Morrisay interviews Artist Linder

MORRISSEY: I think art is a miracle, and I’m so relieved at those rare moments when someone gets it right. But how do you avoid being a copyist? After all, we all work with the same set of words and the same set of materials.

MORRISSEY: Art is also the gluttony of the self-engrossed, isn’t it? Well, it needs to be. But are there not moments, mid-stroke, when you think to yourself, well, perhaps I’m a bit of a nutter? I hope not, of course.

LINDER: Most artists, by rights, should be unemployable and living in Hackney. Many are. But the artist is in many ways the village idiot, recast as a superhero. If you’re looking for me, you’ll find me by the pump. I’m trading stray wisps of straw with the idiot from the next village.

LINDER: The mouth can betray in two ways—by what goes in and what comes out. I am not one of nature’s chatterboxes—but neither do I mumble. As time goes by, I have less and less desire to speak. And the number of people to whom I might address my select and diminishing group of words is likewise dwindling. My internal monologue keeps me busy enough. You once said that you felt as though you had read everything; I sometimes feel as though I have said and heard enough. I cheer the blank page. And central to my own work has always been the fact that women have more than one pair of lips.

LINDER: being the High Priest of the Contrary

LINDER: I try to tell people very slowly and precisely exactly what I think and feel about my work, and they look at me as though I’ve got flies crawling over my eyelids.

LINDER: I’ll probably be 70 before my full cleavage is revealed to the world. Do you remember I always used to wear V-necks back to front? As a young woman in the ’70s, I longed for a flat chest—to be braless, liberated, and secure in just a vest. Inevitably, I used to attend feminist meetings in south Manchester wearing a 36C cup and too much lipstick. A woman’s right to choose.

LINDER: I have never been much of one for “colorful characters.” I think that all too often “eccentric” is just another word for “veteran bore.” Kingsley Amis once called Stevie Smith “dotty” on television. It was hard not to agree, but she was dotty, in a brilliant kind of way. Perhaps the answer to this lies in the fact that a great deal of talent is required to turn eccentricity into charm. But how quickly that charm can curdle and turn back into a kind of sour milk of the personality. . . . It’s the razor-blade high wire that genius walks.

Source: Interview magazine