Anton Weiss | The Interview
It was a beautiful sunny morning when Anton Weiss and I sat down for this interview. He came straight from his studio, creative and energized, a little guarded at first, but in no time we were into interesting waters. He looked a lot younger than I expected, dressed comfortably in his sandals and with a smile that simply wouldn’t quit.
There was a lot of ground to cover. I knew he had survived 2½ years in a Russian concentration camp in Yugoslavia, and yet, rather than being bitter, he has found a way to accept it and to use the experience in a positive way. I thought it was a good place to start.
KS: Let’s start at the beginning. What was it like for you growing up during the war?
AW: I was on my own a lot, especially for those 2½ years. I was 10 years old, and survival was the only solid issue that you were concerned with. They were trying to take those kids and convert them into Communism and control their destiny. My mother escaped from the camp six months before I did. I knew where she was crossing the border; in case something happened once I left the camp, I knew where to find her.
KS: You were 13 when you got out of the camp. Were you able to pursue art at that point?
AW: Yes, when I went to apprentice in Austria. In the summertime, we didn’t go home or on vacation; we were allocated to do labor for the country, and you were paid while you performed those acts. It was such a beautiful experience. I loved it! Of course, when my parents decided to come to the States, I didn’t want to leave. Looking back now, the life that I chose, it’s all been good ever since then. I don’t have any complaints about life.
KW: Your father was employed by Peabody. What were you doing at that point in your life?
AW: That’s right. My father wanted me to be something other than an artist. He said, you need to get a degree. I said, Dad I could care less about a degree; I want to paint! I signed up for two months at Peabody, and it didn’t take. I would spend more time with the teacher there, Alfred J. Pounders, in his private studio painting with him. So I said, why am I doing this? Pounders said the same thing: unless you’re going to be an educator, why are you going through this agony?
The thing is, my father would never spend a dime on my art education. Not one single dime. And later, I found out why. He thought if this is something you’re passionate about, you agonize over it. (Laughs.) Everything that I achieved was mine. And it still is. It’s not going to reflect on my parents; nobody gave it to me. I created it, you see.
KS: Talk about your painting technique and what it is you want to accomplish.
AW: The experience for me is that you exist from one period to another period, and your experience is elevated automatically because you can’t help but gain knowledge. This is what I have lived. At the end of the day, I’ve gained a tiny bit of experience or knowledge, and what I did yesterday becomes obsolete. This is the process of putting pigment on top of pigment. I’ve learned you can become paint-transparent with opaque pigment. What that means is you will use a flat area of canvas, or whatever, then you will use overlays of another color, not necessarily a complementary color, but a color of your choice. And you will leave fragrances of the underneath color evident. And you do this like 20 times, and what happens in this sequence is you create depth. This is what I’m concerned with now; I’m painting with a concept of transparency, with an opaque fashion. This is where I departed from Hoffman.
KS: As you’re painting and taking away from a surface, are there other things going in your mind; are you reaching back into the past when you paint?
AW: Oh yes. Let’s put it this way—it may reach a point of explanation: your experiences that happen in the past, whether they were good, bad or whatever, they’re still experiences. The majority of the time if they were bad, you sort of block them out, and you erase those experiences. Well, I’ve never felt that way. I don’t feel bad about what happened to me. Those experiences make me a better individual, and I will perform in a much deeper sense than if I block them out. There is no such thing as a bad experience, if you use that experience to your benefit as a positive gesture of the future. For instance, a lot of people…you talk about disasters in society like concentration camps, even imprisonment or whatever—I could say to myself, the people that were behind those actions are shunned by me. I don’t feel bad about those things. I was in a Russian concentration camp. I can’t say to myself those people who were behind that were bad. They’re not. I don’t have anything against them, those people. But I think that you survive by that, and eventually it makes you a broader individual. If somebody does something, even in words or whatever, you know, does that person really realize what he said or what he did? A lot of times he doesn’t.
I’m not saying it justifies what they did, but to me, see, I question my reaction to what they did, they probably don’t even know; they’re probably not aware of what they did. That’s a matter of reactions to things that I may have said.
KS: You said that sometimes being under stress or duress can actually make some of the best paintings.
AW: For a period of time, I did some paintings that were related to those early experiences. What I find myself doing is reinitiating or digging up specifics of what happened. A revolt is stimulated within me, and I will probably exercise a much stronger action to that revolt than if I were to paint all pretty paintings. Paintings don’t have to be pretty in order to be appreciated. Take Goya for instance; they don’t have to be pleasant in order to be good. That’s all I’m saying. And it depends on the individual, how they want to approach life. I find myself digging into the past to be stimulated by a positive reaction to that. That’s all it is.
KS: There must be a lot of chemical reactions going on inside of you when you’re at the easel.
AW: Well, there is. There are certain colors that will react to certain situations. It’s very rare for me to use the color purple. For me, it brings out too much of the dark side of an experience. Now red, most people say red, blood, whatever—it doesn’t do that to me. I think red is a very flamboyant color. Now some of the purples, and sometimes deep blues, have a tendency of arousing a different reaction to my experience. Other artists may have completely different experiences. It’s very rare I will use purple in my paintings. The majority of them are concerned with earth color.
KS: How did you arrive at the techniques that you are using now?
AW: When I changed from classical to abstract, I had to get rid of the classical instruments. It was a crazy process. You have this dictatorial message that your brain gives you if you hold a certain implement in your hand. This is what it’s going to do; this is what it’s supposed to do. This is what your teacher told you to do. But I didn’t want to do that. I had to change. At one point, I painted in watercolor and used an enamel palette, and the color came off in sheets. I thought, this is so beautiful; why can’t I put this back on my canvas. I enjoy painting more so than ever because I’m not afraid to venture.
KS: Are you that way in life?
AW: Yes. Most people don’t have the courage to make a statement. I enjoy the process. For a while, I was forcing it, but now I can always get a drill and a sanding pad and mutilate it…. And sometimes, I don’t know what the past will reveal. This is the beauty of it. It’s not just a process where you add and add and add. The majority of the time, depending on the material, you take away, and you leave whatever you feel is necessary.
KS: What do you do when a painting goes cold on you?
AW: Let’s say if I worked on a painting for three or four days and the surface has gone dead—in order to reactivate, I will take a drill to rebel against my actions, to recover and go back. It’s almost like going back and rediscovering a day in the past. And you get a new insight, a new foundation, and go on.
Prime example is the painting that’s in the gallery now. I literally had to go and scrape off 50 percent of the surface in order to regain the quality that I felt I needed. About a month later, I got it to a point where I’m satisfied with it. It revealed what I wanted it to reveal.
KS: Where else do you find inspiration for your art?
AW: Right now, I’m so engrossed with experimenting with chaotic elements that happen on my palette. It’s stimulating to me [because] they were not mixed on purpose. I’ll start out with a blank canvas with those elements, and then I’ll start filling in values and colors to connect those pieces. When I reveal it, I can feel the stress and activity and excitement of working this palette. I have total control on one hand, what I’m composing, but I also have the chaotic experiences leading up to it.
Just underneath the friendly exterior, I was surprised to learn how courageous this man is, to get in constant touch with those experiences of his past to instigate better painting, a better process, a better self. What surprised me the most is that he’s not afraid to go there, nor does he dwell on his past. Certainly, I’ll never forget his warm smile and Southern drawl. But, now that I know him, I’ll never forget his perspective on his own experiences. And what some would see only as a tragedy in the world, he has chosen to use for good in the creative process of his art.
Anton Weiss is represented locally by Leiper’s Creek Gallery and by Bennett Galleries in Knoxville and L Ross Gallery in Memphis.
by Katie Sulkowski | Photography by Anthony Scarlati
