Richard Prince

32:55He said, tell me everything I did. So he's doing my act. I didn't get it. But the eye and like, where do I locate myself in that joke? Am I the psychiatrist? Am I the patient? The idea of doing my act is what is my act at this point. And it was the perfect joke. What is my act? Yeah. And I realized I don't have an act. So what is the psychiatrist even talking about doing my act? You know, now he's doing my act. Yeah. I have. Oh, so I have an act. So anyway, I write it out. And I pinned it to the wall. And I said to myself, can I do this? That's the question. It's not getting away with it. Can I call, can I invite someone up and say, this is my work.

33:57Yes. This little very modest. Yes. $10. Yes. That's the price that I put on the joke. The very first one. Yeah.

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35:49So the jokes are the first thing that's sold. You said the guy in Chicago sold. Sold, yeah. And then I started, I stayed in New York. At the time I was looking for any job I could support myself with. And I knew I wasn't going to, you know, make it with the jokes, but I felt that I had to do this. It was funny. The feeling I had was if I had walked into a gallery, and I had seen someone put handwritten jokes up on a wall and called them there are, I would have been jealous. And when I have that feeling, I know that's where the hour shouldn't be pointing. I said, well, wait a minute, I don't have to be jealous.

36:40I'm the one who's doing it. It actually happened. You know, and it happened very organically. It didn't happen overnight, obviously. It happened because I was, you know, drawing and miscalling the cartoons, jokes. And so, and also I had never seen this kind of subject matter, or even the radicality of the funneling of the information down to this little piece of paper. But yet the telling, tell me everything, that joke. I mean, yeah, I'm going to tell you everything. And I just sort of started ripping with the idea of the joke, and it just became okay. Let's paint. Another artist, of course, would have maybe done something very crazy, in terms of materials, and how it was presented.

37:40My idea was that the subject matter was radical. I didn't need to radicalize how it was presented. And presented it in an ordinary way. So I decided, what's more ordinary than stretchers, canvas and paint. Completely every day. And that's what I, and then I decided to learn how to silk screen, because silk screen at that point was the dead medium. Warhol had exhausted it. I was a huge fan, of course, of Warhol, but he had exhausted it. There was only one silk screening company left in New York that was on Verk Street. And there were no more silk screenings, because they were outlawed, because they were so toxic.

38:23So the only silk screening were hobby, things, which when you use them, they would fade away in three months. They would disappear. And of course, that's what happened to some of my jokes. When you talk about collectors, I had a collector call me up three months after he bought one of my jokes. He said, Richard, the joke is dissipating. And I said, well, I'll give you an option. And it's funny, this guy was Helbert Brooks's brother, the comedian's brother. And actually, he was one of the funniest, and he ran an ad agency. And he was one of the funniest guys I'd ever, I'd never met Helbert Brooks, but his brother was a big time while Sandra was a collector.

39:18He calls me up. Jokes disappeared. It's a ghost. And I said, well, tell you what, I'll buy it back. But there are only four of those. And I said, I used magic ink, disappearing ink. And I was, I mean, I completely like bullshit, that I were supposed to do this. But I said, don't worry, I'll buy it back, because there's only four. Of course, that's what collectors want to hear. Yeah. I suppose, I don't know. It's like the stamp that's printed upside down, you know? I was doing my ad. It's more collectible. Yeah, exactly. I was doing my act. Yeah. That follow. It's a question I had for you. If you had a choice of buying a Monet signed by Monet, or a Monet signed by Picasso, which one do you want?

40:07I probably the one by Picasso. Me too. I think, you know, you're getting, especially if it's an homage. Yeah, that's an interesting question. But yeah, I agree, I had the one by Picasso. It's interesting. Yeah. And I was thinking about, I know you've published well -known books that you have authored. Catching the Rye. Catching the Rye written by Richard Prince. Yeah. And you know, it's funny. That book, we took it to a number of printing presses. They wouldn't do it. And when it was very, very... Lickages. Yes. Exactly. So, I think it was published finally in China. I'm not sure. A really good friend of mine, John McQuinnie, who has since passed away.

40:58He was a bookseller. He operated in what I call the gray area, meaning he sold first editions, and he sold art that had a little to do with book art. He was trying to marry the two when he unfortunately passed away. But he was the guy who got that off the ground and saw that. And when we got the feel of that book, when you pick it up, I mean, I'm a bibliophile, which I guess, you know, I like books more than people. I guess that's the definition. And when we got the book back from the one that was first put, I could feel the weight, the paper, the dust jacket, everything was perfect. Trying to think what was different about.

41:49I think the only thing that was different was I doubled the price of what a normal catcher in the ride would sell for and it burns a novel. That's what was different. A lot of them. And other than that, it's the acceptance of Richard Prince. You know, is it only on the cover inside, too? Like on the page, the author's page. I think it's Richard. I think it's Richard Prince. I think we removed. We on the back of the first edition of a real catcher in the ride is the image of Salantrum. He hated that image and had it removed. So we didn't publish it either. But it's funny. Getting back to Dangerfield, I sold that book outside of Dangerfields on a blanket.

42:49I have pictures. I see. And I think Chris Rock is in the window looking out. Amazing. His poster or something like that. There was a park bench in Central Park where I would go and sell these types of certain situations and they would get around town that, oh, he's there and people would. I did that recently with Ted Kaczynski's book. I managed to buy the only copy of his biography that he wanted published, but his brother stopped it. So the manuscript became available to me. I don't know how. But I bought it called Truth vs. Lies or something. Anyway, we published it. I didn't ask permission or we just did it.

43:44The same thing with never gotten trouble with Kaczyne. To this day, there's been no repercussions, no repercussions with the Kaczynski. Lots of trouble though, subsequently with the problem with this idea of taking things that are out in public first where you see them out there. And I feel like they have the idea of something that's already been seen by other people, others in myself. It's already in the public. I need some reason. I need that. I don't know why in terms of my subject matter. I like because I feel like it can make a connection. I think. Maybe it's some sort of deniability because it's not the content's not coming from you.

44:38You're the author of the work, but you can't take responsibility for the thing that's underneath. Do you know what I mean? So I can be a picture of a person and that person goes out and kills somebody. That has nothing to do with you. You took the picture of it. You were a step removed from it. Well, the idea of taking a picture of someone, I actually in the mid -80s, I had an idea of how to take your portrait. And it was basically you would give me five pictures of yourself that you liked. Yeah. And give them to me. Yeah. I would look at them and I would pick one. I would refotograph it and that would be your portrait.

45:18Done by you. By me. By me. And I felt, no, two things happened there. Well, a couple of things. Can we bodies happy with that arrangement? That's a great arrangement. You don't have to come and sit for me. Yeah. You're not going to be disappointed. No. Because you're like, oh, five. You're like, oh, four. Great. And there's a kind of a time warp. You could give me a picture when you were 14 years old. Yeah, it's a great idea. Have a gone can't do that. It's a great idea. You know? Now, I thought I actually, when I wasn't making any money and this was 84, this is actually how I was working with Airoff.

45:51That's how I got to the archive of the, because then I started going through the archive of Warner Brothers and I did D .D. Ramon. I did the B -52s. I did Lorientus and I did David Byrneino. Whoever was on the label. Yeah. But I had permission and they own the, I wouldn't get any trouble with that. But I actually thought, this could be a business, you know, but it's still can. I'm very bad at business, but it didn't work out, you know? Unfortunately, but it was a great, I thought it was an interesting way to take someone's portrait. There's a bunch of them that are out floating around in the ether out there from 84, but the other weird thing in photography that I did, which no other photographer had done it, I made editions of two.

46:46Why two? Because it was still a reproduction. Not much of a reproduction. Yeah. But because the natural, most photographers do 250. 150. I mean, I remember Maple Thorpe. We had become friends before he passed away. He was always complaining to me about, you know, I said, well Robert, I mean, you make, first of all, you make a lot of photographs, but you make big editions. He says, yeah, why do you only make tunes? I said, well, you know, I started that with the Cowboys, even though it didn't sell, but I kind of knew the idea of two was a great, you know. It was also kind of way of not subverting, but kind of like dealing with the photography's naturalness.

47:40The camera has a lot of, you know, things that just go along, whether it's retouching, I would always use a commercial lab. And they all had their own way of describing the process. And I would use those terms sometimes to describe the work, because it was real. Yeah, it was technical. I didn't want to make anything up. Yeah, yeah. Or at least my way of making things up was a different. That's all. The idea of two is really interesting. And it also elevates photography through scarcity. Do you know like when you can make as many as you want, it can't be worth as many as if there's only two. You know, I remember buying a George Tyson photograph.

48:26And it was like the 250th copy of this particular image. And it was a lot of like, no. And most of my, what I would call straight photographer friends, not that I had that many, but they would have huge additions. I mean, I don't mind, you know, that's their business. You're doing a different model. Yeah, I mean, it just had to be, I just thought that, I just thought it was kind of cool in 1980 when I started the Cowboys. I had been doing additions of 10. But then I realized, well, none of them were selling. So it was the point. But so then I said, well, well, let's try to maybe, maybe again, the scarcity would, would help.

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51:00Back to the jokes. It started with you did it by hand and then it turned into silk screen and then is that the end of it? Now then it became stenciling, painting, and then I started reintroducing the cartoon on top of the joke. And I would put a joke that had nothing to do with the cartoon. I see. So the cartoon I would pick, there are certain situations that cartoonists use all the time. And one of them was a woman walking in on an infidelity. That's a standard. So what I would do is I would put that as the cartoon. But the joke underneath had nothing to do with the situation. So you would read the text and say it didn't make any sense.

51:46So I would do that. That's how I reintroduced the cartoon. Really interesting. So I did that for a while. Then I did some abstract paintings. And put a panel attached to a panel under the abstraction. And Han wrote a joke. Didn't silk screen. I just wrote it out again. Did that for a while. So 87 is when I, the galleries came knocking. Because they realized, well, this guy's got maybe like 10. I mean, I know what their motivation was. Backlog. And you know, there was an article in one of the art magazines published an article. So the phone started ringing because of this one article. I was completely like gumfounded.

52:47So people started visiting me in that little room. And anyway, gallery came maybe an offer. I went with the gallery. And it's funny. Our first show. I didn't. The woman, the guy I didn't tell her anything about the joke paintings. She thought she was getting a photography. And when I brought the work to the first show, she says, what are these? I said, well, this is my new work. She said a new work. She says, well, where are the photographs? I'm not doing photographs. So there was a bit of a, that's great. There was a bit of an impasse there. Because we had settled on in those days what they call the stipend, which is, I don't know if they have those anymore.

53:42But you would get a certain amount of money every month, supposedly against sales, kind of like what they do with music business as well. And so she was a little surprised. Here, I'm giving you this stipend. What am I supposed to do with these, by the way? I said, well, they're, they're jokes. Yeah. And I like that idea that if anything else, I started doing an act. I said, yeah, I would sell people would say, you know, I like that. Joe, I like this work. I would, and I would kind of like say, well, well, you like the painting or you're like the joke. Yeah, I would like start to kind of mess with people.

54:27Yeah. And like really like, because the other thing that would happen is you'd walk into a guy and people would be laughing, which didn't really happen. No, most show. So a lot of weird things happen because of the subject. Yeah. You know, and of course, then in Europe, where you couldn't speak, yeah, it would be abstract. I would say, well, it's abstract. It's abstract art. It's perfect. You can just look at it. Because I would, I started to, when I started the silkscreen, I started to pick two strange colors. One background and then the joke would be silkscreen with a very strange and I felt that the color was the cartoon.

55:15It was a substitute for this, you know, it was representational. So the colors became very important. And after a while, I did this thing where I would only work with like 18 jokes, like a routine. I mean, I was really, That was your act. That was, that was really, Would you do multiple of the 18 or no, only 18 and? I would do it, yeah, but different scale. Sometimes it would be small. Sometimes the same joke, like the psychiatrist joke was done very, a lot over the years. But in different ways. Because that's like one of your hit songs, that joke. That's like the hit song, exactly. Yeah, but I wouldn't have a hit song until, to tell you the truth, I've never, even though I was very lucky in the sense that, you know, it's not as if I haven't had museum shows and all that, which is, you know, it's okay.

56:22I mean, I'm not a big fan of being curated. But in talking about a hit show, I didn't have a hit show until I did. I don't know if you're familiar with the Instagram portraits. That was the first show that was, I felt, broke out, outside the art world. Wow. Where, and that was a new territory and new things to deal with, which I hadn't ever dealt with before. I'd always been inside world, you know, just 25 people were my audience, I felt, you know. I was never expecting to make art that would be on the news. Like, that was preposterous. That's not something that I would lawn or even, you know, this never occurred to me, but what's not realistic.

57:24No, it's not, and you can't plan that. You can't. You know, you could try, I mean, a lot of artists probably try, but, you know, anyway, that just happens. And I didn't even, at the time when I did the Instagram portraits, I was on Instagram for the first time. Because Instagram was probably pretty new, right? It was 2014. It had been a long, a little, a little while. A couple years. But I was on my, yeah, I was on my daughter's, what they called Tumblr. I don't even know if that was, I wasn't really into the social then. But I was specifically told by my kids, don't go on Instagram. And I didn't ask why.

58:08I just said, don't. It's not for you. So that's interesting. So I went on it, of course. And then that was the only invitation you needed. And it was like a brand new giant magazine. I went down the rabbit hole. And they lost me for a summer. I see why they told me not to go on. I became, I mean, it was like, it's just too addictive. And so it was like, again, having this thing in your room too. I always liked the idea that could I make art in my bedroom by myself. Right? Yeah. It's just so something simple. But I was on the phone one day with this woman. And I was talking to her. And I said, you know, she was a model, Jessica, something.

59:03Anyway, I was going through her feed. And of course, everybody's posting lots of pictures of themselves. So I'm getting to look at not just five pictures that you like of yourself. Some of these people were posting like hundreds of pictures of themselves. So I was going through her feed. And I said, Jessica, there's a, there's an image of you. You're, it looks like you're in somewhere in Switzerland. You're standing in front of a bridge of Bardot, a new warhol portrait in your skiat, skiat. And I said, it's fabulous. It's a, I don't know. I didn't care who took it. I don't know. I don't pay any attention to it.

59:44It takes photos. Of course. I said, this is an amazing photograph. You should, you know, make a portrait of this. And she simply said, why don't you make a portrait. And then a clip of course, I should make a portrait of it. And that's how it started. Amazing. Yeah, just like again, one of these things, the universe just allowed it to happen. You know, yeah, it just keeps, now, if I was a musician, I would have still been back trying to figure out how to play F sharp on the guitar. Yeah. Or, you know, there was never the arrow. But with the art, these things just kept happening. It doesn't happen very often when you, when it does happen.

1:00:32And it just, it makes sense. It kind of checks all the boxes. And that, when she said that. And of course, my niece, I'm so lame sometimes, told me how to screen save. Back in those days, I'm a screen save. What's this? Yeah. Right? And then, the image would appear on your phone in a grid and it was organized. I said, this is, this is, because I had stopped taking pictures because of this analog shit, they got rid of slides. I love, I only photographed with slides. Slide was my go -to because it didn't take up any room. You didn't have to like, grant a slide. You could, it was both a positive and a negative.

1:01:24It's very convenient. So, when they got rid of that, I just dropped, you know, I kind of like, I did the upstate thing. I took, you know, I just, the digital, I couldn't move into the digital camera world. This was too weird for me. But when she showed me the screen save, it just opened up a whole new, what I call post place, meaning, I can be anywhere I make art at any time under any circumstances. And I'm not on social media, much anymore, but when I did her portrait, then it started, okay, what's my, what is my contribution in terms of like, and I realized it was the comments underneath. So, you would just write a comment?

1:02:17So, I would, I, and I started basically, not psychic jujitsu or kind of joy -seeing riffs. And but I would, I would do this kind of like, what I call bird talk. What would be an example? Just crazy sentences that I would make up that made no sense. Most of the time I would sit with the portrait I would be watching TV, and I'd wait for the ads, and the ads would say something I'd write it down, because it would make no sense at all. And unrelated. And totally unrelated to the image. Most of them were in the beginning, because a logarithm would change sometimes, and I would only be, was allowed to like, maybe make a sentence or really quick.

1:03:07It's almost kind of like a jazz sentence. Would you make a sentence and then take a screenshot right away? Because otherwise it would move down the feed, right? Well, I had, yeah, but I figured out how to get rid of, that was the other thing. I figured out how to get rid of all their comments. So mine would move up. How? I don't know how. I can't to this day, I don't know how, how I, how I, how I, how I, how I, at that time, you could figure it out. I figured it out, and I don't know if you can do that anymore. I'm not sure. What I was afraid of, which I didn't know at the time, were they also losing it on their feed.

1:03:44I see. But they weren't. I was only on my feed. Oh great. Then what I would do is I would look at their comments, and sometimes I would keep a really interesting comment. Along next to yours. Along next to mine. But mine would always be the bottom one. I see. And mine would be the last sentence. And some of them when I look back at them, I mean, for, I had to be convinced to show these images, you know, after the first one, did you think, okay, I'm off and running, I'm going to do a bunch of them now. I know. I did a whole bunch. And you know, I didn't have any friends. I went on, whoever had a feed.

1:04:23Yeah. I did my friends. I did people I didn't know. Yeah. I did people that maybe I would want to know. I did people that it's hard to know to explain why I would pick someone. Like the very first, how did the people show up in that very first show? Why, why those people? Yeah. Yeah. Some of them were my friends. Some of that knew. But mostly it was about the way their portraits appeared. To me, they would only appear that way because they were on Instagram. So something, it was a very strange way they would show up. Sometimes with friends and it was all about maybe it was this, this, this, and thing.

1:05:10It was a very different looking type of portrait just to begin with. Yes. Regardless of what I did with it. And my transfer was simply, you know, I had the option of making it into a photograph, but I decided on it was a very new type of canvas that had just come off. Very white and very tightly wound. And when I saw that reproduced, and I saw how the ink used with the canvas. Is it like a laser print? No, it was just an inkjet. Inkjet? Yeah. Inkjet had started to become almost ubiquitous. How big were the images? The first size, I think, was like 48 wide and maybe 54 inches tall. Now, of course, I can make them tall and I still make them not so much anymore, but I did a book recently called New Painting where I took images of just people painting with their backs to their painting.

1:06:18A lot of women, some men and just, you know, at some point, like five or six years ago, there was just so many people painting, it seemed to me. Like, I just needed to capture that idea. And everyone who was painting the same painting, it seemed. So I started doing that. We published a book. Again, 300 copies. Yeah, something like that. Or all the books like that. Yeah, sometimes there were a thousand. Sometimes they never go into, I don't know if I don't think they've ever gone into a second printing. I've never done that. But now they're first small. I like that. But the, yeah, the, the Instagram portraits got immediately.

1:07:07There was tension and there was a crime by my kids. They got hammered at school. I mean, it came out. It became a thing. Yeah. And I didn't quite understand it. Did people not like it? Oh, the hate was unbelievable. Oh, my God. And then the money. Yeah. Right. It became a factor. And of course, then the people in the fact that you were selling them for a lot of money because they were desirable, collectible things. And people in them who had no idea that they were in them. And it heard about how much they were selling for it. I got that. It blew up into a shit store. It really became an issue.

1:07:59The way I described my before and after is that before I owned, I owned half a stereo. No one would sue me. I could do anything fucking wanted. Nobody was looking. No. And in some ways, the before was great because we were anonymous. To just doing my thing. Yeah. And I didn't care. Yeah. And if people didn't like it, it was okay. It doesn't matter. I mean, I was just going to do it regardless because there was no no repercussions. No, nothing. Even when I did my own crazy gallery with the Brook Shields portrait, that was kind of cloak and dagger stuff that was kind of fun, lowery side. I called it even lower man hat.

1:08:45And it was really ravington back then was really bad neighborhood. And to go to that gallery, which was sometimes open, sometimes not open. Who was behind this gallery? I had a beard. This woman, you know, supposedly running it. Amazing. But in those days, the idea of like being sued would never occur to me. I mean, who I didn't know. I didn't have anybody to care. No, yeah. Right. But once, but then the money, the money thing, that's the only reason why there's litigation in the first place. Forgetting the litigation for a minute, you put up a show. Everybody's talking about it. People hate it.

1:09:31How are you feeling? I got mad and really pissed off and went to the gallery. And three days before the show was supposed to come down, I took the show down myself because I was really pissed that they didn't say extended for a next few, two weeks. And I left the gallery. Yeah, I left. Yeah. Gagosian that day. Wow. I was so pissed off. Wow. But they didn't see that something was happening. Something let it happen. Yeah. Let it let it. Yeah. Because first of all, I didn't ask to show these. I never asked. They asked me. Yes. I didn't ask you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never asked anything from a gallery.

1:10:21But if it's a hit, but I never had a hit. Yeah. I never had this much reaction. Let people enjoy it. And this much drama. Yeah. And the, what tree they wanted to take it down. I don't think it wasn't Larry. It was the people who worked under him. And I think I don't want to even, I kind of know why. But I think there was some, you know, it wasn't about a scheduling thing. They could have extended it. Yeah. But when I heard that there was no I walked in with a video. And I had two assistants. And we just, and they end the gallery assistant. Yeah. They were running down. What are you doing? What's going on?

1:11:07And I wouldn't speak. Great. I just took them. What a great story. And we filmed it. We filmed it. Amazing. And they, and no idea what was going on. And I just took them off the wall. And were they already sold? They all sold. They also, but you took them back. I don't know what we did. I'm sure eventually the people got them. Yeah, the people got them. But I took them. I, but you didn't want them to show it anymore because they weren't being respectful. Yeah. Well, I'm not even sure they knew what was going on. I knew they knew what was going on. Yeah. I'm sure if I had talked to Larry, which I wasn't.

1:11:44I wasn't really in communication that much. But I didn't want to ask. No. Because I don't want to be beholden. I don't want to hold anybody. Of course. At all. Ever. I understand. So I just thought rather than wait for it to be over, I would, I want it to be over on my terms. Yes. But what was so strange is that we kind of made up in three months after that. They did the, I think it was the Freezard Fair in New York. They did the whole booth. And that created an even bigger shit storm because the price had tripled. And that's what caused. It was Instagram again. Instagram. Backed by popular demand.

1:12:29And it really looked actually in an Art Fair setting. You look good. You can do that. They look good on a wall for some reason. I didn't, I wasn't convinced. I had to be convinced to show them it all. But the minute we hung them in this particular gallery, there was in the back of a bookstore on the ground floor of Madison Avenue. There was something about the reflection, the scale of, you had to walk through a bookstore. So you're already, there was already text and images. So it was a very seamless trip into the next room and it made sense. And they kind of wallpapered the room. Great. I do, you know, when you said collector, I do have one collector that I love and revere.

1:13:24Irving Blum. If you go to his apartment in Los Angeles, he has 20 of these things hanging in his house. He's like, he's, and for him, I've interviewed him. I've videotaped him. I've talked to him, been a friend of his for quite some time. To me, he's, he's not just a collector. He's, he's a, he's at a different level in terms of, you know, walking, it's all, it's a different curation. Yeah. Yeah, he, he was the one, he pessed a lot of the California artists off. But that soup can show, he, you know, there's, it's almost like there's another side to that coin where if an artist does something as well, say, like, like say 62, when you walk into an artist's, well, he didn't have a studio at a townhouse.

1:14:25And they're on leaning against the wall as a painting of a soup can in 1962 or 61, like, you know, this high and there are several of them. There are all different flavors. You have to like, what? You got me up town. First of all, you, it's insulting. It's, it's almost like, what do you know, why you waste is, is, so it, the other side of that is someone reception. It's not a compliment. It's almost like it's, it's almost a way to, of completion. Yeah. Because it wasn't, yeah, there's the soup cans and they're leaning against the wall. But it wasn't completed until Irving came along and decided, I want to show this.

1:15:17Yeah. He had to have as big as perspective, as, as Warhol had to, you know, because he brought them to California. Not only did he show them, he showed them on a shelf. It's a great idea. I didn't know that. Yeah. And he sold the story that Irving tells is Dennis Hopper bought two. I thought he only bought one, but Irving said he bought two. And that was it. And Irving realized at the end of the show that they should all be together. He called up Dennis, who luckily I got to meet just before he passed away. Called him up. Dennis agreed. And then Irving called Andy up and said, I want to buy them all.

1:16:18Would you take $60 a month for the next couple of, and then he said, that was like that kind of money, that kind of terms. And that started his relationship with Warhol. And then the next show he did, I was the silver Elvis. Amazing. Which Warhol just sent out on a huge role. And Irving said, Andy, what am I supposed to do? He says, oh, or just cut them up. That's why there's some, there's single, some doubles and threes. Because Irving cut them. Unbelievable. I mean, stories like that make me feel so good about what I do and what I could possibly do. And to get back to that time life building, what else I discovered long after I left was which is unbelievable is that Warhol's empire, the film was shot from an office building in the time life building, which is.

1:17:29And that was an overnight thing. Someone had to get, he had to have some kind of weird permission to get into that building. I wish I had known that at the time. I'd love to go into that office building, that office and look out. Where did they shoot that? Because for me, I've always said I would not, I want to make a movie. People said, why don't you make, I said, well, you know, I'm not going to make a movie until I can make something as interesting as empire. So again, full circle now, I have made a movie. It's six hours and 47 minutes. It's called deposition. What's it up? It's my deposition from my, for the Instagram case.

1:18:18You know, because I don't know anything about the lawsuit. Okay, so I got sued. But I mean, one of the two of the people in this. I had already been sued. I had taken some pictures of rastopharians and made them into paintings years ago. bought a book of rastas and say, Bart, and live with the book for three or four years and drew in it and cut it out. Didn't have paying attention to the author. I didn't know who the author was. I didn't, I just liked the images, but he sued me, which in hindsight, yeah, he should have. I mean, I should have asked. I could have easily avoided it. But I didn't think that way.

1:19:00I didn't think about asking permission. I never have. I just didn't think that's part of the making. Well, the problem with asking permission is they could say no. Women, you don't get to make your art. I guess no fun. Oh, I would have done that anyway, though. Even if they said no. It's like the building inspector. But anyway, knowing what I knew from the first lawsuit, yes, I knew from the second that when you give a deposition, you get videoed. And so I knew, I'm not even sure if I can even, it's still cool to say stuff like this. I don't know, because we settled finally. I had had it this past.

1:19:43It had taken a toll on me eight years. It takes a toll. Yeah, it's not just mentally. It's, it's horrible. But on the back of my mind, I said, I'm going to have this video. Because when I went, I knew I was going to be videoed. Yeah. And I knew it was a bit of a performance. Yeah, I guess I can say that. I think you can. You're supposed to tell, you know, I was tell, I did tell the truth. Of course. And you could tell the truth and do a performance that you're supposed to look straight at the videographer. You're not supposed to look left or right. That's what the lawyers say. And when the lawyer asks you a question, you answer.

1:20:22But at times, I would answer their question and take up to 15 minutes. And they came a point in the deposition where the lawyer stood up, screamed, would you tell your client to stop this talking? And then of course, I shut down and just look straight and it's in my deposition. And you hear them arguing. I like the idea you can walk in at any time if it's shown. And it's just me talking about art. Yeah. That's it. And I think as a movie, we're planning on showing it soon and wrong of all. In this little chapel. Great. To the friend of mine. Do you know when? I think Easter. We were going to call it deposition row because there's a mention.

1:21:24They were trolling me before I did something about Dylan and in desolation row and I said deposition row. I said in a couple of days, I'm going to go and I'm going to be in deposition row. And they wanted to know what I meant by that. So I start, but I think it's cleaner just to call it deposition. Both are good. Yeah. Both are good. We'll say, I don't know. There was talk we were going to screen it at the Metro graph about a year ago. I decided, I don't know. I'd rather I like the idea of doing it way first way away. Yes, yes. You know, on a little box. Great. You know, I think we've cleared all the legal hurdles because depositions are public.

1:22:17My first deposition is people publish them. But I never saw that coming. Well, that's the other thing about where does this go? So yeah, I get to have a movie. That's crazy. Well, finally, people can stop asking me when I'm going to make a movie. You know, because the idea of making a movie to me is so collaborative. I don't think I could do that. So how is it different when there's someone there? What do you think? Well, it's a lot. When someone is with me, the last time I had real assistance, I had a studio in Harlem. I had it for about seven years just before COVID hit. And the great thing about having it depends on what you're making.

1:23:12But I was making paintings.

1:23:17The great thing is you could make a mess and you don't have to clean it up. That's the advantage. And it sounds stupid, but it's really like you don't have to clean your own brushes. And you don't have to. It's all prep work. You know. But and my idea about making art has always been, I never wanted it to be a job. Once it becomes labor, I get so detached and bored. And I want to move on to the next body of work or another process. Because I have no desire to work for a living, basically. You think you can get to the point where just having the ideas enough and you don't even have to make it? That too.

1:24:18You can, you know, file it away in your head and live with it in your head. That's an interesting point, especially with our experiences and our lifetimes, I think, because of the histories of what we've done. I think we can actually sort of do that now. Because I know that I've become more patient. I don't have to rush. I don't have to like make a painting. And you're right. Sometimes I'm just wondering where the light is. You know, where do you have to necessarily actually? Why bring it into the world? It's still there.

1:25:12I guess the benefit of bringing it into the world is that then you can share it with someone else. And I don't think there's any way to do it otherwise. Yeah, you can just share it with your one friend or even share it with yourself. Just to, you know, I mean, I make a lot of things that I need to make just to see what they look like. And then most of the time, for a long time now, I'm at least able to make things and put them away for years. Like the work that I'm showing you in Mafa. I mean, it's been in the racks for maybe almost 15 years. And I said, let's bring, you know, I have a winter, I call my winter studio upstate.

1:26:03I very, very go up there anymore. You used to live there pretty full time, no? I lived there full time. I left New York for a little while. How many years? I left 95 and I met up my wife up there and we had kids and I found it exotic. I found it. I'd never been out of the city. I found it bizarre. We could grow up. Well, I dropped outside of Boston in the summer. I mean, I came, it was funny too because Panama is now in the news. That's where I was born. I was born in the canals. How did you come up for you to be born in Panama? My father worked for the government and so did my mother. What did they do?

1:26:50Do you know what they did? To tell you the truth, I knew what my mother did. She worked for the OSS, which was pre -CIA. Yeah. That she told me. But my father. I was never very close to them, but I was never very close to him. But he was a nice guy, but he was just, I never really knew what he did. But that's how I came to be. He was stationed there. So we moved around a little. Your brothers and sisters and sisters? I have a sister and not - A little older. A little older. A couple of years. How did you really ship with her? I haven't talked to her in a long, long time, but she's very important to me because she introduced me to cultural things at the time.

1:27:36She was a couple of years older. And would introduce me to things that, you know, like say, I was in the eighth grade. She was a sophomore in high school or something. And all of a sudden I did turn down to. But anyway, the upstate thing, I think it was for about, I don't know for about some years and then we moved back. Yeah. I have a body shop where we make, when I wanted to paint, I wanted to paint something that was already painted. I wanted to move on from the refotograph. And I always liked the way certain way that cars were painted by teenagers. Where they would metal flake, stripe, put a flame, mostly bondile.

1:28:26They would put nine coats of, but they would leave the hood like completely bonked. And I would see that on the street and I said, that looks great. Why is Bondo so good looking? It's just, it's just great. Why? I don't know. There it is. It is. And everyone knows it. It's like, why aren't all cars Bondo? Well, I set up a shop. After I moved on from time life, I moved to California for a little while and I discovered lifestyle magazines. And, you know, like sunset magazine, or like, you know, surf, by turn, heavy metal. Yeah. Even it seemed like in these giant magazines, I was just mad for magazines.

1:29:11After time life, I loved paintings too. But I noticed in the car magazines in the back, they were advertising for car parts, where you could send away for a particular part. And I was very interested in the biggest part was the hood at the time. There was this company in California and, you know, for, for not so much money and the idea that you could send away for it and would arrive in the mail. It's like saving up their box. The car, it's so funny. You could order a specific one. Well, of course, because everyone else was buying it to fit the car they had. But I was buying it because it had a certain kind of like subtext.

1:29:53Like the Dodge, a 1968 Dodge Challenger was in bullet. That's what the bad guys drove. Or 1970 Dodge Challenger was in vanishing point. That's what Barry Newman drove. So even if nobody got the painting, the people who picked up the war, the shippers were, they would go crazy. They didn't know anything about art, but they knew about what a challenge it was. And I just loved that. Yeah. I just loved the connection I made with that side of the art. Had nothing to do with painting at that point. It just had to do with, yeah, they knew. Yeah, the thing you chose to paint, it was almost like a secret language going on beneath the surface.

1:30:38The Mason's handshake. Insiders. Inside world. Yeah. Which is a publication I published once. Inside. It's just basically, yeah. So we have, you know, talking culturally about what you share and what you know. And you might not even know necessarily why something is cool, but you know it's cool. And you know the other people who know it's cool, know it's cool. And then they add on even something you didn't even know about. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. And so it's, it's a whole. Additional conversation going on. That's great. Yeah. I think it was two years ago, you know, a show of the hoods. They never went over very well.

1:31:27People still didn't quite get them. But I started, you know, painting them at first was very specific car colors that came out of the factories. Again, just more non -fiction to them, as much as I could. And then I, then when I moved upstate, I built a proper body shop, hired some real motor heads. And we went to town. So I'm just saying this idea of lock or juxtaposition or when you walk into the studio and something happens, like we basically had a junkyard at some point, you know, hundreds of cars. And one day I walked in and there were like, there were these four doors that were leaning up against the wall and I looked at them.

1:32:14I said, oh, that's the doors. I said, don't throw those away. Let's weld them together in a row. And the Chevy and Polo is going to be gym, that's gym Morrison. The other, the other three, I'm not sure what car they came out of. But that day, walking into the studio, that kind of experience from me, what it's all about. Okay, I got it that day. Yeah. Right. And it was so late. But it's happening every day. It's always happening. It's so dumb. It's so, it was so kind of like not maronic, but for a couple of years, I've been walking around this stuff and I never made the connection. Yeah. When do you make the connection?

1:33:06When did you make the gym Morrison connection? I don't understand that one myself. Well, I just, you know, it was just the four, you know, I looked at the four doors. Oh, the four doors. I'm going to call them the doors. And I said, that's the piece. I see. And it's the doors. I, we welded them together. We did one going right and we did one going left. And I started to become, and then I got obsessed with doors. But anyway, those are the kinds of things that wouldn't happen with me with the guitar. Yeah. That obviously it happens with people who play the guitar. Yeah. Yeah, a discovery happens.

1:33:50And, but a realization. Yeah, I mean, I, I know that I played in a band, the Glenn Bronca band. Everybody played with Glenn Bronca, every artist I know. He would come over to your heart and say, this is what you hit one note. And as long as you can do this, he had like seven guitarists on the stage. And I remember one night we opened Erwin Plaza. Great. Laurie Anderson was on the bill. This was about maybe the fourth or fifth time I played in public with Glenn. Glenn was, you know, very serious. He really took his, you know, it was his way, the highway, you know. And I had brought along a friend who was a real rock and roller to fill out the guitar.

1:34:39And that evening, something happened on stage where I looked at my rock and roller friend and he looked at me and something was happening with the sound. And we both recognized we came up, came up stage. So should we tell Glenn what we just thought we heard? And I said, he doesn't want to hear that. He wants to be full of glass. He wants to be, you know, he wants to be taken seriously. He doesn't want any kind of like references to rock and roll or anything like that. But what was interesting, I just heard a new kind of rock and roll. I thought, I thought, but I didn't want to say anything to him.

1:35:18Do you remember the name of the piece? Because I want to see if we can find it. I don't remember the name. All I remember is that I quit that night. Because I couldn't talk to the guy. Because the next day who joins the band is thirst and more. Lee Ronaldo. And I've asked Lee, hey, I know they probably didn't stay for so long. But they probably, they did hear something. And then of course, they turned it into Sonic. I think that's what happened. So Sonic was an outgrowth of Glenn Broncos band. I think that's probably my, you know, because I was hanging around with Kim. Take a look, see if any of these songs look like the song.

1:36:01Just because I'd love to listen to a, I haven't listened to Glenn. His records were put out by nine, nine records. That was the way that I learned about the ascension. Let's listen.

1:38:05I think what I think, and, and, and there's some kind of camel I feel it just grew out of that. You know, is there a way of Richard Prince loud song? Let's see. It's the only song I've put out in my life. Let's see.

1:38:35This is the only song that I've ever done that I hit like.

1:39:28I think it's the only song I've ever done that I've ever done that I hit like.

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1:43:32But he also knew that I was kind of a want to be songwriter. And my goal was to try to write a hit song. And so he brought me out to California and he put me, put me together with some of the session guys from the Beach Boys. He was a complete nutty thing to do. You know, sometimes I would hear these melodies in my head, but I could just, again, I'd hit a wall. But anyway, I would go back to my bedroom. What I wanted to do was just record my own stuff in my bedroom, on my own. So I set up, I had two cassettes. So, and I had a keyboard. And I would just play the keyboard and record it on one cassette.

1:44:26And then I would play what I recorded on the cassette and play more keyboard, but recorded on the second cassette. Great. And then I would just go back and forth. And I just, I came up with this thing. And when I heard it, I just said, you know, that's, you know, that's it. This was 1985. I'm not going to do anything more. I don't want to do anything more. And I told Jeff that I'm not going to stop. That's going to ever happen. But I kept that. I always thought, I just thought it was loud. Yeah. It also sounds spiritual. It sounds like maybe church music. Yeah. It just happened. Yeah. Were you playing it loud in the room when you were playing it?

1:45:15It's, I don't know. Because it sounds loud. It sounds loud. Yeah. It does sound loud. Maybe has to do with the cassette recorders compression or something. I have no idea. But it was all it had always existed on a cassette. And, you know, and over the years, of course, I've met, you know, thousands of musicians, really well -known musicians. I love speaking, you know, to musicians. And you know, I've had, you know, the opportunity to actually sit down and they want to talk about art. Yeah. You know, they don't want to talk about music. Yeah. And everybody's an artist. But I, you know, that's fine.

1:45:57I'll look at, you know, whether it's Ronnie Wood or Johnny Depp or, you know, Polamacartney, you know, or, you know, Dylan, I think Dylan, to me, is the more accomplished artist. I think I got to call it one day from his manager years ago. Would you want to meet Bob? What's the meaning? What do you, what do you think? What's this? This is some sort of lunch of Frank. He says, yeah, he's not. He wants to meet him. I said, God, yeah, fine. So this short story was that he was playing at the beacon. And as he does, usually in the, he says, he's out in the jersey, go to this stand at the small town out in Jersey.

1:46:50I said, all right, that's where I go. He says, yeah, that's where you go. And so I go out there and I pull into this like, rattle hotel and I go into the lobby and there's that one of his handlers there. And I figured I'm going to go up to a room. He says, no, no, he's out in the parking lot. I said, oh, all right. We walk out in the parking lot and he's in an RV. That's where he's staying. And it's kind of like, not very nice looking. You know, it's just a regular beacon up, which he drives. He loves to drive. Interesting. So I mean, that in itself, yeah, it was not me for a little, of course, I'm nervous as hell.

1:47:36Yeah, right. You know, you know, scary. He wants to talk about these publicity pictures of all the work. I guess he had seen me. I had started working with publicity pictures in the mid 80s, but then really got into them in the late 90s and started collecting more and just organizing like memorabilia. I love the way I would go into a memorabilia store. And something would be elaborately framed. It would be a signature. And I just love the formalism of the presentation. You know, you would get this photograph that they would like match double matte, but then they would like they were selling the autograph.

1:48:25Yeah. Yeah. And so I kind of wanted to mimic that. And I just had a, you know, it was just again, another journey, another body of work. I don't know where it would lead. I don't know. I got you to Bob Dylan, but it got a call from Dylan. And of course, we sat there for like hours. And he was sort of like scoping out the idea of like what he didn't want to talk about the art world and how does it operate? I mean, he had shows in his paintings. And I wasn't aware of his paintings at the time, but I soon, then I visited him again in California. And what I was very impressed was his the gates that he makes these phenomenal.

1:49:12I just think the subject for Dylan, the idea, he brought me to this, I think it was in Santa Monica his studio. And why in all this iron work that he collects and he welds and he makes these gates. And I just thought, first of all, I looked at it and I said, that is great folk art. Yeah. I really, and I just, it just, the marriage that he made with the subject, the paintings, okay, I wrote about the paintings. I wrote about the fact that it almost seemed like his studio, he was, the term I came up with, witness protection. He had that vibe like he could just, if he needed to escape out the back door, five seconds flat, he could.

1:50:05It wasn't an artist studio. It was a strange looking studio, but the gate was really phenomenal. Then he did have a couple of shows, he had a couple of shows with Cagoseon and I helped out. I kind of helped, I didn't really help, but I became friends with his manager who I used to visit his offices and talked to him about the memorabilia that he was organizing. And the painting, I just was knocked out that, you know, the original painting from music from Big Pink and self portrait painting was there. Well, you could photograph those. I have done many. You could refotograph those. I've done variations of those two paintings, but I think, yeah, that's probably, the idea of becoming friends or, or at least not friends, but acquaintances, with, you know, a musician like that.

1:51:09I've seen your thing with Paul McCartney and Paul and I get together like, we get together at least once a year for the last, I don't know, or whatever. And it gets easier. I get very nervous. He's like, I have this thing where it's like, but this past August, because he likes to come to the studio. He likes to see what's going on. Yeah. Because he likes to paint. He has very good friends with Dekooning, who is one of my favorite artists. And we could really communicate on that level, just visually. And you know, I know that he just had his photographs shown that he took in 64, he showed him a Brooklyn.

1:52:05But this past visit was really interesting, because he played me some of his new music that he was just rolling around with. And then of course, any split and went on this big tour. And I guess it's over now. But to have conversations with, I think with artists who have, you know, their feet and maybe a couple of different worlds in the arts, you know, whether it's, you know, maybe they're making movies, but they're playing music too, whether they're painting. And you know, I kind of like that. Yeah. Because one is usually experimental. The most part one is really solid is what they do for a living.

1:52:50But it's nice to share the studio experience with with a musician. Different than sharing it with an artist. I think so. Yeah. They're looking at it in ways in which another artist, you know, when I get together with someone like Christopher or something, I'm like, I just went to his, he had a show downtown in Wall Street, recently, took over a floor and abandoned office floor and put his work up. And it was really successful. You know, whether it was the windows looking out, the textures, the leftover, the wires hanging from the ceiling. And it all figured into the work. It was an you know, you created an environment where he took over an existing environment.

1:53:46And I've done this before and he's known about that. It was the first house. The first house I did out in L .A. It was a tear down. We were able to lease it for three months. That was an incredibly fun. And I met a lot of artists who, because I stayed for three months in L .A. to do the project. And it wasn't in a gallery. I treated the house like a domestic environment. Can you get the idea to do that? I just like the idea of showing work in a domestic with furniture, with the idea of hanging a work in a kid's bedroom. Yeah. The idea of having outdoor space like a garage or a driveway or a park a car.

1:54:36Yeah. And then tearing the house apart. And then sheet rock. I loved sheet rock like like Vando. You know, for some reason when I love the idea of sheet rocking, taping, but don't paint it. Leave the tape. Yeah. I've done three houses, decided second house, which was up near my property. But that was actually bought by the Guggenheim, the hall plates. Amazing. All the hoods, there were all hoods in that house. And then it got hit by lightning. What are the odds? What are the odds? But it was like a gift. But the house was existing. House was existing in a field of grass. It was abandoned. And I've been driving by it for years.

1:55:26It was just a simple ranch house. But it was floated in a sea of grass. And I said, I'd love to do something with that house one day. Yeah. One day I saw it was your cell. Perfect. The sun, I guess the dad had passed away, bought the house. And I just started doing my thing. You know, I put any works in it or you worked with what was there? I worked with the rooms. And I worked with what was going on the outside and really changed the shape. I didn't change the way you got up to the house, the driveway. I didn't work with the lawn. I parked a car and put it on cinder blocks because everybody has gold cars in there.

1:56:14I basically did what I was introduced to when I went first when I went upstate. Because when I went upstate, as I said, I didn't really know what it was like to live in the country. What I soon realized, you know, there's a basketball hoop and almost everybody's yard. There are these tire planters. I mean, there was all these kinds of things that I just started treating people's yards as a page and a magazine. I started photographing people's yards and what was in the yards. And then I got my own yard, that house. And I treated the house as an upstate. And I decided I put a lot of different things in before I decided, let's just do hood.

1:56:59And then I don't know what happened. I'm not sure why it was sold to the Guggenheim.

1:57:11I'm I think they were trying to go through all the legal things to get it access. So they had to park. You know, they had to do a parking hand. They never got to that stage because they removed all the hoods except one, which was mine. And then my painting, which I did not sell them, as part of what I call my Sid Vicious painting, which was this thing I had bought it, a sex pistol, almost kind of like a a shawl. It's done cheap fabric. I bought it at a flea market and I stretched it and I painted everybody out except Sid. I just thought, you know, I like Sid, I don't know. I love his version of my way.

1:57:57I mean, that to me was just phenomenal. And I finally, and I did eventually meet like look Lauren, who was a real character, but that burned when the light I got a call. How's yeah, I mean, what? But luckily, the only thing that was the Sid and my hood, which was no big deal because I could just repair it. And then I left it there. And I think we read and negotiated where I bought the house back from the, and some weird deal for like a dollar or something. And it's the house and it's still there. Well, there's very little there. The car is still there. Yeah. The 78 beautiful view. I'm not sure what to do with the property.

1:58:46Maybe the ruin is the most interesting thing. It could be. It's like going to Rome. It might be. And it's all been, you know, fairly documented. Yeah. There's been a, I published a book called Second House. I mean, and that's the thing about books is they have a way of hanging around, publish 300 copies. I mean, I have my own publishing company and we publish, and I was 300 copies and we give them away. You know, we're just giving a couple of book, you know, really interesting bookstores. Yeah. Who liked the books. Yeah. When did you start doing that? The publishing. Oh, a while ago. It's just come to call Fulton Rider.

1:59:25And I just decided, I've never been interested in this idea of the catalog resonate kind of. I just don't see how that's going to be possible with me. I know people have tried it and people are trying to do it right now. You used to make too much stuff. Well, I just don't see how you're going to organize it. Yeah. I mean, you know, unless you want like 25 vault, I mean, I make bodies of work. I always have.

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2:01:30Do you think of yourself as a curator?

2:01:36Upstate. I've curated a bunch of buildings over the past 30 years. It's almost like a little village now. It's almost a mini -marfa. What I'm planning to do is I want to do a show called collection where I've taken other artists' work.

2:02:03I've paid homage to them. In that sense, there's a bit of curating going on. I don't have a space for that show yet, and I don't know when I want to do that show. What I've done with the homage is, for the warhol, it was, to me, it was an interesting warhol because it belonged to Alice Cooper. It was one of the electric chairs, which of course was interesting because and we did a trade. All I did was I did a z on the whole thing. Him owning it, shepp is in there, his manager, and then every electric chair that's supposedly out there. Because there was some kind of question about this one, but I don't care.

2:03:02It's Alice Cooper. And I believe he got it from Warhol. So that is part of the curating. If you were going to say because that's my idea of paying homage, and then I have a Pollock where it's a photograph of him by very well -known photographer, but I bought a cancelled check from Pollock made out to the IRS, but it has his signature. So that's Pollock. Then DeCunning, I bought one day, I was talking to this, do you know the Mnuchin gallery? Yeah, he's a strange guy. Anyway, he kind of was courting me for a while, and I love his space on the uprisah. I lived like four doors down from his gallery.

2:04:00It's a beautiful space. It does fantastic shows. Very focused on what I like to focus on at the type of art. So I was up there and he was talking. He wanted to do a show with me, but I just wasn't sure I could do something. Work with him. But I'm sitting in his office, and he has one of the ugliest DeCunning drawings I've ever seen in my life. Great body, but the face looked like someone drew it after. And I said, what's the end of his talk? It's big. It's the story with this drawing. I said, how much? I knew exactly. I wanted to buy it, and then I wanted to do, I wanted to reproduce the paper, the image, and then I wanted to put my own face in like 15 of it, and then line them up.

2:05:02So that's the DeCunning. But when you buy it, you can do whatever you want. You buy the real one. Yeah. And you buy the warhole. You have the war end my scene. Yes. And then I got a Picasso from 1948, and I've rift on that, and you buy the all -ten, but you also get at least you get the Picasso. Yeah. That's great. So the idea is like, I'm going to curate. I would say I'm more of a collector. Tell me everything you collect. I collect books. I started collecting paperbacks in the East Village. Based on the covers or mostly the Beats. I started with Carolec and that kind of stuff. And I just learned more.

2:05:59I became friends with people who sold first editions. I just haunted and hang out. And then I met other book collectors and I learned and I went to the Antiquarem book fairers and years and years of just studying and knowing what was going on. Because I didn't start to read until very loud, very dyslexic. I didn't read until I was like 22, but when I started, it flipped. I just started being able to read. And I just started reading like everything. But art, sometimes I go through periods where I go kind of crazy and I buy a lot of art. You know, the problem now is we're trying to set up a foundation.

2:06:51In terms of collecting my own, my friends, I'll now I'll call them up and I say, Hey, where would you like your art to go? Let's say it's the Institute of Chicago or Mocha. It's not as easy to just think, it's kind of donate. It's a whole process. It's a bit of a, it's a little defeating. You know, you call them up and you say, Hey, I've got, you know, it's also not what you want to spend your time doing. No, not at all. But I think it's better than, you know, certainly better than selling. But it wasn't making art that really turned me on the most when I was like 19 or something. I just come back from the European humanities thing, which I never attended.

2:07:41I just part of this thing that I would went around to all the museums on a year and I would draw the, how did you get to go on that? I was at some stupid school that I was avoiding the draft. It was like an alternative hippie school up in Maine. It doesn't even exist. It was like an every loser and person couldn't take an SAT got, you know, sent there. But they had a humanities course, which was, they would, you would go to France and I sure I'll go. But I never went to class. I just hung out and you know, I would get on a train. I went to museums all by myself and, you know, but I came back from that trip.

2:08:25No, there was a little carriage house with a little art department at that school and there was a sky there. He was my only art teacher and but what really turned me on was going to his house when I was 19. He had real art on the wall. And that I think that experience actually was incredibly profound for me because I had never been to a house that had real, you know, he had etchings, he had aquatents, he had drypoint, he had painting, had drawings, you know, anywhere like a drypoint Matisse to a Mary Cassattte aquatent to a, this guy named William Bailey who was a fantastic draftsman and painter from taught for years at Yale.

2:09:15This guy Walt Choon who is well known for painting circus. He also put together the armory, he was one of the three curators that put together the armory show and we're just shopping. And he was the guy who always told me, no, don't settle on any one thing right now. Don't try to create a style like all the artists that are around our neighborhood in Maine who are trying to get shows and sell their work. Because in those days it was you're in Wyeth country. I mean I'm a huge Wyeth, I love Andrew Wyeth, huge fan but you know there's a lot of other things out there. Yeah, you're a path. You know, so and then go to New York.

2:10:04You know, at least check it out. Yeah, you know, yeah, and find out what's good advice going on. And that was difficult. I didn't want to, again, I didn't want to leave that bubble. And I was having a great time up in Maine, hanging out with older, you know, working artists, going to figure drawing class. I love that. But the start's really not that different from a lot of other, you know, I think it was getting to New York that the idea of walking down the street on the middle of the afternoon on West Broadway back then in 74 and being able to pop in to a gallery, you know, one that's free, you know, that's anything.

2:10:56I'm not having to make an appointment, not having to make a plan. Maybe you just went to the godaiga to get a sandwich. Oh, I'll just walk in and I see this art per vera show. I don't really know much about or I see a Vito Akonshi who I later become very good friends with. Like, I can't believe I'm friends with this guy years later, but I mean, you know, in 1974 to see go to Sanabed or to Steli or, you know, it's just not making art. It's the whole it's like a community. And then bumping in to another artist and saying, I always grab a coffee and just talk. I think that's for me, I know it's not for a lot of artists, but for me, that's part of the work.

2:11:50Yeah. You know, I love coming out to LA and I used to have shows right away in LA, little, you know, hotels and crazy, weird places in LA. But the problem with LA is that you just couldn't walk you there's no walking down the street and bumping. You don't run into it. No, no, no. You want to go see John Boldessari, you're going to go all the way to Venice and make an appointment, yeah, talk to the guy or whatever. There was no spontaneity that way. And I'm not sure what artists, if that's part of their routine these days. I know a lot of musicians like that, that sort of the camaraderie of fellow travelers.

2:12:29Yeah. Because if you don't do it, it's a different conversation. Absolutely. You know, unless you're doing it, it's like speaking another language. I think you also break through to places where you wouldn't nor narrowly. Absolutely. Maybe you'd get there much later. Yeah. I mean, I was in Laurel Canyon in 1967. I missed it though. Yeah. I was there. Yeah. And I didn't have the wherewithal to stay. Yeah. I don't know what would have happened. I was there outside the whiskey when the doors were playing. I had just gotten out of high school. I was visiting my sister. But that community of musicians up in the hills.

2:13:18And then I mean, I mean, I love those docks and it's a great time in music. And then then talking about hanging out. I mean, the stories, that kind of time must have been a little bit what I think that I experienced in the early days of Soho. Yeah. I got there just in time. I mean, it was almost over as soon as I got there, the real estate thing. I mean, it just went. But I was also the luck you happened to go. You had a guy who told you to go. You listened. You went. You thought you'd go for three months. Yeah. And you found it. Yeah. Yeah. And you persisted through years of rejection. Well, I throught years and years.

2:14:07But I learned to I really thought after a while if the work wasn't rejected. Then I'm I mean, I don't know. It's not like I wanted to be rejected. No. But being hated is better than nobody caring. Well, there's an emotion. When you get to, yeah, it's better to have that extreme, either extreme love. Yeah. Or, you know, this guy is just wrong. Yeah. I don't know. I still have a very narrow definition or idea of what an artist is. Yeah. Especially these days. Yeah. And it's probably not the correct one. But I still think that artists essentially an anti social creature who basically just is in a room doing something by themselves.

2:15:00And their audience doesn't really have one at the moment of the making or probably won't for a while. Yeah. It's not about them. No. I read a review of one of your shows. The reviewer finished looking at the show and said, I wish I was dead.

2:15:28I you know, I love it. I actually sometimes I used to collect. It's fantastic. You know. And I'm not sure if I've heard that one. Yeah. I wish I was dead. Please tell me. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Well, I don't know what's next, but it's, um, if you're excited about making art now as you've ever been, yeah, you know, it's all I do. Yeah. It's all I think about. I don't really do anything else that I never have. I mean, like for instance, this is the first time I've actually sat and talked to anybody about what we're talking about in a long, long time. I mean, I, you know, I gave up giving interviews and talking to the press and whatever for a while ago, you know, I don't know.

2:16:27I just felt this time, I felt, I mean, I thought I'd feel comfortable because you're an artist, you know, and I think I feel more comfortable about around people who are creative. Yeah. Because they get it. Yeah. I mean, it's even a explaining stuff. I mean, you get it. You know what it's like. You know, you have to make these decisions. And you know, some of the decisions are made not by you, but for you, they're just, they're made kind of automatically. And it's like, it's not like magic. I don't know what the word is. Would you say it's like it's revealed to you? Revealed? Yeah, something Shondan is definitely.

2:17:16But I think it's recognition. You're able to receive it. Whereas most of the population, all that got taken away from them by probably around age six. Somehow the artist, something didn't get removed somehow. Yeah. Something happened very young.

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