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Interview with Tim Rollins and KOS members Robert Branch and Nelson Ricardo Savinon

Tuesday March 14, 2000
(excerpted from Art as Prayer)

James Romaine: A popular perception is that artists work in the solitude of their studios; your work is the result of collaborative process between Tim and K.O.S. (which stands for "Kids of Survival"). Who is K.O.S.? Tim Rollins: [S] K.O.S. is the group of my long-term and most devoted students nationwide. Our South Bronx based team currently has thirteen members ages eight to twenty-eight. Nelson is the elder of the group and is now co-director of the studio along with Robert.

JR: How does the workshop collaboration happen between you and K.O.S.? Does each member of the group have a particular role, which they carry out in each and every work, or are the roles interchangeable?

TR: We're like the Yankees! Robert told me, "Tim, you're a coach but a player as well. When we need you to, you can go out on the field and hit the home run for the team." Robert Branch: Tim is definitely a player and coach. The way Tim and K.O.S. work together is very organic, like a perpetual dialogue that results in works of art that people find interesting. There is no management! (laughter) Roles interchange all the time, especially in order to facilitate learning together. We mold art and learning strategies according to each member's particular needs. For instance, when I first joined K.O.S., I needed to work on my painting skills and develop better study habits. We accommodate each member's strengths and weaknesses.

TR: We collaborate first and foremost conceptually. I'll present a text that I intuit will speak profoundly to the kids, a text that can inspire us to create a work of art, a text that confronts us with a genuine mystery. In responding to that text and in trying to come up with a visual motif that corresponds to its themes, we must explore the historical context that the writing comes from. When we eventually find the appropriate visual motif, we have to research its history so that we know what tradition we are working in. For example in painting flowers inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, we had to study the history of flower imagery throughout the world culture, from ancient Japanese landscape painting to Warhol's silk-screened paintings. For the I See the Promised Land (after the Rev. Dr. King) works, we researched the astounding history of the triangle and the possible symbolic uses it has had in the past and present. Our entire curriculum is generated from our quest to solve the problem of making literature visible. Not only do we learn, but this learning results in the creation of a work of art that keeps on teaching.

JR: How does your faith shape your attitude toward art?

TR: I think of Hebrews Chapter 11, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I see art as very similar to prayer. It's as futile, or as powerful, as prayer. It all depends on your faith. Art, like prayer, is futile if you don't bring any faith to it. Many people new to contemporary art are bemused, perplexed, even angered by it. Many non-believers have a similar cynicism when they observe people praying. But if you do believe, and have faith in God, you know what prayer can do, and you have seen the effect of prayer in your life and in the lives of others. This is the same sort of spirit that we invest in the making of our art. It takes faith to believe that a red triangle painted on book pages truly means something and has power. Artworks have a spirit - they are not unlike other objects you encounter in everyday life. You bring faith to art as you do to God since great art is an instrument of God. I believe that artists are constantly imitating the penultimate creativity of God and that this imitation is the sincerest form of praise. A painting by El Greco is the Holy Spirit demonstrated in paint. That's its undeniable power - there is something deeply spiritual going on in his work. I'm a Baptist with a Pentecostal spirit. Before I had been spiritually revived, about five years ago, I went to the Prado in Madrid but never really understood the work of El Greco. Robert and I returned to that museum last year, but on this trip I felt something. I practically shouted right in front of those paintings by El Greco. I got them and they got me! Robert was kind of embarrassed. Pentecostal power in paint - that's El Greco.

RB: I'm a Catholic and I have learned a lot about my own faith by coming to the workshop. I had to find faith in myself, in the group and the power of art in order for this all to work. There is nothing ordered from down high in here. Art making doesn't come with written instructions, with a step-by-step procedure. You just kind of feel it out. It is a process of faith.

TR: It's like a church choir. I could be the director, or it could be Robert or Nelson or even a new member if I'm not here. What is important that we all sing a common song to the best of our individual abilities. This common song is the inspirational text that motivates us to make works of visual art. Most of the work in the studio is actually rehearsal. You never know what's going to happen - all the improvisations, the blessed accidents, the fantastic surprises that constantly take place.

JR: How did the work I See The Promised Land come about?

RB: Our past works tend to lead to new ones. We had just finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (after Harriet Jacobs), a piece that's festooned with satin ribbons each representing the color of a K.O.S. member's joy. For the I See the Promised Land pieces, Tim came to us with the question, "What is the color of your hope?" And we responded, really getting into mixing all these different colors. After we got the colors, we had to work on creating a credible space with these colors on the surface of the text by Rev. King, playing with painting styles, transparencies and so on. TR: Rev. Dr. King was my hero as I was growing up. As a precocious thirteen year old, his assassination in Memphis was a wake-up call that made me grow up fast. I've become an amateur Rev. King scholar, and when I was invited to work with kids in Memphis, I was compelled to attempt working with that text.

JR: That was his last sermon, right?

TR: Yes, delivered in Memphis at the Mason Temple Church of God on April 3, 1968. He was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel the next day. And in that amazing sermon - it's not a speech, it's a sermon. Looking at films of that sermon, you can see that he truly foretold, prophesied, his own death. You can see it in his face, you can hear it in his words, the tragedy, the courage. Reading his collected writings, sermons and speeches I wondered, "Is there a visual motif that flows throughout Rev. King's homiletics?" In discussion, K.O.S. immediately recognized the reference to mountains and mountaintops. That reminded me of an early sermon called "The Three Dimensions of the Complete Personality." It's one of my favorite of his sermons. Rev. King preaches that, "Life at its best is a great triangle." It possesses the three dimensions of breadth, depth and height. One angle constitutes "me." You must take care of yourself and invest in yourself because your own presence is a gift from God. The second angle represents "we." You're nothing if you don't have love for others. The third angle, the top angle, is that spiritual force that is God that ties it all together. That is a complete personality. This relates to the first lines of his sermon "I See the Promised Land" with its references to the pyramids of the Pharaoh's Egypt, Mount Olympus of ancient Greece, to the Trinity of the Renaissance artists concluding with the mountain top from which he could see the Promised Land. Triangles everywhere. Then we remembered a major triangular painting by one of our favorite artists, Barnett Newman, called Cathedral. That work features a triangle bisected by a stripe of light, what he called a Zip, like a stream of water poured down by God.

JR: How did the work, Invisible Man (after Ralph Ellison), with the letters I M, come about?

TR: That painting piggy-backed on the research and development we were doing for I See the Promised Land. We had been wanting to do something with the great novel of the 50's, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison for years, but it took forever to come to come up with a way to visualize the text. We tried and struggled to come up with a visual motif that played with the notions of invisibility and how art is the enemy of invisibility. In researching and studying for I See the Promised Land, we had a photograph of the Memphis sanitation workers that were striking. The strikers carried this simple, perfect sign that stated in placard lettering, "I am a man." And it just happened, we had this photograph and a copy of the Daily News in the studio with something about a murder victim. The lettering was large V-I-C-T-I-M. We cut the letters I and M off the VICTIM headline. And that became the image for the painting. The opening line in Ellison's novel is, "I am an invisible man." And our response is, "Oh no we're not." We refuse invisibility. Our art affirms our existence and voice in a hostile cosmos. At the same time, the "IM" motif echoes the Book of Exodus. God appears in the Burning Bush to this special education student named Moses who stutters, stammers, and no one takes seriously. God tells him to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let the people of Israel go. And Moses says "I see you and I feel you, but when I go down and tell my folk about you, what do I say? Who do I tell them you are?" And God in his perfection, simply says just tell them "I am that I am." This is the essential message of art. RB: When I was younger, one of the first questions people at our openings would ask me was "What does the work represent?" The best answer I gave was, "What do you represent?" You just are. Similarly, our art doesn't represent anything. It just is. It is a way that we connect with other people.

TR: We're having a special exchange that affirms our humanity. Art makes the invisible visible, vision becoming visible, and making hope material, power manifest, and Spirit sensuous.

JR: There are several versions of Invisible Man (after Ralph Ellison); one is black lettering on a white field, like the signs carried by the strikers. But there is another which you have creatively modified; it is white on white, very minimalist. It pushes the issue of visibility and invisibility further.

TR: It immediately refers to a painting by Malevich, white on white, where he turned a square turned askew on the picture plane and manifested this as Spirit. Also, we reclaimed the idea of what white represents, by taking it over by young people of color. We are questioning the notion of white as right and pure and clean and innocent, white as the admixture of all colors, as a field of possibility, a tabula rasa, a blank piece of paper hoping to be drawn upon.

RB: Some people get upset, but our work is all about breaking barriers. This process is organic. It is not about picketing, holding poorly made signs up. For me, the color white is invisible. You can ignore it, you can say that it is nothing. But in its blankness, white becomes the Great something. In making the white Invisible Man, I found out that there are an infinite colors of white. And we did spend a lot of time finding the white we wanted. We get to the spiritual or metaphysical issue through hard work.

JR: Sometimes the creative process is like Jacob wrestling the angel all night. The artist is saying "I'm not going to let you go until you bless me," but there is something beautiful that comes out of that struggle.

RB: I believe all good art comes out of struggle. One of the first issues you raised in the interview is that there is a popular notion of artists working in solitude. I think art comes out of social experience. Even if artists want to project the idea that they are the lone architects of their idea, they work within the world. Even if they make a conscious decision to shun it, they cannot deny the everyday world.

TR: As an artist, you are just a vehicle for something passing through you. Like the paint, you're a medium. But something, some spirit is coming through you, making something manifest. It's like climbing Jacob's Ladder or going to the mountaintop. It is a continual climbing to reach a pinnacle that you probably won't see until you see glory.

JR: Another of your works which seems to deal with spiritual struggle is The Temptation of St. Anthony-the Trinity. How did that work bring spiritual and creative struggle together?

TR: This was a breakthrough work from before I came back to church about five years ago. St. Anthony is one of these hyper religious folk who gets to the mountain top but just sits there - sanctimonious - pious beyond belief. Like some who are so holy that they are of no earthly good. St. Anthony removes himself from humanity and sits all day on a straw mat reading his big old Bible. So of course the devil wants him the most. Satan appears to him saying, "Where am I going? Just now, a glimpse of the shape of the Evil One." The whole play by Flaubert is a dialogue between St. Anthony and the Devil about the real nature of good and evil, heaven and hell. In our church, Memorial Baptist in Harlem, we sing a song, "God's Not Dead, He's Still Alive," But guess what, there is another old hillbilly gospel song that goes, "Satan's not dead. He's alive, too!" Many people are in denial about the visceral existence of evil, and the power of evil in the world. Evil is a real force we have to contend with daily. Flaubert wrote this fantastic scene at the end of his book. St. Anthony has been attacked all night long and has survived all these amazing temptations and horrific hallucinations. When the dawn finally arrives, St. Anthony sees the face of Jesus in the rising sun. In our interpretation of The Temptation of St. Anthony, we actually made these works by mixing animal blood with alcohol and other spirits to create these amazing, phantasmagoric images - poltergeists that are beautiful and revolting, sinister and transcendence all at once. The work shows the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost assembled as a trinity. Nelson Ricardo Savinon: What is strange about this painting is that when we were working on it, the images just appeared, like visible spirits. The images just came out. It was almost like this image was already hidden in the text and we drew it out. It was an amazing experience to make that particular work, because it became a form of worship and a sacrifice at once. There are times I sit down to make a work, and sometimes I'm not satisfied with it. And if it moves me, it's just gonna move me. But when you're in a collective, and it moves someone in the group, and then someone else, there's something going on. You can't deny it.

TR: It's like in my church. If you were in a service and the choir started singing, you might begin feeling an intense individual emotional reaction - tears welling up in your eyes. At first you're doubting yourself, thinking, "I'm crazy," until you see five hundred other people sharing that same feelings and tears of joy. This isn't group hysteria. I believe this is an affirmation that something supernatural is going on.

JR: It is interesting that you would be relating the art making process to worship. It seems that this works both in terms of the corporate climate in which you make your work and the individual experience of the viewer that takes your art to heart. Historically, the church has been a major supporter of the visual arts, often incorporating them into the worship experience. Recently that relationship between the church and the visual arts has fallen on some hard times. Sometimes even artists with faith will feel uncomfortable in church. What has been your relationship with the church in general, and also with the church you attend?

TR: Memorial Baptist Church in Central Harlem is a celebratory church. We are a loud church, a Psalm 100 church, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye landsS." We're a Psalm 150 church, "Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord." I've found that that exuberant religious ecstasy that I experience in my worship service is similar to the ecstatic experience that I feel in a much quieter way in front of a powerful work of art. What we are making is a form of praise. We're making a joyful noise, but we're doing it visually. It's a visual noise. It's a graphic Hallelujah.

JR: You have lent your work, I See The Promised Land and Invisible Man (after Ralph Ellison), for the front and back covers of the 2001-2002 of the Directory of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA). What would you like to see an organization like CIVA do to encourage artists of faith?

TR: What really needs to be done is we need to have more institutions like what Father Terrence Dempsey has in St. Louis, the Museum for Contemporary Religious Art. We need to have more artists and exhibiting places that aren't ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to have more Christian folks supporting Christian artists. Everyone says that the avant garde is over, but what could be the most radical thing an artist could do now? Praise God through their work and have God manifest Himself through the making of your work. And there has to be a stronger willingness to engage with the world. Christians aren't supposed to hang out just with other Christians. We're supposed to go out there and tell the Good News. Art is a form of ministry. When people look at our work they get encouraged, they are excited, they are inspired by example, not by exhortation. [S] That's why it is very important for us to make things that are beautiful, that are glorious; but that can be critical and vital and political simultaneously. Only beauty - love made visual - can change things. I think that is the ethos of Jesus as well. People come to church and they want some of this. I see it in their faces when the choir starts singing and this glory radiates. I see their longing like, "there is something going on here that I have never felt before and I want to feel." We as human beings are biologically are wired for spiritual ecstasy. And we try to get it in every form but a one to one connection with the Almighty. I think art is a way to summon that connection. The glory of God - this is what we seek to demonstrate in our art. This what I feel in front of great works of art.