Betty Tompkins, Fuck Painting #4, 1972, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 60 inches, Courtesy of Betty Tompkins and P·P·O·W, New York
So until that moment where you not really aware of how these paintings might affect an audience?
Not at all. I never paint with an audience in mind. I paint with myself in mind and I still do. It’s a really good habit to get into.
So you were really thinking about it as a painter in terms of composition and forms. In other words, how political was it for you?
Not really. Of course I knew what they were. When I originally titled these paintings I called them Joined Forms and things like that. But I always called them the Fuck Paintings to myself. When I started to show them again, in 2003, I then called them the Fuck Paintings.
Oh, so they weren’t originally titled that back in the day?
Well no, when I would talk to Don, my then-husband about them I would say something like “This is the 5th Fuck Painting I’ve made” and he would roll his eyes. He was a budding academic and he was like “Look who I’m married to?”
But of course the images came from him originally. You might think he would be fascinated by what you were doing.
No, he didn’t make that connection. He was totally horrified that people would find out and and he would get fired.
Really.
Yes. And in the mid-70’s I couldn’t get into a group show and I couldn’t get anything going, the days of slides. And I said to him, “I’m going to relabel the slides, and just put Tompkins. You’re a Tompkins. Take them around.” And he refused to do it. So I have no idea. I was starting to have a glimmer of an idea, that my age and my gender were working against me but he wouldn’t do it.
So you were able to show them a few times and then nothing?
I was in two groups shows. One at the Warren Benedict Gallery. The other at the LoGuiduce Gallery. I would get recommended to go see people but it was a 99% rejection. I did get into those two shows. It was famous people and me. Nobody bought anything, of course they didn’t. So I’m very happy that I managed to hold on to them for another 30 to 40 years.
So what were you doing during those 30 to 40 years?
I got really discouraged. And I was young. Young people are ambitious. While I had no expectation for a career, I was ambitious. Which is the only way you can survive in this art world. It is cutthroat. So, I just started to do other things. I made word pieces. I did animals and seascapes and law pieces. I wanted to watch the Winter Olympics, so I would spend the time making grids on these papers and painted a base color, and, wrote the word “law” in each square. And after the Olympics were over I went back in with the letters. So all words. When you take those tests that are right brain or left brain I always end up exactly in the middle.
So it doesn’t sound like you were particularly political in the beginning, when you first started working as a painter. You mentioned that you weren’t invited to the feminist groups, that they didn’t accept you. Did you think of yourself as a feminist?
Of course.
Did you think of your work as feminist work?
I didn’t think about that context, because if you were one that was enough. The politics went along with your belief. Since the choice was between being a misogynist and a feminist there was just no question, so yeah of course I was a feminist. Yeah, but totally rejected by the feminist movement and never invited to attend anything.
So when you were rejected by them – –
I was so rejected I didn’t even know I was rejected. That’s how rejected I was. I found out in 2016 that they didn’t like my subject or my source. They were polite enough, but they were also older than I am. I put it down to the youth factor. I didn’t really pay attention, I had other things to do. The feminists in New York were a tight and very small group. They perceived the world as being so against them, that they had to protect their territory. They would help their few friends with teaching jobs and exhibition opportunities but they didn’t let people in. Every new voice was a threat, because they perceived their situation as being so tenuous. I always do it and to this day. Because, to this day, I have never heard of anybody getting thrown out of a show because they recommended someone else for the show. I don’t know how I had this spirit, this generosity, but I did from the beginning.
No, you’re right. No one has ever gotten thrown out of a show for recommending someone else.
Their perception, was probably more real, and they riffed off of that.
Were the people that were looking at your work back in the 70’s saying very different things about it than they did 30 years later?
I can see that they look at it differently. People actually didn’t say very much to me about it back then.
What about the guy who ran out of the room?
Well his mouth was so open and I kept thinking, What have I done?
Did you ask him, “What have I done?”
No, I was too stunned and too surprised. When he went back in ass first, he did spend a fair enough time in there. Since that’s what I wanted, for people to spend time with those paintings, to me that was a huge success. He was looking at them seriously. He clearly did not want to engage in a critical conversation. Which was probably just as well. I was so young. I was still in my 20s. I was so inexperienced about talking about my work, what would I have said, “Yeah. You like it?
So then you were doing these word pieces that weren’t sexual at all.
Right. I crawled back into my work in a circle. When I was finished with the word pieces I wanted to just paint. So I stretched big canvases. I was a body builder at the time and I was painting body builders with animal heads and I found out later as I find out most things – later – that that’s an incredibly old tradition of animal heads on human figures. Mythology. But I found that out later. I would do dog heads. I love to paint dogs.
Me too!
Good! I would paint dog-headed figures and they were all body builders. For the first three I put the word “man”. And I would paint the bodies with the word “man” on top of the figure.
And were they bodies of men?
Yes, they were men. And one day, I looked at the painting without the words on it and I thought that’s a nice painting. I’m not going to put words on it. And I didn’t. And so I never did again. And then I got really involved in mythology. I have tons of books on mythology, symbolism. My favorite book was “The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets.” Oh, if you haven’t seen it, it’s a wonderful book. I did a lot of pieces with mythology. At a certain point I split what I had been doing into two things. So then there could be a whole animal and a figure or statue. I did that for quite a few years.
Are any of those here?
I kept them on stretchers for years, but then one day Bob Nickas came over and said, “You know Betty, people are starting to want to come to your studio. They aren’t coming to see that. They are coming to see this.” So immediately I took them off the stretchers.
Let’s talk about the Women Words series. So in 2002 and then 2013, you started this new body of work. How did that come into your head? Do you know?
Oh yeah. I went into this period where I was tired of being the only one in on the piece. It must have been 2002, and at that time a lot of artists were doing collaborations. I made an email saying, “I’d like to do another series using language,” to which I was referring to the cows and horses and the sea. I decided I wanted people to send me words and phrases about women, and if it’s in foreign language, please give me an accurate translation. I got 1500 separate words with a lot of repetition, and I organized it all in a list alphabetically. When I would have repeats, instead of retyping it, I would put another asterisk against the original word. And I was surprised at the number of pejorative terms.
I was too! You didn’t go into it asking for pejorative terms you only asked neutrally for a description, right?
Yeah, just tell me your words and phrases about women. Right. And when I did it again in 2013, I also added to the email, “Anonymity guaranteed.” And that opened up a lot of interesting avenues. Incredibly insulting.
Were the insults from both men and women?
Yes.
In equal amounts?
I didn’t track it but my impression was it didn’t make any difference.
And you used these for the 1,000 Paintings piece. Did you keep the same percentages of pejorative to nice that you had received from the emails?
No I didn’t try to do that but every once in a while I would say to myself, It’s been a little sweet around here Betty. It’s time to get a little nasty. I would make sure that there were positive things in there, but if it stayed sweet it got boring. What’s interesting about the language is the insults.