Ed Ruscha

32:29I like tiny things too. So every time I approach a work that I think I want to make, something pushes me in the direction of size. And I'll say that'll work better if it's just like half size, rather than six feet by eight feet. You know? And just the inner knowing? Yeah, yeah. Or something says, how am I going to learn from this thing unless it overpowers me? I want a wall rocket. And then that makes it become itself. How is it different making a piece, like the example in Mageddi, to live in a certain place versus a piece that's going to just be shown what's going to be shown? Is that different?

33:16Well, I pretty much was guaranteed that there's that's going to stay there for a while. Yeah, but I'm saying if you're asked to paint a picture that's going to live in one place forever, It doesn't have to be that size. Yeah. If you know where it's going to live, does that change it? Not in the making of it, and there are not many works of art I make that I ever have any notion of where that thing's going to end up. So usually it's going to go what it's going to do. Yeah. But I've worked on commissions too, where I did a library in Miami in 1985 that involved 60 paintings that were like six feet by 12 feet.

34:02And then a circular rotunda about six, let's see, words without thoughts never to heaven go. That's seven words from Hamlet. And so I painted one word on each one, and it was joined together. where each one was joined and sort of painted on aluminum with canvas mounted to aluminum. And then we would bend it into place in this circular opening. So sometimes the colors would jar with each other and they wouldn't continue on, you know, it wouldn't continue us. So that's an example of some where I knew that worthy things were gonna go. Yeah. And they're now in place. Yeah. Now that building was brand new designed by Philip Johnson.

34:54And now they're thinking about, well, it's lived its life. What's going to happen with my artwork? And I go back and look at the contract and it doesn't really cover me. I mean, it's not connected. I wonder what's going to happen to that. I mean, it'd be nice if they gave me those back. Yeah. I don't know what they're going to do. Well, maybe a museum would buy it and build it. Yeah, a pop -up. Installation. Something. I don't think it'll just go away. Yeah. How important are the words you use? They've got to have some kind of temperature to them or ananimity to them or you use a lot of two or three word combinations that they're not only just single words but I started painting these single words like spam and I liked that because it had an explosive sound to it And they're like verbal utterings, you know, like smash.

35:54I always like words like that that had a noise quotient to them. Just how the letters look matters well. Yeah. And then I was into type faces and things like that that I felt like that's got to be part of the art. And then it moved on from there, but it was just like, I like the way words go across a canvas and, you know, your eyes are set like this and they read from left to right, that's right. And so it became a, almost like a landscape. So I was picturing landscape. I mean, even if I look out on this lawn right here, I'm seeing kind of a horizontal activity here that I'm picking up with my eyes and I like that.

36:42So landscapes, I like landscape painting, things like that. And so maybe I could see this landscape horizontal, where words would just be sitting on the landscape. And then they became the landscape. You have your Hollywood sign painting that's really wide. Yeah, that was a kind of an example. I lived over on Western Avenue in Santa Monica Boulevard and I would check out that Hollywood sign every day and that was like a thermometer. You know, a weather vane or something. If I couldn't read that sign I knew I don't want to stay outside as too smoggy. So if I can read it, then if it's very clear, then I know that it's the air's Okay, to breathe.

37:35Can you remember the thought of painting it from behind? Maybe I got the idea by looking in the mirror or just accidentally seeing the painting in a mirror and the painting was behind me. So I thought, well, that's not an unlivable kind of image. It's got some substance to it, and painting it from the back. It's kind of like an ode to the rear -view mirror, or something like that. Yeah. Also feels like it could be telling a story about Hollywood, like behind the scenes, or something. Yeah. I don't know. It definitely creates a question mark when you look at it. Yeah. Just looking at it from afar was not enough for me, So I would go up there to the Hollywood sign.

38:28Back then you could just walk right up to it and climb around it and it was really shoddy made out of pieces of tin, I guess, on what looked like telephone poles. I think it's probably a lot of those poles are still holding the existing scientific edgy. So I feel like, yeah, I see it from afar, but now I'm touching it.

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39:42Flow release, low dose, gradual lifting, sustained energy, soft landing, inspired results. Athletic nicotine, more focus, less static, athletic nicotine, more clarity, less noise, athletic nicotine, more accuracy, less anxiety, athletic nicotine, from top athletes pushing their limits, to artists pursuing their vision. Athletic nicotine offers the lift you've been looking for. Learn more at athleticnicotine .com slash tetra and experience next level performance with athletic nicotine. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Tell me about perspective in general, so the choice of painting it from behind is changing the perspective we normally see.

40:39I remember paintings you've done where we're looking at something and we start moving to the side and now we're seeing it from the side view and even further side view and sometimes where you can barely make out what it is anymore because we're so close to parallel to the image. Tell me about the idea of perspective in general. I guess I liked the concept of baseline perspective where, and I think it came from movies. And I would see movies as a kid, and there would always be some scene with the characters in the movie. They're traveling somewhere, and so they show you a little train. And the train always starts way off to the side, and it's tiny down here.

41:29Yeah. And then pretty soon it goes along. You know, so, wow, that's panoramic, isn't it? And so I wanted to do some panoramic study. And also I would always see this 20th century Fox logo and wanted to go ahead and complete its diminishment. Yeah. And so it was like a three -dimensional. Yeah, yeah. And it was almost like one of those freight trains who are passenger trains that comes, zooms in from the right -hand corner and completely takes over the left -hand corner. So it's like a megaphoneic kind of experience. The 20th century fox ever used your version? No. Really? No, no. I'm surprised.

42:18Yeah, no, and I really had to cut any pushback from anybody. And even standard station, you know, I had this idea about gas stations and I always liked gas stations and the architecture of it. And even for a while pictured myself, I could live in one of those gas stations. Not bad at all. It's got the canopy was so great. And you park your car out of the canopy, you know, and then there's a little house. Yeah. You could live in it. I love that concept. So I was just, you know, that was an extension of somewhere I thought I might want to live. Telling about the wake California has changed over the course of your life.

43:02I do remember, I mean there was this specific thing, as I was reading them, a look magazine. And there was an article about Los Angeles. And it said that there was a, this was like 1950, 6 or 7. There was a net gain of 1 ,000 people a day. So, boy, if 500 people in LA left, that would mean 1 ,500 people would have to come in. And that was just, to me, phenomenal win that kind of thousand people a day, net gain, it's astounding, you know? But I'm not sure what it is today. It might be greater or it might be less, I don't know. But I like the old neighborhoods in downtown LA, and I lived over in Silver Lake and Echo Park Hollywood.

43:59And I see now when I drive over there, I see entire blocks gone. Yeah, there've been swept clean. And you know what's coming? Aircraft carriers. Ha, ha, ha, ha. God. And so I see great change in the city. Yeah. And a lot of the really pretty old buildings are gone, or they're ready to be gone, you know? Yeah. I'm surprised Musso Frank's is still there. You did the photo book that opens up of Sunset Boulevard, the two sides of Sunset Boulevard. I remember I bought that, right? When I moved to California before, I even knew your work. I bought that book and my plan was to have the two sides framed to put on either side of a hallways I lived right on Sunset Boulevard and I thought like this is the perfect.

44:52Yeah. I never went through with putting it together but I loved that feeling of it was a place that I romanticized about because it was the 60s in California Sunset Strip. For people who like music, it was a very important kind. Band -Ords box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was great. How did the idea come to do it in that fashion? You know, maybe it's some romantic connections to words again, like sunset. I didn't didn't realize that there was going to be, I was going to come to LA and find that there was an actual sunset boulevard. Yeah. And then while they also give you a sunset. And then that became kind of a target for this activity I had going in my mind to photograph buildings and just for posterity's sake or just as a, you're acting like a reporter and you're capturing what's out there and bringing it back, printing it on paper.

46:04So I've been doing that for years and they've got a website at the Getty called 12 Sunsets and if you get on that it'll show you they've taken my photography over the past 50 years. You can look at what it looked like, what a building looked like in 1966 and 1986 and if you want to know how many synagogue, there are on sunset Boulevard, bang bang bang, if you want to know how many dry cleaners, bang bang bang, and I thought that's a piece of information that is beyond imagination, you know, that they're able to do something like that, but there was a team of people that got all the pictures together, the photography, and then studied it, and like an archaeological study, Yeah, in a way.

47:02When you did your first one, did you have any thoughts about the future? Or no, you felt like this is just documenting the moment? Well, no, I had notions about what it would be like, and of course, I didn't know. I can't know. So, but the possibility was always out there, and I like the absurdity of it. Yeah. What can you and can't you learn in art school? Yeah, I think well, that you can learn is that there shouldn't really be any rules. Yeah. And all possibilities are out there. That kind of disturbed some people because they like to have, they're thinking grounded in reason instead of absurdity or possible, you know, things out there in space.

48:01So that's something I learned there. And luckily I was around a lot of students that also were in kind of a competitive sense inspiring each other. And we didn't get everything we learned from the instructors. We did learn a lot from them, but we got to learn a lot by just being around each other, competing and making pictures and crazy art. So it was good for all that. At some point, over the course of your life, from where you started till now, and I'm not talking about your art. I'm talking about the fine art world. The fine art world became mainstream. It was not when you were starting. When you started going into art, no one went into art thinking it's a serious career.

48:59It might be something to do. Yeah. But it wasn't like, I'm going to be successful doing this thing. No, no. It didn't promise you a successful career. Like they do today. I mean, you go to our art school today and there's all kinds of commercial possibilities to spin off into that you can make a living from. But we just wanted to make art, you know, till we spit blood. Yeah. Yeah. It was almost deciding not to pursue anything that could be successful. Yeah. Does that sound right? Yeah, I mean, or that would be condescending or where you'd be edging into the world of commercial art or something like that.

49:44You know, that was frowned on, I guess. Yeah, I mean, but then a lot of people would, we all made living from it, and I make a living from it, so yeah. But I'm still kind of in a state of wonderment trying to figure the whole thing out. Yeah. I read that one of your paintings eight or ten years ago now sold an auction for fifty -something million dollars. And do you know what you're painting? I'm talking about. Yeah. Okay. Tell me from its inception, when you made it, what was the reaction to it? When it originally sold, what it sold for, if you remember? And then the life story of this painting.

50:27Oh, it was painted about 1965, I guess. It was a painting called Radio. I painted the word Radio. And then I somehow wanted to take some sea clamps, you know, carpenter's sea clamps and pinch these letters, you know, pinch them. And for just to aggravate the theme. Yeah. And I believe I had to, yeah, I showed these things at the Ferris Gallery and I didn't sell them. I didn't sell anything for quite a while. But then eventually I think maybe 10 years later or something, I sold it for probably $500 and out of that I got $250. So I had to pay taxes on it. And then do you know what happened to it after that?

51:17Yeah, it was bought by Jack Quinn, who was an attorney. He helped a lot of artists out, and he bought the painting, and they had it in their home for years and years, and then it was sold after he died. And he was a proponent for 10 % resale royalty for artists, you know, for unique works of art, which never really became law. They tried to invent this thing every time the work was sold, artists gets 10 % of it. But it took hold for a little bit here in the state of California, and then they voted it out. So of course, when that's sold and I heard about that, I wanted to say, where's my cut? Yeah, yeah.

52:05But there wasn't any, so that's the folly of it all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the good news is that if someone would pay that for that work, Maybe your other works might be worth something. I guess so. It's supposed to work that way, not always, but. So I asked you about the mainstreaming of art. When do you think it got more like taken seriously in the public? What made that happen? Well, a change in attitude, I guess, that goes from generation to generation that you've had the abstract expressionist before that. you had, well, you might say, Ash Chan School or New York School of Painting, and that lasted an into 30s and 40s, and the adds, French to realism coming there, and then Picasso was always working at that time, and so it was always evolving into newer and different things.

53:05And this is like the music world, I guess. You know, you've got rock and billy coming out of race music. Yeah. And rock and roll coming out of that. And then jazz has always been around. So it's the same kind of framework. I think the art world and the music world is a lot of like. And you might say literature too, I guess. You know, there's just these waves of people coming and going and you know creating new things. And it's pretty active. It's pretty active in the audience out there and the people who are producing it, the artist. There's no shortage of them.

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55:22Tell me about the difference between seeing a reproduction of an image in a book versus seeing a real thing in a museum or a close. I got inspired by reproductions. Yeah. And sometimes with posse stamp picture, like this thing right here, I saw as a little illustration in a book on the subject of Dada, the Dada movement in Germany. And that was all I needed for that. And I wanted to push it another step forward when I called a museum modern art and wanted to see it in person. You know, and they showed me. But I saw little reproductions hit me just as hard as a real work. I didn't see a lot of real works until later on.

56:12When you saw the real version of the Dada piece, was there any revelation that was different than seeing the post -substant for no? Yeah, there's some color in here. There's a little red ink that I didn't really know. And it didn't seem to matter. I'd like for this little thing here was enough that it didn't matter if there were colors in here. Yeah. But seeing the colors was like a bonus. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think makes an American artist besides coming from here, in terms of the work? You know, it's more international than ever. And so, influences are across the pond and everywhere. So, I think it's so universal now that it's...

57:05But it used to be claseted off in little pockets, you know, what's happening in France and what's happening in England is another thing like David Hockney and his friends, they all sort of, you could look at their work and say, yeah, that's, they're all connected somehow. You know, they had a solid kind of look that was generally similar. And as time goes by, you know, you can get fatigued by looking at their work, and you can, you know, then somebody else comes along. So it's unpredictable. I read that you were included in the first ever Hop art exhibition in Pasadena in 1962. What do you remember about that time?

57:54Yeah, that was an exhibit put together by Walter Ops. And he was at that time the director of the Pasadena Art Museum. It's a really kind of eclectic, out of the way, museum to have. And he was, I mean, he'd be around him for five minutes, and he'd realize that this guy's for real. And he had something to say. Yeah. It was like a real experience to be around this guy. And he had a way of, well, first of all, even bum a cigarette from me, you know? And he'd walk back and forth, puffing this cigarette. And then he'd walk him back and forth, speaking, and saying great things as he's walking back and forth.

58:41And when he leaves the room, he realized, you've learned something. Wow. That's great. And so he put all this together. He put that show together. And I felt honored to be in it. It was good. And I felt like a lot of these other artists that were in that show are, they shared some common synthies, you know, an openness to the world of commerce, you know, the world of pop culture and what's happening in the world today. And choosing subjects that are figurative instead of abstract, like they were for years. which was great art too. You know, the abstract expressionists and all those people, abstract banding.

59:29And they're still abstract banders today. They're pretty good. Yeah, yeah. And the most was in that show in 62, do you remember? Joe Good was in there. I grew up with him. He was an altar boy in my church. He was sort of like the altar boy with a black eye. Like you'd see in Norman Rockwell paintings. And Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. How do you seen Roy's work before that exhibit? Yeah, Roy Lichtenstein, yeah, yeah. Where would you have seen it? I saw that in 1961 at the Leo Castelli Gallery. And I was in Europe and painted a bunch of little pictures about that size and wanted to show them to Leo Castelli.

1:00:22And I respected him. He had a real good gallery. And he said, let me show you in the back room, go back there and there was a painting there of somebody named Roy Lichtenstein. I never heard of him. I got to know him. He was a good friend. Yeah. Finally, but it was a picture of tennis shoes. And I just felt like, Oh God, that's hard to look at. That hurts. You know, it's aggravating and it's so terrible and then it's got some possibility to it and then that thing might be profound. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. I love that painting of the tennis shoes. You know, that he would, and he did all of his art was made that way.

1:01:08You know, he had a way of seeing the world through kind of comic book eyes. Yeah. And he took that and ran with it and had a very good Besides career of it. I mean he created some really great works and You talked about your trip to Europe and not really feeling the European art as much as the American art Was there anything about the place that he remember about Europe that? Spoked to you Just the location the buildings the experience Yeah, I went all over. I went through Spain and I just, you know, I love this, well, San Sebastian, Spain and went to Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon. And all around Europe, I didn't get as far as Eastern Europe.

1:01:57I went through the Greek Isles and I bought a douche -souau, you know, and I went through cars. I think so. Yeah, it's a little teeny car. Looks like a thorough way for the vehicle. Yeah. Real teeny and it got like 60 miles to the gallon of gas. And I drove all over Europe and the British Isles too. Wow. And it looks kind of like a Volkswagen bug, but smaller and like a toy version of a Volkswagen bug. Yeah. Yeah, and it was very flimsy. I mean, it was like paper thin. I mean, I haven't seen one in LA for a long time. No, not in a long time. I see them sometimes in other places in the world. Yeah.

1:02:46But Europe was, you know, I went to the museums over there, and I learned quite a bit by seeing the museums. I didn't get so much influence from all these historical artists. I didn't get so much from that. But I mean, I was more into what was happening in America. Yeah. But hell, I mean, Europe is the beginning of it. Yeah. It had moved at the time that you were. Yeah. Like it does. It always moves around, you know? Yeah. Have you used any unusual materials over the years? I was using oil paint for a long time and then I felt like I was putting a skin on a surface, you know? and that I wanted to do something else, like staying the surface in some way or other.

1:03:34And so I started using gunpowder, which is charcoal and sulfur. And instead of using graphite gunpowder, I was able to make an image with it and correct it if I made a mistake, easy to correct. Not so much with graphite, But then I started using staining things with grass cut from the, you know, and rubbing the grass in that sort of thing. And axle grease and caviar and things like that that made images. But I didn't know about the last ability of them or anything like that. Do you know if they survived? Yeah, mostly yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I made a Hollywood image out of Pepto Bismill, and if you leave that out in the open, eventually, I mean, it's almost 50 years old, and the image is still there, but it's faded a little bit.

1:04:43So no customer guarantee. Yeah. Are there any themes that you've returned to over the years? Well, I haven't gone back to gas stations. I mean, I guess the main theme is words, I guess, that persist right up to today. I'm looking at it a little like it's, well, could I call it poetry? That's, is that too ambitious to call it poetry? or what, but I find myself making these little word things and they mean something to me, but I don't think too much about it. Yeah, there was a period where you were using words, but they weren't complete words. There were parts of words, or letters were left out.

1:05:33I did a few things like that, but then that began to... It made me question what I'm doing, you know? And are you deliberately leaving these letters out? or stopping too much of a choice. Yeah.

1:05:50How's your relationship to making art changed over the course of your life? Well, I'm surprised and I'm still at it. And physically I can handle it and I still have the same motivation and belief in it. I'm not distracted from the many things that are out there. I see that the world's full of cacophony, noise, and visual and otherwise. And so I maintain my love of doing it. So stop the presses. Yeah, what's the feeling you get when you finish a piece? Usually I know when I'm finished. Sometimes I'll stop a little early and then say, don't go any further. and it just has to kind of round itself out.

1:06:44Every so often I'll start something and then I've got to tear it up, start over again. Coming about life in the desert. I started going out there. In the late 40s, I had this friend and Harry Cohn. His father was at a movie studio called Columbia Pictures. And somehow he was given this property inside a Joshua Tree National Park. And somebody took me out there. I knew this young Harry Cohn who died a few years ago, but he lived back in this in these enormous boulders with a house built in the 1930s. Wow. And it still exists. Sounds great. Yeah. Yeah, it's down a little dirt road inside the park.

1:07:33Wow. There's a few privately owned parcels inside the park. park. And I just said, oh, this is just great. I mean, other Joshua trees and all this. So, and I found a property that I got up near Pioneer Town, if you know where that is. I didn't know where that is. What else is near there? Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree basically. It's high desert. So it's like 5 ,000 feet. And then, so I got this place in 75 and I started building a house out there and finally took about four or five years to build this house. And I go out there all the time. So I'll go out for like a week or 10 days and then I don't usually make much art out there because I go out there and I read or I take care of little repairs, things like that.

1:08:32Events of plain living. When you're out there, do you see many people or is it more? No. You don't see anybody around. I mean, I've got a neighbor maybe that's a mile away. Yeah. That I never see. So it's remote and... Sounds great. For all that, it's great to have it be remote like that. And there's no progress around it or anything. But every so often a fire will get near there. But it's a little bit on the other side of Big Bear Lake, and it's just the desert side of Big Bear Lake. And it's a habit of sort of a living habit that I don't go out there and look at the landscape and want to take impressions from it and make art from it.

1:09:21So I don't really do that, but it's just a living thing that habitual kind of routine that I find myself in, that I love doing. You think it's what you see or the silence? Silence has a lot to do with it. Yeah. I mean, there's a military base out there, a Marine 29 palms, Marine base, and you hear helicopters go over every so often, but it's very remote and good for that reason. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah. Tell me the timeline from an idea for a work, and so you have a finished work typically, or is there no typical? I don't often have a notion to do something where I'm forced to put it off for a while and still keep on to the idea.

1:10:19So I usually get onto things soon, but then sometimes I'll work on a painting for, I don't know, three or four years. I did one of the Los Angeles County Museum on fire and I just, I would paint on that thing for a couple of months and then I'd put it away for six months and paint on for a while and then and put it away for another period of time. And so it's not like something that has a deadline to it. Yeah. So would you say there are always works and progress around? Yeah. Yeah. Right now I have about four or five things that I, I mean, I kind of put aside, but it's there to look at. Yeah. But I know I've got progress to make on it, But I'll do it when I get to it.

1:11:13Yeah, understand? Yeah, yeah. Are there any that start and finish, and they just happen? Yeah, I'll do that with things that are simple or involve one or two colors or things like that. And I feel like a right. But generally, I start working on something and I stick with it until it's done. Yeah. to remember the initial thought behind the museum on fire painting. That came out of, I mean, the angle of the museum, the way it was in the picture, is really doing the same thing as that 20th century fox, or the standard perspective. Yeah, perspective. It goes from lower right hand corner to upper left hand corner and the slope of the building and everything, and then you get up here and you've got a fire happening.

1:12:07And then over here, you've got this green placid lawn or whatever it is. And so you've got the hot spot over here and you almost could fall asleep over here. Yeah. But the thought of deciding, I'm going to paint the museum on fire as opposed to just painting the museum. Do you remember the instant of it's going to be on fire? Yeah. Yeah. I had used the idea of fire in certain things and I made a book called Very Small Fires and I've got no unreasonable attachment to fires but I felt like they were like additional things in a picture so and they were very colorful you know so you'd have this blast of light happening over here yeah and But the whole thing with the museum started with a helicopter ride that I took over LA.

1:13:05And we somehow fell into somebody saying, you want to take it all? Yeah, sure. And I'll take my Polaroid camera with me. And we went all over LA in a period of like 45 minutes. You can see the entire city. You see thousands and thousands of swimming pools. and then we somehow came around over by the LA County Museum and I took some pictures of it. And I always felt like it was a authority figure in some ways. And that maybe this is my statement against this authority figure, you know, let it burn. So it became that in a combination of just wanting to paint a picture. Yeah. Just the idea of keeping my hands busy.

1:13:57Yeah. Has that painting ever shown with that museum? Yeah, it was about three months ago. It was in my exhibit there at the county museum. Fantastic. What would you say you're always working? Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, I don't take vacation breaks so much. I'm not really into that. I don't want to work. I mean, I do like my studio and I find a kind of security in just being around my way I work. And there always seems to be something urgently needs to be worked on and thought about. Yeah. Is there a typical time and day you like to paint? Usually during the day, sometimes at night, and phone doesn't ring, things like that.

1:14:54And that can be uplifting. Tell me about Mason Williams. So Mason, he was a friend of mine in third grade in Oklahoma City. He and I were good friends and he and I came to California together and lived in a boarding house downtown. And Mason, he went off and he was in the Navy for a couple of years and then I just stayed in an art school and then he came back and I talked to him all the time and he lives in Oregon now. And he and I have made projects together and I have done artworks for him and he is a really interesting character and talented great musician and feel lucky to have him as a friend.

1:15:48Yeah. I mean great musician and he also is involved in comedy. I think he discovered Steve Martin. Yeah, yeah. He and Steve were played band hero together and he wrote, he actually hired Steve to write the Smothers Brothers. Yeah, amazing. Yeah. When you have a work that's a series of images, let's say the gas station book, tell me about what goes into a sequence. It's a evolving kind of thing that sometimes is just you make these decisions and if I have 26 photographs in front of me. How do I know how, where they're gonna go and how they fit together? And there's no common game plan, anything like that.

1:16:36You're moving around and see what happens. Yeah, it's a matter of moving around. It's almost like making a collage in a way. And then there's kind of a routine that I don't want to be too sensible or too aggressive or too... Understandable. Yeah. Do you ever put limitations on your work? I think I do, and probably usually when I do, I don't know it. What I'm doing. You ever say I'm only going to work in black and white, for example, or I'm only going to make it, it can't be bigger than this size. Yeah. When I was in school, I admired France's client. Yeah. Because he chose to work only in black and white, mostly.

1:17:22And I thought, God, what a commitment to that. And I liked the commitment as well as I did the work of art. And I also, everybody had respect for Marcel Duchamp when he said, Hey, I'm not going to paint anymore. Yeah. And that was like 1925. Yeah. He said, I'm making no more art. I mean, he did, he broke his rule there. He was making little things all along. but the idea of saying, you know, standing up to the world, saying I'm not going to make it more hard. I mean, it somehow, it taught us something. I don't know what. Yeah. I've heard you say, I'll paraphrase incorrectly, but something about certain works are touched by angels.

1:18:09We've had that experience. Tell me what you meant by it, and tell me what you think was touched by angels. I might think of, well, the book I did called 26 Gasoline Stations, I thought was off by itself and it didn't nod to the world of painting or bookmaking or anything in any respect. And so I thought it was off by itself. So that's, I guess, where the angels live. Maybe that was touched by angels. I don't know. I probably, but what I was thinking of. Yeah. I like it. I like, I like being gay about it. Yeah. And then every so often I think about nonverbal communication. You know, you can, that always reminded me of when they were going to interview Tholinius Monk for a music magazine.

1:19:10And I think he said, okay, I'll do it if I can bring a friend along with me. And they said, okay, sure. Yeah, and so the interviewer said, Mr. Monk, what do you think about country and western music? He doesn't say anything. Long period of time in that interview, you know what I'm saying? Mr. Monk, what do you think about cowboy music? You know, country and western music. He's still no answer. And then, monk turns to his friend and says, you think that guy's harder hearing? Incredible. That's amazing. Amazing. What would you say the most beautiful place on Earth you've ever been? San Francisco.

1:19:59And I can point to why I'm saying this because I visited there as a kid back in the late 1940s with my folks. And we drove through there and we had some relatives there. And so, San Francisco, and every time I go there, I say, this is the most beautiful city in the world. Do you think they'll set something to do with it? The kind of mystery of it, the Chinatown, the bridges, the... Victoria and Howl's. Yeah, the Howl's is, and everything about it, It's just got kind of a romantic, dashy -alhamid kind of flavor to it that I just, I really feel like it is the most beautiful city in the world. But then, you know, nature, of course.

1:20:48I mean, places that you go where there's like silence, like the desert, well, that's, yes, that's beautiful too. You never had the calling to move to San Francisco? No. Why do you think? I don't know. It's better to visit there. Like I love New York, but I go there on my own terms, and I see my friends, and then I get out of town. But if I had to live there, I think it would be a different set of circumstances for an artist to live there, and then have to bring materials to your studio, and get a two by four across town without, boy, what an issue that is. I didn't like that. I like the idea of Southern California.

1:21:34Curators, collectors, and artists. Tell me about the mindset of those three different categories of people. Curators, collectors, and artists. And collectors are curious kind. They have, you know, their minds are often different directions. The artist is thinking only of himself, you know, not so much where he fits into this thing. but curators have a particular knowledge of, I was lucky enough to work with the man that is now the director of Museum of Modern Art in New York, Christophe Cheris. And he curated an exhibit in line that was up about a year and a half ago there that went to the county museum.

1:22:19and he wanted to see every work that I did, and he only would put it in the exhibit if he could see it in person. He had to see that thing in person. So if I can't go to that collector's house and see it on a wall, well, I'm not interested in borrowing it, I've got to see that thing in person. And so the personal contact with a curator is essential. Yeah. No. And he's that way. He's one of those kind of people. Are most curators open to collaboration with the artist? Well, this man certainly was, and he wouldn't put something in the show that I didn't approve of, or, you know, why should I care what he puts in his exhibit?

1:23:09but I did kind of like have a few choices along the way, and he was worth with me on that. So he was, I was lucky to have him. Yeah. Are you ever surprised seeing your art up next to other artists? Do you ever get any kind of a good or bad feeling about it? I mean, I've seen my work in exhibits alongside other people, but and I might get a tug from a laugh out of it. Yeah. You know, just the curiosity of these two supposedly thoughtful artists.

1:23:52Yeah. It sounds like you have fun doing what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I would if I didn't have fun with it. No, I do that. So every so often something will come up that requires a lot of labor and concentration. So that might make me think and make me want to say, I know I've got to do that now. But I generally I get with it and I like it. You just say that once you have the idea, do you feel in service to the idea? Yes, I've got a notion of what I think the idea is going to be. And then the execution of it will be something else. Sometimes I don't know which way it's going to go.

1:24:49Can you do sketches? Yeah, I do a lot of little writings and sometimes sketches. and there, they can be misleading, they can be, they can distort your thinking. But I like to do that, you know, when I'm at a restaurant or something, you know. But what might be something you would write? It might be of, well lately I've just done, I don't think of doorways, you know, a drawing of a doorway at an angle, and what that might be, or imagining that as being bigger work, like a bigger painting, as a first step towards the painting. When you say it always starts with something you actually see in the world?

1:25:37Sometimes I'll get an inspiration from other artist's work. Like I started, there's a Danish artist that named Hammerjoy, William Hammer show, he painted these kind of sad looking interior paintings in 1900 or something, you know. And I've been somehow, I saw these, this Wayne's coating inside of a room and the kind of architecture around the doorway and all that and I, and I say, I don't know, maybe I'll visit that and see if I can push that along. And yet it's going to look nothing like his work. You know, but it'll be a trigger. It's an interesting thing when you see work that an artist does, it opens possibilities of what can happen.

1:26:28Yeah. Like, he made a left turn. What happens if we go right? But happens if we go up. Yeah, instead of down. Yeah. Maybe down is the way to go. Maybe. You can crash going down. Can't you? Yeah, but maybe that's good. Maybe we want to crash. Yeah, you never know. How often do you start something and then decide this is not going to work? Usually it's in the early stage. So I don't set aside a canvas and then start on it and then it's always a little different. But I can usually stop something early if I don't have some kind of hope for it. Yeah. most things, if you get off to a poor start, do you find that it corrects and turns into something that you like?

1:27:19Yeah, sometimes it's an accident that almost like falls on your foot and you don't realize what's happened. This accident is damn, it's good. You know, I mean, you put the wrong color on there, but wow, something is different and something happened that you either learn from or you hit upon or and you didn't start out that way, you didn't really want that to happen, but it's an accident, so accidents are great. People don't realize that accidents are vital part of things. How much of the whole enterprise would you say is intellectual?

1:28:05What did Yogi Beras say? baseball is 99 percent intellectual and the other half is physical.

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1:29:50Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are drawn.

1:30:03Where the hell is David?

1:30:10He is going on thisけれども