Art of Conversation lives! Continuing the project to document the working practice of SF Bay Area artists, Christine Wong Yap joined me in an email-based interview in the first half of May, 2010.  Three numbered sections mark initial, separate topics…yet intricacies weave throughout the conversation.  Enjoy!

1. Steven Barich: Hello Christine.  Thank you for taking this interview, on the eve of your solo exhibition titled Irrational Exuberance at Sight School in Oakland, CA.  I’d like to talk with you about this exhibition in particular, in order to get a “preview of the artist’s mind,” as well as some other topics related to the activity of being an artist/writer/designer in

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It seems to be among the perversities of human nature that people can so often agree on abstract sentiments, and then part company altogether on their application.

In discussing art, one can converse at great length, and with impassioned enthusiasm, about the necessity for inspiration, vision, originality, energy. But eventually it will almost always turn out that one person is talking about Jackson Pollock and the other about Josef Albers, that one’s paragon is Mark Rothko and the other’s Max Ernst—twains that just will not meet.

Compounding the perversity, where there is agreement on specifics it is more apt to be “negative” than “positive.” One is more likely to find those who concur in the judgment that Willem de Kooning’s recent paintings are not as good as his… Continue reading...