"I have always dealt with stress and violence. This
comes from my own state of mind. Now, what I have tried to do since I've always
dealt with subjects like this, is try to understand what this means, and I have
tried to make this an instrument for viewing...a probe into the nature of the
world. In other words, if I find that I'm dealing with, let's say stress,
vulnerability--actions of this kind--then I want to understand what this means
in terms of events outside of myself, how this influences me, how this
influences others and what I can say about the modern world through these
meanings. Mercenaries, interrogations, the white squads: they all deal with
this kind of thing brought up to date, brought into the immediate, into what I
think of as our immediate, instantaneous, contemporary world.
Now, I do not claim, as an artist, that I represent the whole world. The world
is too complex, too many things going on. I can only tell a bit of the factual
situation about one aspect of the world. It is, I think, a relatively true
aspect and an aspect that I have studied as extensively as I know how. So I
deal with certain kinds of subject matter, which I try to do as intensely and
extensively as I know how. I try to do it to emphasize a point, almost
instantaneously, to make it a direct, perceptual thing, easily recognizable,
something we are totally cognizant of, and something which operates immediately
upon our lives. So it is an attempt to comment on the world in which we
exist."
- Excerpt: "Leon Golub Talks of Painting," Interview, Arts Insight Magazine, Indianapolis, Part I, May and Part II, June 1982. Courtesy, Arts Indiana Magazine; Courtesy, Helen Ferrulli.*
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