Interview with Felix Gonzalez-Torres

The work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres has quickly risen to a preeminent place on the international scene asone of the most personal oeuvres in contemporary art. The great number of shows currently devoted to his output, including the major exhibition planned for the Guggenheim (17 February - 7 March, 1995) are
ample proof of this attention. Criticized as being a politically correct artist, Gonzalez-Torres strikes back in the following interview, calling for a veritable guerrilla war - intelligent and undercover - against the plethora of straightforward, moralizing works of art with their angry-young-man messages. You recently took part in an exhibition in London that placed you in context with Joseph Kosuth, and the pair of you in
context with Ad Reinhardt. And I was struck by the fact that instead of trying to separate yourself from previous generations, you joined with Kosuth in establishing an unexpected aesthetic lineage. Could you talk about that a little bit because on the whole, younger artists generally avoid putting themselves in such close proximity to their predecessors, especially conceptualists in relation to painters?
I don't really see it that way. I think more than anything else I'm just an extension of certain practices, minimalism or conceptualism, that I am developing areas I think were not totally dealt with. I don't like this idea of having to undermine your ancestors, of ridiculing them, undermining them, and making less out of them. I think we're part of a historical process and I think that this attitude that you have to murder your father in order to start something new is bullshit. We are part of this culture, we don't come from outer space, so whatever I do is already something that has entered my brain from some other sources and is then synthesized into something new. I respect my elders and I learn from them. There's nothing wrong
with accepting that. I'm secure enough to accept those influences. I don't have anxiety about originality, I really don't