McARTHUR BINION: I rarely talk about my own work. Over the past several years, I’ve been developing this idea of speechless work: how an artwork can have no language except for the thing, the object itself, and the emotional content that I can see and feel.
CHRISTOPHER STACKHOUSE: It’s very interesting to hear you speak to this—about beauty and the specifics of that. The ultimate goal is to get lost in the aesthetics, so that when we look at the painting, we get lost in the work itself—to get visually lost in the aesthetics and not simply the stuff beyond the aesthetics.I also want to talk about craftsmanship. For a lot of artists, craftsmanship is seemingly not important. But in terms of the overall scope of the history of art and craft in the actual making of work, it’s important to examine. The artist’s hand and craftsmanship and beauty have always been of the art object. I’m just curious what you think about craftsmanship and the hand: why are some artists working in the art world less concerned about craftsmanship, beauty, and the mark of the hand? Or as you put it—with “having hands”?
MB: Very few artists focus on the quality of the hand. But for me, the most important thing is to find the characteristics of the hand. Without this, we’re missing an opportunity for the hand to make something beautiful. Making respectable art or attractive art has somehow disappeared, and now with AI, the artist’s hand has become undervalued. For me, in my work, the hand is Black, and I want to make sure I find a way for my hand as a Black man to show both brushstrokes and emotions—to articulate myself on the canvas.
“History: Of: Aplication: One,” 1978, by McArthur Binion
CS: In some ways it’s almost like this notion of speech, that physical mute movement.
MB: Yeah. Absolutely.
CS: If we think of speech as an action, then we must think of the voice as evidence of a particular action. I’m thinking about it that way in terms of performance and so forth—the performance of speaking and how that operates in the world. But also thinking about something as simple as walking and dancing, and all of these manifestations of, as you name it, Blackness. These are characteristics that are specifically part of the Black experience.
MB: If I can go any further, I want you to deflect from speech. I haven’t talked about this very much, but for me, speech didn’t come to me until I was 19 years old. Until then, I couldn’t talk, I could only listen. But at the same time, I was very good at non-verbal communication. So most of my work was all about the hand and the brain and the eye. I work best eye-to-eye. I’m 77 and I moved to New York at the height of classic New York. The height of New York, I call it, before the whole world at that time lost me in it. You see, the resistance started in the ’80s, but people don’t talk about it. They’re soft about it. I was a creative writing major at the time. And so, when I struggled with speech with my deep stutter, I thought, Well, the way to solve words would be to write. And then, I took a job in Harlem as an associate editor of a magazine called How You Act. It was never actually published. But the editor is this well-connected Black woman who lives in Harlem. One of the errands I ran for the magazine was to deliver a package to the president of the Museum of Modern Art. That was the first time I’d ever gone to a museum, and I saw a painting for the very first time. I understood immediately that painting was of a particular nature. It took me two years to build up the courage to take a drawing course. I never studied art at all, but because I come from outside of art history, I just landed there in history and was able to bring a different element to the discourse. I have this group of 10 works that I’m showing for the first time at the Peter Marino Foundation this summer that I hope exemplifies what I’m talking about.
Read their full conversation—including a poem and full introduction by Stackhouse—in PALMER ON THE ROAD, available for pre-order now.