinking of? Were you thinking Rorschach?

PY: I guess. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I mean I must have vaguely been thinking that I’ll make a Rorschach or I’ll see what happens when I fold it or some­thing like that. So then the painting was wet and it was cool, and I took the painting up on the roof of the hotel to dry in the sun. Well, in Morocco, the roofs belong to the women.

DD: So there were a bunch of nude women up there?

PY: Oh no, no, no. That’s where Mo­roccan women hang their laundry and other stuff like that.

DD: Oh, I see.

PY: It was off-limits to men. The men and the women were totally segregated. The women would only come out for an hour and a half in the middle of the day and they’d be totally covered. You’d see just their eyes. They were covered in black and that’s all you’d ever see of the women in the streets.

DD: You were alone?

PY: I was with [my girlfriend] Carmen. Anyway, this is the very first vertical fold and it didn’t fold very well. It didn’t print very well at all, but there’s a column here and a col­umn here, but they almost aren’t columns.

DD: How would you feel about exhibit­ing this painting?

PY: It’d be okay. You can see in the painting that this was supposed to print here and this was supposed to print here, and here it kind of formed some wings.

DD: Did you paint back into it?

PY: No. Later I went back on the roof of the hotel and I noticed there were camel dung footprints crossing the painting which was an absolute impossibility of course. I guess this indicated what the hotel maids thought of my art.