Art as research: an interview with Liliane Lijn by Barry Miles

Abstract

In conversation with the biographer and author Barry Miles, the artist and poet Liliane Lijn talks about her early influences as a young American artist living and working in Paris, Athens and New York and the development of her practice between 1959 and 1970. She recalls her encounters with prominent surrealists, poets and artists of the Beat generation: André Breton, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and her enduring friendship with Greek sculptor Takis. Inspired by the experimental nature of their works, Lijn explains how her own work focused on research and invention. She describes her Poem Machines as ‘seeing sound’ and explains her growing interest in science and, in particular, light. Lijn details the long and complex gestation of Liquid Reflections, her most well-known cosmic work of the late 1960s, and how working with industry and technology allowed her to increase both the scale and complexity of her oeuvre.