December 27, 1984

Dreamed of Glenn Rennell last night probably because I find myself becoming more and more like he was. When I knew him he was the same age as I am now. I wonder where he lives, if he's still married, still alive. If the name in the New York phone book is his.

I understand post-modernism yet can't explain it because I don't like to deal in buzzwords. My problem has always been an inability to think of predecessors as predecessors. I always thought of them in terms of material. There is a fine line there and I can't readily explain but I'll try now once and for all.

At Indiana U they kept asking me, demanding that I own up to my "grandparents." Or so I felt at the time. But they were only trying to get me to place myself in history, define the place I planned to take in the "art struggle." Was I going to be a foot soldier? Cavalry? Drive a tank? Or be a general? But the battle for me and them was in the studio and they couldn't live without having that to hold on to.

They admired certain artists: their lives, the way they painted, the way they thought. And they had books with it down on paper and they knew the "art world" was a farce.

So it comes down to "history." That everyone is a witness to history, being a part of it and that history is not linear but drift and our attempt to define it, give it form, is inadequate. But we each have our own history that we can trace in a linear manner, from birth to the point we are now. The "time" we have physically taken up space in our form, with our form. Yet our brain does not deal with "time" or "space," but gives us an inadequate form in order to perceive the world.

Just because some form is inadequate does not mean we cannot use it as a tool, it just means that form is not art. Art is always adequate and is always a tool.

So how do I deal with "history?" in particular that peculiar thing we call art history -- the history of adequate form. I do not want to paint like Manet, Piero, Hockney, Diebenkorn...I want to *be able to paint* like they were. I want the same place in history I see them having. I am envious.

So now looking back I was wrong yet right at the same time. Because if I had not taken the obnoxious stand of questioning everything everyone said at that time I wouldn't be what I am now, different, better, worse...I no longer want to take my place in history because I have a different view of history, I understand it differently than I did then and see that everything is happening at the same time and not progressively -- yet I believe there is progress in art! Just as there is progress, things move forward, thoughts recombine to form new ideas, technology breeds new technology, a painting creates a new painting and if you don't do one you will not do two, or three, or a world full of paintings. So personally you do progress because you can understand your life in a linear way (from birth to death) and you did one thing then that led to doing another thing now. But it doesn't slip easily into any kind of linear

history, so conveniently...