Michael Workman

The retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art is Lee Bontecou's first show since she withdrew from public attention--but not from continuing to work--in the early 1970s at the height of a highly successful and critically lauded career. Unearthed by MCA curator Elizabeth Smith, Bontecou's legacy has been revitalized, stunning an art world that had written off the artist as an eccentric tinkerer. I talked with Bontecou about politics and human nature, man and machine, many of the themes she has tackled in her work.

Your art very much reflects world events, like the response to Vietnam in your sawblade wall-hangings. You used to listen to shortwave news reports during Vietnam and during the strife in the Congo. Do you still listen to the news while you work?

BONTECOU: Not as much. I haven't got a shortwave now; my shortwave broke. But I listen to music and news. I listen to the radio.

What do you make of the news these days?

BONTECOU: What can you say? We're in trouble (laughs). On the one hand, we got rid of somebody that no one else is going to get rid of, a guy that's killed millions and on the other hand, how are you going to stop this thing? We just keep going. Maybe we need a change.

In the American leadership?

BONTECOU: Could be. That way everybody would save face and something else could move in a different direction. And the others, those guys did it. They went in and got that fellow.

Do you follow politics very much?

BONTECOU: I'm not enchanted with it, on neither side. I just never have been. I listen, but that Washington thing's too much for me. Either side, sometimes. It's politics. A lot could be done, but it's just politics. Fighting, infighting. All those lobbyists. Can't get rid of oil because there are lobbyists pushing oil. At one point we had a feeling in the country where maybe there were alternatives and if we can go to the moon, we could find alternatives using the sun, the wind, everything else in energy. And maybe not in all places, then oil would be fine. Or maybe oil could be not completely gasoline--I mean, there are just so many things that we could be doing. But we didn't and we're not going to. Not with those lobbyists and those special groups. They really stink.

Because of economics?

BONTECOU: Oh, look. It's special interests. I have people who know inventors and they have these terrific things, big corporations buy them up and then they hide them because they'd be interfering with what they'd do so that sometimes these inventors, they just say the f-word and walk away.

Human nature.

BONTECOU: It's human nature. And if we don't come to grips with that and learn from history... It's devastating.

So there's the side of human nature that cares about alternatives and then a Martian side that doesn't.

BONTECOU: Right. It's through education, grass roots. And it's not going to come with somebody saying "hey, you can't do this." Even the environmentalists in some ways, they're as destructive as the others, depending. And others are absolutely wonderful. But I've seen cases where they've made it very miserable for people and it's because they want a job. Period. And OK, but here we have the environment again. So a lot has to be done in that area. Otherwise...they're trying to find a cure for cancer, for instance. And there have been some big breakthroughs. But instead of finding out what's making it, realizing that perhaps it could be industry and plastics, we're all enjoying them. I'm as bad as the next, but if we don't start tightening the belt, which we won't because it's against human nature, then we're all in trouble.

It's human nature to blindly keep consuming?

BONTECOU: We're spreading it all over Europe. The Coke machine, the Coke. It rots teeth, it's bad. It makes you fat. And yet, we continue. Everybody loves it, and Europeans love it and everybody loves it. It's just one example. On the radio, they say we're a nation that's getting too heavy. Well, heck. What do you expect when you have all those fast-food places?

How do you think about the intersection between technology and nature in your work?

BONTECOU: I generally have an interest and a love, actually, for airplanes. They're beautiful. And the engineering! But then again we have those beautiful war machines. They're absolutely gorgeous. They're sculpture flying in the air. Then they carry the guns and the bombs and the destruction. So it's a big love and hate thing. Those projectiles that go to Mars, those probes--just really wonderful. And they look neat, too! That's an upside, I think. And the other is just as complicated as on the downside. We go back and forth. It seems to me that through the ages weapons are beautifully made; they're tempered. From the dagger through the machine gun.

I see. They're ubiquitous. The elegance of the design of these things, and their destructive use--it's all the same creation.

BONTECOU: Yeah. It's in our nature. Every country's trying to do it.

Is the motive always just power?

BONTECOU: I'm sure. What else?

Freedom?

BONTECOU: We claim it's for liberty and freedom. That's the top word. Under that though, there are all kind of reasons, political reasons. Us little guys don't know. Not with so much hidden, so much kept covert.

Lee Bontecou shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago Ave, (312)280-2660, through May 30.

(2004-02-18)

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