Beverly Stephens, The Evolutionaries
Jeffrey Kipnis and Beverly Stephens–a conversation
JK: Why do you call them Evolutionaries?
BS: Because I see them as possibilities of evolution.
JK: I mean what are they, actually?
BS: Pieces of wood that I have painted and stuck stuff on.
JK: You think pieces of wood will evolve to become alive and develop plastic shoes as feet?!
BS: Don’t be ridiculous. Do you think painting or sculpture indicates an evolution of the mind and spirit, even the body, over time??
JK: Yes, of course.
BS: Do you think painting and the arts in general are themselves selective forces of evolution every bit as powerful as those found in ecology, geology, the environment, the economy, sociology and politics?
JK: Yes, you know damn well I do.
BS: Well, then, do you think that, as an evolutionary force, a painting of a person predicts that one day oil paint and canvas will walk around as incarnate beings?
JK: OK. I get your point. Though, now that I think about it, Maybe Fabian’s structured canvas paintings do, kinda.
BS: One of your refrains that I really like is that all matter is always already alive and that is processes can make no mistakes – imagination being one of the processes of matter. I love your account of “soluble fish” for example.
JK: Which part? the Surrealists or the matter theory?
BS: Both! I love the fact that the surrealist believe that the phrase soluble fish proved that the imagination could construct impossible realities and I love the fact that you use matter theory to demonstrate that all fish (in fact all life) dissolves constantly but not in the parochial way the surrealist imaging dissolving should occur.
JK: Thanks; I’m quite fond of that argument myself. Let me try another tack. What do they represent?
BS: Nothing that’s not obvious in the depiction. For example, babies and hands are babies and hands; a breast with three nipples is just that, and it makes more sense to me than three breasts.
JK: Why do you make them?
BS: To kill time.
JK: Well, is there anything advice you have to help viewers better appreciate the evolutionaries?
BS: Well, they seem pretty obvious to me. I guess I would recommend against the tendency to give them names or nicknames and urge that no one feed them.
JK: Don’t name them; why not?
BS: They each already have names, many of which are unpronounceable to a western tongue, a few of which are unpronounceable period, and at least one of which is both unpronounceable and un-writable. So, “naming” them would amount to giving them nicknames and, nicknames, are just a form of small minded subjugation of that which we fear or do not understand. Ask any student from Asia or Africa.
JK: Why not feed them?
BS: Well, because you’d look ridiculous trying to feed a piece of painted wood.
NB: The above was written in its entirety by Jeffrey Kipnis and is published with the consent but without the expressed approval of Beverly Stephens, who prefers to withhold comment on the Evolutionaries.
FIGURE GROUND GAME 