A Conversation with Werner Kramarsky

WK: Well, it is a very good time to have this conversation because on the desk between us lies the catalog of the Seurat show and it is a classic example of where you really, really have to look at how it’s made. My interest is, I think, partially because—well, what little interest I had in school was in geometry and physics. So, it’s mechanical. I really look at things and see—before I even begin to think about “what does this mean?” I look at “how did it get made?” and “how did it get put together?” And from there you begin to think of “why was it put together?” and that’s a whole other theory. I think that there is some argument that you could only understand the art of your time in terms of the social, cultural impetus that the artists of your time are living with, but if you are a reasonably educated human being you have some sense of what the proceeding two generations, maybe even three generations, lived through culturally. I think that it is probably more true of my generation then it would be of a generation that is twenty, twenty-five years old today because living through wars, holocausts, and all of that makes you more aware of your history then people today probably are. But I still think—I have a lot of trouble with some of what is being made today because I don’t understand the cultural impetus for it. I am not watching a lot of television, and I don’t listen to a lot of rock music and a lot of the art that gets made today, quite properly, relates to that. So, I quite readily admit that there is a lot of stuff I don’t understand and I go and look and I try to understand because I feel that’s my duty.