CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/14/2017

The perfect holiday gift for artists, curators and art historians

“For me, the key element when interviewing artists, or anybody, is that you want to know what they think and how they think. A good interview with someone results from drawing them out, making them feel safe to say what is on their mind. Artists can be expected not to tell you where their ideas come from. Richard Serra famously told Chuck Close once that an artist is only as good as the obscurity of his sources. The point is that there are subjects that the artists don’t want to talk about, that you’re almost never going to get them to discuss, and you don’t want to put them in a situation where you effectively say, ‘Got you!’ I’ve prepared the way for Gerhard Richter and other artists to say things that I didn’t expect they would say, but it wasn’t me versus them in a sort of prosecutorial relationship. It was me and them as two people with a common interest—art, generally, their work, specifically—trying to account for the texture of it and the reasons for it. So my general approach is not to cross-examine artists, but to ask real questions to which I would like to have answers.” – Robert Storr, Interviews on Art, 900 pages of the best there is, published by Heni.