Jasper Johns and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro
For painters, materials and processes are essential aspects of the total conception the work. Most artists quite like talking shop, and a discussion of materials can be a catalyst for reflection about attitudes and ideas that are at the core of an artist's thinking. That understanding is what makes the Artist Documentation Program so fascinating and so important. Initiated in 1990 by Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, the brilliant conservator who was responsible for salvaging the badly damaged Rothko Chapel paintings, the ADP is an ongoing series of videotaped interviews with prominent artists including Ann Hamilton, Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, Max Neuhaus, David Novros, Rudolf Stingel, Sarah Sze, Cy Twombly, and many more. Each session is more than an hour in duration, and begins with simple questions about the materials used in specific works, then ultimately expands into astonishingly candid and detailed discussions of the artist's intent.
David Novros, Untitled, 1976, 120 x 360 inches, oil on canvas
Ms. Mancusi-Ungaro is remarkably adept at asking questions that lead to revealing insights into each artist's thinking process as well as rarely glimpsed details about how certain works were made. For painters, as for conservators, this series is an almost endless well of technical and conceptual information.
Brice Marden and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro
