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Pop Culture
May 10, 2022, 06:27AM

Everybody Thinks I’m Very Strange

A 1994 Archives of American Art interview with artist Sylvia Plimack Mangold vs. a 2022 BOMB Magazine interview with author Chloé Cooper Jones.

1994.09.24 artist reception and opening paintings of sylvia plimack mangold 006.jpg?ixlib=rails 2.1

Sylvia Plimack Mangold: It wasn't until we moved to the country that I started looking out the window.

Chloé Cooper Jones: It’s huge, boring, and empty, but it’s my favorite place to work.

Mangold: Oh, Pop art. Sure. Right. Two years. [Laughs] It was terrible.

Jones: Then, you and I drove out to the lake, ate some good food, and took a swim.

Mangold: And I loved it.

•••

Jones: It’s progress. It’s control. It’s very distracting.

Mangold: It's kind of on the tip of my tongue.

Jones: You can’t erase your body; you can only figure out how to live in it.

Mangold: I mean, I was around—we went to all these different exhibitions.

Jones: Do you ever reach a threshold where the time you spend working alone is a nonproductive escape from reality?

•••

Mangold: And it opened up all these different planes, which were kind of interesting in an abstract way, and also in a philosophical way, because it was about reflection and illusion.

Jones: That being said, the book is not a straight-forward travel narrative—nobody cares about someone else’s travel pictures.

Mangold: Because it's too hard. So I don't have to go into that.

Jones: Everybody thinks I’m very strange.

Mangold: Correct.

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