Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Ralph Rugoff, the only American running a major London museum, takes a posse of art writers up narrow steps and across three levels of gray concrete.

Rugoff, director of the Hayward, has just curated ``The Painting of Modern Life,'' a survey of 100 paintings from the 1960s to the present day that translate photographic imagery.

Works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Malcolm Morley and many more hang throughout the peeling, Soviet-style Hayward edifice, which is ripe for the kind of revamp that its sister buildings in the South Bank Centre got. A fundraising art auction is scheduled for next year.

I caught up with 50-year-old Rugoff after he finished giving a tour of the show. In a jacket and open-neck shirt, the director, soft-spoken yet determined, gazed out of a window at the nearby National Theatre. He elaborated on the exhibition and shared his frustrations about the art market.

Nayeri: What gave you the idea for this exhibition?

Rugoff: It's an exhibition I've been thinking about for a while. It's the story of how artists over the last 45 years have used photographic images of the world we live in to make paintings that make us confront both the world and the role photography plays in how we picture the world.

Nayeri: Do you consider painting superior to photography? You seem to show photography as playing an archival purpose, and painting as being the noble interpreter of it all.

Rugoff: I wouldn't say that. We live in an age where painting actually occupies a marginal place compared to the role of photographic media, which invades every aspect of our live.

Slow Art

What's interesting about painting is that it's a slower medium. It can ask you to slow down the way you look at something. A painted image of a photograph creates another layer of distance that gives you the space to reassess what an image's significance might be, what it might mean, and that's something that's very different from most photographic media.

I should say that these painters are not looking at art photography. There's a lot of art photography that is very self- conscious, and makes you aware of how the image is made and everything else. Most of these artists will say themselves that they actually cannot work from an art photograph, because it's too finished. There's nothing they can do to it to translate it into a painting. So they're more interested in the photograph as a kind of raw information.

Nayeri: In your talk, you said artworks today were recognized for their price and as commodities. Is the art market something that disturbs you?

Rugoff: I wouldn't say it disturbs me. It certainly has an effect on what I do.

Absent Warhol

There's a Warhol in this show that probably doubled its value due to the auction activity from the time we first contacted the lender to the time we had to cover it with insurance. There is another Warhol that the collector finally decided he didn't want to lend, because the market for Warhol suddenly seemed to have doubled.

All the attention of it -- how much money is paid for a Peter Doig or a Damien Hirst -- distracts us from thinking about what the work is about. It's amazing that these contemporary artworks are selling for as much money as they do, but I don't think it necessarily helps anybody appreciate what's interesting about contemporary art.

Nayeri: Does it make it harder for you to have a judicious eye on this stuff?

Rugoff: No, not really. (Pause.) Not really. (Grin.)

Nayeri: You don't think painting is revivified by this market interest?

Rugoff: I think it's revivified as a commodity. I don't think it's revivified as something that's particularly relevant in what it can say about the times we live in.

``The Painting of Modern Life'' runs through Dec. 30. For information, call +44-0871-663-2500 or visit http://www.haywardgallery.org.uk/.

(Farah Nayeri is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Farah Nayeri in London at farahn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 9, 2007 01:53 EDT