What's the difference between a good painting and a great painting?

MB:   Knowledge.

You've been having these love affairs with some of the great artists of the century.  Have you discovered similar qualities among them?

MB:   Actually it's less about what’s similar and more about their differences. Those differences become like guidelines, stepping stones to the next level in my search and aesthetic development.  I also noticed the enormous amount of time that these artists spend on the work. It's like a religious activity.  Morandi was almost religious in his approach.  Repeating the same bottles on the table but in different permutations.  It was as if they were on an altar. The act of painting becomes like a long prayer.  With the history of modernism that long prayer shortened. And now with the computer it's really fast.  Instead of a long-term focus it’s become quick collaging and editing.  It used to be like a fetish object that took a lot of stroking and attention in order to absorb the magic.

Maybe that's the difference between a good idea and a great idea. A good idea is clever, quick, spontaneous.  It doesn't necessarily demand an intense focus. Whereas a great idea is the evidence of a long focused attention and I think more of the substance of the artist, the psychology or dare I say soul.

MB:   Or Spirit. Not just in the visual arts but also with music and singers.  It's the genius in the interpretation or the spirit in the interpretation.

Sue Coe is one of the clearest and most convincing political artists around.  Her masterful drawing skills are married to a searing intelligence unafraid to gaze long and hard at issues most people, art world citizens included, would prefer to give a cursory nod to before pressing on to less disturbing activities.

She is not interested in the post-modern strategies of cute, clever, witty, ironic, ambiguous or any of the other methods that allow everyone to stay one or two or three steps outside of what is being considered. Her techniques instead wrap the issues around us so we can't help but feel the warm, frightened, outraged, cruel or compassionate heart at the center of everyone involved.  Our interview took place over the phone in early March as she prepared for her next installment of illustrations for the New Yorker magazine.

Dianne V. Lawrence: What is your definition of politics?

Sue Coe: The muscle that cloaks the skeleton of economics.

What is your definition of morality?

SC: The skin that covers the muscles. I'm not sure there is a universal definition of morality.  The dominant culture defines the mores.  Do we have, as humans, an internal moral compass?

I think so...but true north...the big pull of power and money, has a tendency to mute other directions.

I was reading Porkopolis. [Sue's expose on the slaughterhouse industry] there are horrendous stories. Baby pigs being castrated while conscious and without any protection against the pain. Pigs strung upside down while conscious and then stung by an electrical prod before their throats were slit. Some accidentally dropped from their shackles to crash-land on their head. There's the story about a slaughter man who in order to deal with a cow who refuses to go into the slaughter pen will stab the cows eyes to blind it and then its anus to get it to move forward. Another man refers to pigs a stupid because they don't want to go into the slaughter pens. These are a few of the horrors and cruel indignities the animals are subjected to and what you kept going back to witness in order to create your images. I would imagine it would take Herculean strength and commitment. How do you keep from being overwhelmed with despair pain and anger?

SC:  Although these emotions are very real it's not useful to be drowned in them. Emotion is not the  entire truth. We live in a death and life stream and it's how we balance our contributions to the struggles. At some point in my life if I saw an animal with a broken leg, or an eye gouged out at a stockyard, I would be obsessed with the suffering of that animal…like a tooth that has broken, my tongue straying to the jagged edge, a reminder over and over of the suffering. How did that help the animal? I learned that the attachment to the emotion of suffering had a similar route to the attachment to the concept of happiness. Real compassion is where our actions lessen than the suffering and cruelty. If we are going to be long distance runners we pass ourselves.

What response did you get from the slaughter industry?

SC:  It varied…from the workers themselves, many responses. Surprisingly dominant was agreement with the conditions I portrayed. In fact I could do Dead Meat the sequel, based on information I have subsequently been given.  One young man gave me a series of photos from a slaughterhouse where he worked that were terrible, just terrible. I find that people in this type of work want to talk about what they do. They want to debate it. They are mostly alienated from it, they become automatons. The slaughter industry is not different from any other. It steals the workers labor, for little pay and in the end there is blood money. From owners of meat packing plants I got justification “we feed the world”  “create jobs” etc..

You've gazed long and unflinchingly at humanities seemingly infinite capacity to not only ignore the suffering of others but to even exercise a great amount of creativity in creating it. Money greed and fear are some of the motivators. Do you suspect any other factors?

SC:  We are a social species and need the approval support of the tribe. Our behavior is learned. We collude with ideologies that are not in the best interest of our species survival. Our culture also stresses resolving conflict with force not imagination I spent last summer with macaque monkeys. We could learn a lot from their conflict resolution.