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| Robert Motherwell Image © The Dedalus Foundation, Inc. |
During his time as an undergraduate at the University of
Illinois, Wallace had an experience that would shape the way he thought about
his career and life as an artist forever.
The artist, Robert Motherwell came to visit the university
to give a series of lectures that coincided with his exhibition at the Krannert
Art Museum. As an undergraduate in the painting department, Wallace was
assigned by the school to chaperon Motherwell during his trip, driving him to
appointments and lectures, and accompanying him on studio visits where he
looked at the students work, including Wallace’s own.
People were all over
him, clamoring to talk to him, asking him question after question about how to
have a career as an artist, how to be successful. On the third day, he said to
me, “Do you know Jonathan, you’ve never asked me anything. I’ve seen your work.
Don’t you have any questions for me?”
I told him that I’d
been listening, that I was taking it all in. Eventually, I said to him, “I know
I’m still learning, but the truth is I don’t feel the work I’m doing right now
is expressing my true self. I want to know how to do that.”
He looked at me. “But
don’t you care about your career?”
I told him earnestly
that I just wanted to figure out how to tell what I want to tell and say what I
want to say.
Very quietly, Robert
Motherwell turned and looked at me. Eventually he said, “Jonathan, don’t be
successful. Don’t be like Jasper Johns and get discovered in your early
twenties, because your life will be over.” He said, “Be like me—live your life,
toil in obscurity until your seventies. Let it come to you. And if it doesn’t
come to you, don’t care about it. Because your journey will be fuller and
richer. I’ve had my whole life to be able to find out who I am and figure that
out in my work and now it’s being given to the world. Hopefully that will
happen to you.”
I don’t ever not think
about that moment.
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