Author Description

Van Buskirk’s newest novel is appropriated—word for word—from an interview of Herbert Ferber (1906-1991) in the Archives of American Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others Herbert Ferber was a sculptor and painter in New York, N.Y. The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Herbert Ferber on April 22, 1968. The interview was conducted by Irving Sandler for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Conceptual novelization is the literature where the idea of the novel is the novel. The conception is at once the origin and the end result. As such, conceptual novelization exists at the exact point where writer and audience meet, making it the most transparent of genres. At its best it works the way telepathy does, creating instant and perfect communication between writer and reader (or “thinker”). Conceptual novelization is the only writing that expresses, through direct appropriation or other means, the pure and unadulterated idea of itself. Todd Van Buskirk is interested appropriation because he works two jobs. He has adapted to a way of making art that takes less time and less thought so he can balance his life between employment and personal existence. He had to put the “corporation first” over his artistic fulfillment. As composer Charles Ives wrote, “I can’t feed my family on dissonances.” Van Buskirk’s economic reality informs his art. Working over 60 hours a week dictates how he works on art. Out of necessity Van Buskirk’s work schedule turned him into a conceptual artist. Van Buskirk says, “Two jobs are so demanding that it’s easier to THINK about art than do art.”