Leon Golub
[Artist, b. 1922, Chicago, Illinois, d. 2004, New York.]
I am trying to make some kind of connection to what is going on in the world, to make some sort of
contact. And I use the instruments that our modern world offers, these extraordinary instruments of photography and film and computers.
People say: “But photographs are all lies.” That’s not the point. The lie is a truth, too. How the hell are we going to know what Kissinger looks like? Well, the photograph tells us one version; I’m trying to tell it also, but differently.
Over the years a photo-mania developed. At times, photographic images have signaled a way forward and gotten me out of a bind.
The freeze of a photographic gesture, the fix of an action, how an arm twists, how a smile gets momentarily stabilized or exaggerated—to try to get some of this is important... The photofix inflects the almost literal shaping of a figure, changes of movement or potential movement, and a sense of occurrence or event.
