The Beauty of the Involuntary

Richard Tuttle's '3rd Rope Peice' (1974), I would not have got this long ago and called it a scam, but I heard an interview with Richard Tuttle and found it absolutely fascinating.This is art that is as perfect and resonant as a pebble smoothed by the sea or the sun baked branches of wood he draws on for inspiration at his home in New Mexico. He has filled his house with artwork that mirros this landscape in minimalist forms that are more powerful than any oil painting could ever have been.
'The ones that failed—looked weak—are about beauty. I’ve felt this way for a long time—for someone to ask me what is beauty—I really don’t have any idea. Trying to do what it is I want to do, I think, eliminates, or tries to eliminate, beauty as much as possible. If it comes back or it happens naturally—the way you put a coffee cup on a table…. Beauty is somehow a trail you create through your work that’s left behind like a snail leaves its ooze.'
'The other day I was re-looking at an old piece in my studio, and it occurred to me to think a little bit about the sublime—the Romantic’s connection to beauty. And again, I didn’t understand. I respond to John Constable’s line, “In my whole life, I’ve never seen anything ugly.” The line also applies to anything beautiful.'
(from Richard Tuttle by Bob Holman in Bomb magasine, fall 1992)


Also irrelevant, but check this out;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Idq00hSOA