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Sep 20, 2024, 06:28AM

It’s Almost Like an Oxymoron

A 1999 Black Film interview with actor/rapper Todd James “LL Cool J” Smith vs. a 2006 Per Contra interview with painter Alex Katz.

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Alex Katz: Systems only have value when they are absorbed by the unconscious.

Todd James Smith: That's an interesting point. It's like God is one word but it’s almost like an oxymoron.

Katz: For the large painting Penobscot, if you look closely at the seagull you may be able to figure out the brushwork.

Smith: I think the main thing in that is: learn.

Katz: I started wearing gloves 10 or 15 years ago.

•••

Smith: You walk away feeling something, whether it's numb but knowing about life whatever it is you can have a dialogue, it's an opportunity to create dialogue between people and I think people feel something in this film.

Katz: I develop the costumes by the movement the choreographer develops. The language was rhetorical and two-dimensional.

Smith: Convert the ounces and the pounds, so to speak, and do it like that.

Katz: They had to do with time past, nostalgia.

Smith: “As the Chinese say.“

•••

Katz: The Museum of the University of Pennsylvania has a terrific Egyptian collection.

Smith: The director being from Australia, he trusted us. He couldn't do nothing but trust us.

Katz: The next week we danced at a party and that was it. His description of volumes is convincing with the simplest means. Very few artists get on top of the bounce.

Smith: I think whoever is really talented will win.

Katz: I actually would have liked the stage to be three feet deep.

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