What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Some of America’s more interesting artists show and tell

A KOMAR AND MELAMID

Arles, France

“We call this work The Summer in Arles. We wanted to repeat the van Gogh summer of the year he cut his ear off. To be at Arles at the same season, and to paint portraits as van Gogh did. But our minds were on America. The old artists were supposed to suffer to create a work. Van Gogh suffers and he depicts himself. The new generation of artists doesn’t want to suffer. Our subject suffers, not us. In Julian Schnabel it’s the plates that suffer. It’s a different way of producing art: to punish a canvas, or, in this case, Mondale and Reagan. ’ ’

EDRUSCHA

Oklahoma City

“I wanted to get out of L. A. I went to Oklahoma to watch the whole thing on television. I’m working on paintings and drawings with words in them. Like ‘Honey.. .1 Twisted Through More Damned Traffic to Get Here’; The Storm That Stopped for Nothing’; and ‘They Did It on Several Occasions.’ Things like that. ‘Mind if I Laugh in Your Face?’ ”

WILLIAM WEGMAN

Loon Lake, Maine

“This drawing is about my dog Man Ray’s birthday that used to be July 27. We’d celebrate it at my cabin here and invite all the neighbors. There are two mistakes in the drawing. The ‘88’ is a mistranslation into dog years of Man Ray’s age when he died. And I changed his name to ‘Rex’ because I didn’t want it to be completely personal. Things have gotten difficult the last few years without the dog around. ’ ’

◄ JENNIFER BARTLETT

Paris

“My husband [Matthieu Carriere] and I have the top floor of a blue-and-white tile building designed by Henri Sauvage. It’s like the place in Last Tango in Paris. I often work on the roof, which has a 360-degree view of Paris: it’s like living on a boat. In the letters cut out of photographs my assistant and I are beginning the construction of a piece. I can’t say what it is until it turns out. ’ ’