NEW YORK—Richard Tuttle has trodden the most independent of paths since he first came to public attention in the mid-1960s. Geometrical shapes cut from white paper and pasted to a wall, strange curving patterns made from wire, cutouts of unstretched dyed canvas, short pieces of rope nailed to a wall—these were only some of his early ways of working. They were not to everyone’s taste. When Tuttle had his first major retrospective, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975, Hilton Kramer infamously savaged it in the New York Times: “In Mr. Tuttle’s work, less is unmistakably less. It is, indeed, remorselessly and irredeemably less. It establishes new standards of lessness.”

But it was Tuttle who had the last laugh, for not only did appreciation of his work increase dramatically but whole areas of Postminimalist practice emerged apparently inspired by his efforts. The artist’s second major retrospective opened at the SFMOMA in July 2005, arriving at its sixth and final venue, LA MOCA, a few weeks ago. The show has enabled a new generation of spectators to appreciate Tuttle’s peculiar, deliberately unstylish, but strangely beautiful work.

His latest New York exhibition, “Memory Comes from Dark Extension,” opened at Sperone Westwater on May 3, and he spoke to ArtInfo while putting the final touches to its installation. Tuttle’s way with words is as unique as his use of materials. What follows is one of the most unusual and fascinating interviews we have ever posted.

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Richard, this is a beautiful show. But your work is not concerned with beauty, is it?

Eastern philosophers talk about the illusion of the world. I feel very sympathetic to that, because you know in an instant if a person is involved with appearances or reality. There’s a whole huge structure out there that gives high marks for appearances. Then there are the people who are involved with what’s real. By far the vast majority of people’s lives are involved with appearances—even most art is just appearances. People are literally swept away by appearances.

But you believe that you’re working with reality rather than appearance?

In our culture there is a job for art, because we can’t experience reality anywhere else. And the experience of reality is absolutely fundamental to human existence. My job is to give the best possible visual experience. I try to raise the bar on the visual experience so that people can enjoy their lives. I get to thinking a lot about motivation—the purest motivation should result in the best visual experience. This is the first show where I think I’ve really connected with this motivation. It takes a lifetime to achieve one’s work. Art is not an overnight career. You can’t face your own desperation until after a long time.

In my case, there’s a part of me that feels like I’m a piece of shit, and all my life I’ve tried not to feel like a piece of shit. In an exhibition like this, I actually feel that I’ve reached a new level. What can you do? The possibilities that art offers are unique.

It sounds like you’re saying that you make art to cope with neurosis.

One way you can deal with feeling like a piece of shit is by developing a neurosis. As an artist, there’s a kind of perfection that you can actually achieve. But there’s another part that’s not possible and it just makes you neurotic and screws you up. I’m looking at every one of the pieces in this show and trying to decide if anything needs to be done to make them look like they want to look—that’s apparent to their nature. And I’m trying to resist neurotic fear.

Each work is a challenge. I believe—and I think of this as a Renaissance notion—that you get extra points for trying to do something difficult. So each one is chosen as a difficulty. For example, look at this one—Section 1, Extension T (2007). I’ve never before done a piece where there’s a relationship between the diamond and the square. The lineage of the diamond is one thing, and the lineage of the square is another thing. To make those lineages work together is really very hard. I’d been thinking that it wasn’t successful, but when I see it from this distance, I see that it is, because in this case the ocher looks like it’s luminous, and the white is not luminous. That’s really hard to do. What would be considered “good art” would be the reverse.