
The Persistence of Emotion
The Art and Life of Augustus Goertz
an interview with Jonathan Goodman, January 31, 2025
Augustus Goertz
Preparing For A Longing Drive, Entrapment Escape Series, 2021
Acrylic, acrylic lacquer, and mixed media on canvas
44 x 44 in.
Augustus Goertz, a veteran downtown artist in New York, and a gifted painter of well-conceived and emotionally direct works that often emphasize a thickness of brush and a penchant for darker tonalities. He has been doing so in Tribeca, close to Chambers Street, within a slightly cramped live-in studio, which does not constrain his creativity in any way. Indeed, Goertz’s working habits are prodigious; an outlet for this work is the gallery Lichtundfire, on the Lower East Side. Goertz’s notable art and excellent effort are of course major incentives for setting up this interview, but because he has lived and worked downtown for a long time, he has had the chance to watch the artists and visual movements come and go. Thus, he becomes a chronicler of many years of change. This interview not only concentrates on Goertz’s strong talents as an artist, it also takes advantage of his longevity working in famous art environs, his life as a New York child and adolescent in Greenwich Village, his perception of how art movements have changed, and how he feels about them now. This interview also serves as a personal history that has considerable public meaning at a time when public meaning is hard to keep alive.

Augustus Goertz
Flower of Life, Inner Landscape Series, 2024
Acrylic, acrylic lacquer, and mixed media on wood
6 x 18 x 4 1/2 in.
Jonathan Goodman:
Both of your parents were artists, and you lived in Greenwich Village at a time when the life of artists was vaunted and often extreme, hedonistic. Did these various experiences affect the way you made art?
Augustus Goertz:
My parents and their friends were extreme in their seriousness about art. They were passionately devoted to art as important to civilization. The artists, writers, etc. who were often at my parents’ studio were somewhat more political and engaged about the various schools of art than we experience today. I remember my father being fired up in a jovial sort of way after returning from the famed artists gathering place on East 8th Street in New York City, founded by Philip Pavia, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and others, called The Club. My father would repeat theatrically moments from debates he had with the wonderful painter Milton Resnick, for instance. I suppose all of them were part of the Bohemian Movement that thrived in Greenwich Village at that time.
Growing up in a vital artist’s studio affected my work, in the sense that I always made art. My earliest memories are melting crayons on the steam heating pipes. I was fascinated by the way the colors melted together and then froze in shapes upon cooling. Making art was, and still is, as natural to me as eating. The downside of growing up in the middle of my father’s studio was more about not developing the single-minded ambition to break into the art world.
Goodman:
You studied art in the Bay area, at the San Francisco Art Institute. How did that experience affect your work? Do you believe academic training in art is an advantage or an obstacle? How did you prepare for your vocation?
Goertz:
The San Francisco Art Institute, at that time, only took students who had already spent a year out of high school doing something else, somewhere else. In my case, I traveled around Europe and transferred from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh where I studied acting. I was fortunate enough, to be made an Honor Student at the San Francisco Art Institute. I had keys to the school and could come and go to work in the large studio overlooking the San Francisco Bay anytime I wanted. With 24-hour access, I often worked at night, because I lived on the same street as the school, on Chestnut Street.
I could pick my curriculum, and sit in on classes with any of the teachers I chose. This fit me since I already had been making art my entire life. I attended a special high school in New York City, the High School of Music & Art in Harlem on 138 Street and Convent Avenue, later called LaGuardia High School, now located at Lincoln Center. I was mainly interested in learning new techniques. I spent a lot of time in the photography department, which later led to my Liquid Light series with photo emulsion, making light-sensitive paintings. I also studied with Tom Akawie how to use spray painting guns and airbrush, of which he was a master. Bruce Nauman, who was teaching sculpture, taught me to think conceptually about my work. He said to me, “ You are the best sculptor in the school who is a painting major.” That led me to emphasize the sculptural aspects of my painting.
I did learn a great deal from Sam Tchakalian about organizing a visual space, no matter how loose it may seem. He ran some of the best group critiques I ever experienced. It’s interesting that you ask whether academic training is an advantage. My favorite teacher was Jay DeFeo, who produced one of the greatest paintings ever produced, The Rose, now in the Whitney Museum Collection. She asked me why I was in art school, since in her opinion, I was already an artist when I got there.
I think, learning, experimenting, taking chances, developing a personal art philosophy, becoming and being more and more yourself, that’s what’s important to be an artist. My father always said, “No one can be better at being you, than you.”
Goodman:
New York City has been almost entirely your home, with short exceptions such as your time in San Francisco. Does New York City retain its excitement as a place to work? Or has artist overcrowding, a glut of weak work, and the absence of a professional scaffolding in writing done away with the enjoyment in the field here?
Goertz:
There was a period when I had representation in Los Angeles, showing at galleries Patricia Correia, Ruth Bachofner, and Bobbie Greenfield, so I was out there quite a bit. Then, for many years, I had representation in Germany as well as New York, and would often travel back and forth over the Atlantic. I guess because of that experience, and having just done an extremely productive artist-in-residence at Artpark Hoher Berg NRW in Germany this past summer, I have never felt so much dependent on the New York art world, even though I have always been a part of it.
What you describe as the glut of weak work has always existed. Certainly, the phenomenon of digital art, now often enhanced by A.I., and the ease with which it can be produced by some would seem to have the potential to exponentially increase the percentage of mediocre work. In the past and in the present, there is something that has not changed, and that is, to be good usually takes a lot of time and work. On the other hand, if humans have a future, art should be gaining in importance and accessibility.
Goodman:
The Abstract Expressionist movement has been around since the middle of the 1930s. You are now practicing work that plays off the very early styles of this work. Your work is very strong, but it still begs the question why an artist would continue painting within such a historical way of working. Do you think this style can still effectively be practiced?
Goertz:
Actually, I never considered myself an Abstract Expressionist, perhaps, because I overly associated the school with gestural painterly abstraction. In my mind, I have been a conceptual process artist. My work, usually, has been organized around a conception or a subject that I wanted to explore, like war for instance. At the same time, my work is built upon traditional methods combined with non-traditional materials and techniques. Artists like Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, and others who de-emphasized brushwork in painting come to mind. So, really, exploration in painting didn’t end with Jackson Pollock as some were saying when I was young. Actually, Pollock could be viewed as one of the first process artists. New roads of inquiry are constantly opening up. Painting is an ever evolving-thing. At one time, I was doing lyrical abstraction.There will probably be lyrical abstractionists for as long as people love to paint. No doubt they will be able to bring something new to a tradition. Painting has withstood the test of time with constant innovation since the cave days.
In my opinion, new traditions are developed all the time. The older traditions change by nature of relativity to the contemporary world around them. For instance, the figurative tradition of painting the human body is very old, but the meaning and the implications of a nude figure change over time dramatically.
Goodman:
With the many, many backgrounds alive in painting today, does it make sense to emphasize your lineage, as in identity art, or your participation in what can be called an international style? Does a question like this even deserve discussion?
Goertz:
I am personally more interested in making art that is difficult to guess the gender, race, or culture of the artist. Of course, we are all results of “nature and nurture”, and that combination is going to express itself one way or another in one’s work. If one thinks of international style as a shared vocabulary and language, then I think historical development takes on added significance and importance and can be used creatively as locations for liftoff. For me, abstract art, like music, has the potential of developing a new language without end, a universal language of relativity that incorporates emotion, and what makes for intelligent feeling in life.
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Goodman:
Galleries and museums in New York are many and offer highly varied interests. How important has going to them been for you as an artist? What do you look at– historical or contemporary art? Is seeing art a real need for all artists?
Goertz:
As you are becoming yourself as an artist, it is important to know your context. To avoid remaking the wooden wheel, and not even as well, I must know what has been done before in history. Still, I personally tend to go much more often to galleries to see contemporary work. I think competition is a good thing, so I like to know what my contemporaries are up to. There is excitement and inspiration that often can be found in galleries and museums. In my experience, when I gain momentum in a series of work, the immediacy of the need for influence from the outside diminishes. On the other hand, my enjoyment of seeing the actual work by other artists increases with the growing confidence in my own work. As I grow older and more experienced, I find my general appreciation of art past and present deepens.

Augustus Goertz
Mercer and Grand Street (Jean Nouvel Building/Corner of Mercer and Grand), Liquid Light Series, 2010
Photo emulsion on paper
22 x 30 in.
Goodman:
What two historical figures have influenced your work? Why? What two artists of your generation are important to you? Why?
Goertz:
That is almost impossible to boil down to two people, either historically or contemporaneously. Artists want to do the impossible in general, so, I’ll take a crack at it. Max Planck, and Leonardo Da Vinci, historically. Planck, because he theoretically expanded the universe and its possibility. Leonardo da Vinci, because he expanded the expectation of what a human could explore simultaneously.
Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter as my seniors come to mind of the more contemporary artists. Kiefer, because he works on such a large scale on subjects that interest me, such as books, memory, the subject of war, and his use of materiality and texture. Richter, because like him, I worked for years on figurative work, sometimes in simultaneous series with abstract or non-objective work. At the end of the 1990s, the late art writer Robert Morgan wrote about my work, and he mentioned Richter with regard to my Inner Landscape series. In a sense though, I have to say, I have been influenced by just about everything, and by many artists who came before me.
Goodman:
Please comment on the usefulness and influence of materials in your work. Do you buy from the store or salvage from the street? Do you make your own paints? How much does a material influence your style? Why has everything gotten so expensive?
Goertz:
The use and experimentation with varied materials has always been central to my work. Even in the 1980s, when I was making both figurative and abstract work, and exhibiting at Sarah Rentschler Gallery on Green Street in SoHo, I was superimposing the imagery over found materials, such as eucalyptus bark that I had sent to me from Monterrey, CA. Later, I was making totally abstract, unframed, hanging work. Those works, I made partially on my Greenwich Street building’s rooftop, working in the sun with heat-set dyes on sheets of bark that I sourced from South America. One day, the supplier never returned from the Uruguayan Forest. That taught me to not work with materials that I couldn’t be sure I could continually get.
For some years, as many artists did in those days, I worked in construction and building restoration with a crew of artists. Doing that, I became fascinated with plaster, cement, joint compound, and other building materials. To this day, I still get my art supplies, as much from lumber yards, quarries, and hardware stores, as from traditional art supply stores. The materials, and the process of working with them, often drive my work. In this way, it is still possible to take one of the greatest old art-making traditions, painting, and find new and non-traditional methods to create.
Traditional art supplies, like everything else, including construction materials, got more expensive, because there are fewer manufacturers and fewer competing retailers. Like in other industries, the bigger fish tend to swallow the smaller ones.
Goodman:
How do you feel about climbing the ladder according to your ambition? Do you worry about being marginalized in any fashion? What about timing: Isn’t it true that artistic success often exists in contrast, even in opposition, to the conventions of recognition and wealth? Is this troubling?
Goertz:
Coming from an artist family, I didn’t have organized ambition for a long time in my life. Mostly, I depended on the various galleries over time to promote me and my work. It is especially important to have an exhibition every now and then to help me with my organization. Seeing my work up, professionally exhibited, gives me a chance to better understand where I want to go moving forward. Some of my fellow artists are much more directed about their careers. My career has evolved in more of a cyclical nature.
At a certain point, an artist realizes, if one is lucky to live long enough, that one’s work could become a burden for others if it doesn’t have strong institutional recognition or significant auction records. This has become an incentive, and of late, for about the third or fourth time in my life, there is increased interest in my work both in the United States and in Europe.
Goodman:
How important is writing in art today? Many of the journals are gone or moribund– why? Is the Internet alone the cause of shorter reviews and a lack of interest in reading? These days, too, writers receive small money for their work. Why are these changes taking place?
Goertz:
To me, writing is always important. A good art writer can be a conduit and explainer of one’s work to a wider audience. He or she can shed light on aspects of the work, give historical context, and poetic feedback helpful to the artists themselves. Critical writing can reorder the art world landscape, bringing important focus to lesser-known artists, and sometimes shine the light on the actual quality, or lack thereof, of well-promoted artists. Support from a publication puts a writer in a position to make positive criticism. This in turn strengthens the value of the publication.
The whole nature of the digital age we live in is imbued with, and trending towards, a desire for speed. That is why it is so visually oriented. We are used to getting an impression of things. Not only are we often looking at a grid full of tiny images, but often with little or no attached writing. It’s all fast and flat. A giant painting, with texture and detail, is boiled down to a postage-size suggestion of what the original is. Few people have time to read anymore. Most people I know who are reading lengthy works are actually hearing them read on audiobooks while driving. The sheer amount of information a person today is expected to absorb, let alone interpret, must be much greater than in times past. Subtlety is also becoming a casualty. However, in my opinion, there will always be a place and hunger for high-quality writing and for the publications that carry it.
Goodman:
Can you describe what you would like to see happen next in art? In a technical sense, and in a thematic orientation, both. Will technology play a big role?
Goertz:
The healthiest next development in art would be toward non-conformity. In the past, a fashion mentality sometimes seemed to dominate– a follow-the-leader mentality of what is in and what is out. The good thing about the digital age, and the ramifications or possibilities it suggests, is that there is a decentralization that allows creators to find far-flung audiences receptive and interested in their ideas.
A new visual language that is not determined so much by the past, but looks to the future, could be a worthy goal. Artists can be leaders by example. Something has to replace what we have. The culture of amassing power and wealth is literally burning up the Earth. Perhaps art, imagination, creativity, can be the new currency. Through inspiration, we can find common ground with uncommon vision.
In a technical sense, the age of endless replication, which we have embarked on, will create a vacuum to be filled, a thirst to be quenched, only by the one of a kind. An artist whose presence, in the vastness of time and space, leaves artifacts that are the tracks and trails of that individual’s expressions of experience, never to be repeated. These artifacts will become invaluable in their rarity over time.
Goodman:
Now that the Internet has taken over communication, and is itself being used as an art medium, internationalism and a sameness of expression seem to be taking over. Is uniformity something we can support without becoming concerned with monotonous creativity? How do we handle the problem of excessive similarity across cultures in art?
Goertz:
In my opinion, art is at the highest level of communication. It’s a particularly human endeavor. We express emotion, we reflect on the past, we conjure up the future. The medium may change but the messaging in all its variety is constant. A universally understood visual language is a strength, not a weakness. If originality was in some way suffocated in the process of this shared understanding, that of course would be detrimental to human development and self-evolution.
Art is mainly about the communication of a wide variety of ideas. The positive effect of the internet is that it conveys these ideas easily to a greater audience. As for the flattening of art and the prevalence of imitation on the internet, my assumption is that it is more due to the containment of ideas in what are commonly known as information bubbles. The originality of language and ideas is probably as prevalent as ever. Every artist is a product of his or her time. I am considering myself an artifact maker. I love to make tangible one-of-a-kind objects of art, produced by the hands of an individual with a finite existence. Creating art reflecting a life lived at a particular time and place, is what mainly interests me.

Augustus Goertz
Quad #1, Blue, 2025,
Acrylic, acrylic lacquer, and mixed media on canvas
24 x 24 in.

Augustus Goertz
Zwei Mal (Two Times), 2023
Acrylic, acrylic lacquer, and mixed media on canvas
53 x 46 in.