James Little has been an influential painter and teacher in New York for decades. He is what some people call an artist's artist - a high compliment that essentially means "the real deal". Though he has received steady attention from museums and private collectors throughout his career, recently at age 70, Little found himself in the international spotlight as the breakout star of the 2022 Whitney Biennial. A major profile in the New York Times followed and the world finally learned what so many of Little's colleagues and students have known all along: that he is a contemporary master. His work has been called minimal, painterly, even formalist. But as Little says in the following interview, his paintings are far more humanistic than those simple labels suggest.
"I am interested in feelings and emotive content, Little says. I am not interested in stripping the thing down to some sort of whimsical idea that I may have entertained about some experience I had that does not mean anything to anybody but me. I am not trying to share my misery with people. What I am trying to do is touch on emotions, and feelings, and perceptions, in real time. And I am trying to do it with generosity. I am trying to share it."
Little's latest pre-occupation is a major monograph his representatives at Petzel Gallery are putting together, two years in the making. It tracks his career from the early 1970s to the present. Readers of the book will realise that although his visual style has evolved over the years, Little's intense work ethic has been staunch and steady from the start. He hand-makes his own paints, often working in encaustic, considered by many painters to be the most challenging medium. He is also known to invest sometimes six months or more on a single painting. The three monumental works he exhibited in the Whitney Biennial were composed of only two hues of black. His current body of work, he explains, makes a similarly intense study of white.
How would you describe the white paintings you are working on?
Well, they are done in oil and wax, or encaustic. Large scale. I think the last one I finished was eight panels, 12 feet across, about six feet high. I am going back and forth with these tints and shades. For instance, the black paintings were a shade apart. Two shades of black and the white paintings are two tints that are one shade apart. So I am playing around with that kind of stuff. I pretty much allow my paintings to dictate where I go. I do not have, I guess, a strata, or anything that I just abide by with a lot of regularity, or any sort of restrictions. I do not set it up that way. I let the work dictate where I go. Or the idea. It is not like a situation where I am particularly working on any specific one thing. So right now, I am engaged with these white paintings. But at the same time, I may break off into another idea while I am working on those, so I always keep the door open.
Are these white paintings shaping up to be geometric compositions?
Yes. They are simple, geometric compositions. But they are also very complex. And sophisticated on a particular level. They are very analytical and I guess you could say, to some extent, reductivist. But they are not minimal paintings. They are very animated paintings, but I only use a few things to get the pictorial punch that I want.
You say they are not "minimal". What does that word mean to you?
It just means the minimum. They may be misinterpreted as minimal, because I only use a few things, but what I get out of it is quite a bit. I just develop a working design, or a particular kind of organised space, and I go from there. From that point a lot of the paintings require more technique and medium and that kind of thing. So everything plays an equal part. I do not call them minimal, because I use what I need. And if I need more, I use more. The thing that I am more interested in is trying to make something that works, by whatever means. I do not like overloading a painting; I like clarity. It seems to me, the more you put in, the less clarity a thing has.
Have you always had that approach?
No. I had to work my way through it. I went through processes and experimentations; I experimented a lot. I was younger and I had not firmly found my way. I was good at that stage, but I never stopped experimenting. Like I said, I allow the paintings to dictate where I go, and it just came to a point where the paintings began to edit out. Certain things became less meaningful to me. I started paying more attention to other things that interested me in regard to painting, surface and design. I had this phase where I was using a lot of colour but nowadays, I do not use a lot of colour. I am using, some people would say non-colour, but I do not say that. I mean, the last group of paintings I have been doing have been black and white and some of them have these colour shapes, stencil-like images. Geometric. But the emphasis is not directly on colour. The colour is there. Shape is there. Surface is there. Geometry is there. Everything has equal parts. As opposed to saying "James is this geometric painter who is very good with colour", I want the painting to do a little more than that. So I work my way through the colour thing. I know what I can do with it and I want to see what is beyond that, so I allow the paintings to do that. I know when there is closure. And when there is closure, you just try to take the next step. The next risk or the next challenge. That is the way I have always done it. But nothing ever came out
right out of the gate. Never.
What is it like to make your own paints?
Well. A lot of it is in my head. You do have to go in and practice it and do the dirty work, the mixing and all that, but a lot of it is in my head first. And when you say mixing paints, I work with several different media. For instance, I am doing the oil and wax painting, but I also did paintings with dry pigment, paintings with oil on linen, and I have done some things where I worked with acrylic. That is four different mediums right there. Each one has a particular kind of personality, a resonance. I try to engage with that. It is not like there is some sort of formula that I have set. You know, every time I go at it, there is a certain kind of experiment going on. And you just never really know what is going to happen. I am closer to it because I make the materials.
Are materials connected with something psychological within you?
Well, there may be some sort of innate need. It depends on what I intend to do and which medium is going to best help in expressing a particular kind of idea. I will go back and forth. It is a good tool to have, virtuosity. And I think just working a long time, you develop a certain kind of virtuosity and dexterity. I mean, if I have an idea for a new painting, I will figure out what is the best medium to use to go for this particular construct. Sometimes it may be the best thing to do is just use pencil on paper. But I just know a lot about the materials. That has come from me exploring and coming up with tools and formulas that I can use. I try to find the right fit so to speak. So your personality is sort of intertwined with that, or woven into that same thing.
Why did you move to New York?
Because that is where the art world is. You know that guy, Willie Sutton? He was a bank robber back in the 1940s or 1950s. They asked him why he robbed banks. He answered, "That is where the money is." There are other places like Chicago, California, Europe… But New York is just the epicentre.
What does abstract or geometric painting mean to our culture right now?
You have to look at my work in the context of art history. I am not interested in trying to make paintings that reflect this chaos that we are in right now. The thing that I am interested in is order. I have focused on that kind of thing throughout my career and I have taken a lot of criticism for the way I work. I have been called a formalist and "this and that", and some of that is true. But, to be a formalist, and couple that with painting, you really do have to know what you are doing. And it is not a word that you just toss around lightly. I see it as a badge of honour. I am trying to make paintings that somehow reflect the extension of modernist concepts, or abstract painting, or even modern painting. That is where I am at. So if you are interested in painting, or abstraction, then you have to give my work a hard look. It is not something that is glossed over. Basically, my paintings are based on ideas and concepts and questions. That is what I try to do - solve problems, reach solutions… and provide answers to some extent, based on that pursuit.
I am not that interested in what is outside of painting. I am not going to be the person that sits here and responds in real time to what is going on in Washington or in the Middle East. It is not going to come into my painting as it is happening. I will reflect on that one way or another, but that is not what is going to get me to where I want to go. I have to get to another thing before I can speak and be heard when it comes to politics, and that is, make some significant paintings. Make some work that holds up. Make some paintings that raise questions. Make paintings that provide some answers to those questions and some solutions. But also make works that arouse the curiosity of the average person, whether they like them or not. Trust me, I am not trying to make paintings for people to like. I am trying to make paintings that people can respect, paintings that evoke feelings and question our existence in this moment in time. It is not about narrating anything. You are alone there with the paintings. It is not a spelling bee. So if you come with some preconceived idea about what painting is, and what I should be doing, then you are going to be disappointed in what I do. But if you come with an open mind and try to meet the thing halfway, you will probably have some sort of success with the kind of paintings I do.
What have you learned about the art market?
The art market is unpredictable. But I think if you are consistent in what you do and the kind of work that you do, you might be able to do pretty well in the market. If it is turbulent, if it is something that confuses collectors, or people that are participating in the market, I do not know if that works in your favour. I believe the market likes clarity.
What does it mean to you to live and work as an artist?
Well, I have not had much of a choice; at least it was not a rational choice. There was nothing else in front of me that I felt like I could embark upon and make any sort of significant contribution to it. And there was nothing out there that I felt complete freedom with, or complete control, that I had complete authority over what I was doing. So that is how it has turned out, but it was never something that was preconceived or something, that was some sort of collaboration with myself and my alter ego. My whole life around art was something organic. There was this appetite, this hunger. It was a love affair. And I had to figure out how I was going to get through it and get to where I want to be. You know, it takes a long time. It is a long haul, very difficult, especially if you are interested in making anything of any sort of real quality. And if you are interested in making works that are going to hold up and making any sort of contribution to the history of art within the canon, it is a tall order. But I arrived at it just out of an innate, or a God-given desire to pursue art.
One thing about painting is physicality. It is a physical activity and a mental activity. And when you couple the two, it is a very taxing and challenging activity. It takes a particular animal to be able to embark on something like this and come out on the other side. The odds of making it as a painter are slim. And there is only a sliver of space within the canon for any artist. A sliver. So if you can get there, you really accomplished something. And nobody can give you a roadmap of how to get there. You have to be really attuned to your psyche, your feelings and your instincts. And you have to be super smart and stand for something. When it comes to art, it stands on its own. The only thing I can promise when it comes to painting is that my work is going to meet you halfway. No more. So I will get back to saying that I use what I need. I am interested in making unadorned works. I am interested in flat space. I am interested in what you do with flat spaces and how you organise flat spaces. That is pretty much my a priori when it comes to abstract painting, in terms of what I am interested in. I think at this particular time, that is the most progressive path.
You know, life is fragile. Everything is fragile. In this particular day and time, the way the world is going and the way politicians are behaving - destroying institutions and trashing culture - if we do not have art, we are done. The last defence is the arts. But in a way, it is not tangible. A lot of it is perceptive and conceptual. But we have to have it. And so that is why I remain calm. I can see the idiocy. I can see the ignorance. I can see the lack of sophistication, and the lack of will. So you have artists to be a bulwark against this kind of destructive atmosphere that we live in. And they have always done that. Throughout history, in all times of war, in religious crusades, all the way through, the arts really have preserved and saved culture. Without that, you do not have anything, so it is best to be cool. What are you going to do? You cannot go out there and challenge these people with these automatic weapons. You have to challenge these people with beautiful art. It is a long game. That is why you are going to see dozens and dozens of people fall off by the wayside. They might be big stars or whatever, with rising careers, that may have made a lot of money, that may have all kinds of things in fashion, in television, in creative arts and performing arts. You will see a lot of them fall off, but then you will see the core, the ones that really have lasting power, the ones that have made a real commitment to art. That will be the front line of this whole thing when it is all over. And so that is what we have to do.
I think artists are privileged and lucky to be able to have a space they can go occupy and get away from some of this madness. Matter of fact, when I did my last show, a lot of people came to it and said they were just so happy to see something that could relieve them from all of the chaos that was going on. Everybody kind of settled down and looked at my, what did they call them, "meditative black paintings" in this big, beautiful space that Friedrich Petzel built on 25th Street. Anyway, you have to turn the page and do what you know how to do. Do not waste your talent. And that is pretty much it. I am just working hard, trying to contribute what I contribute.
