Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Richard Prince

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Richard Prince is one of the most influential, important, and controversial fine artists on the planet. Renowned for pioneering appropriation art, his “Untitled (Cowboy)” series of rephotographed Marlboro ads includes a piece that sold for $3.7 million, ranking among the most expensive photographs ever auctioned. In 2021, his “Runaway Nurse” painting sold at auction for an astonishing $12.1 million. In 2007, the Guggenheim Museum hosted “Richard Prince: Spiritual America,” a comprehensive retrospective of his work. Richard’s methods challenge traditional notions of authorship and originality. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Vivo Barefoot http://vivobarefoot.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA25' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Tetragrammaton. I got to New York in 74 and in 77 I kind of made a breakthrough. But for about 10 years to 87, nothing, I mean I had shows and I had artist friends. And my audience were- What was that first breakthrough? It was, now they call it re-photography. And it was just simply me. Did they call it re-photography or did you call it?

Okay. It was a very awkward term at the time because I was trying to figure out what I was doing and basically I picked up a camera and I tried to play it as if it was an instrument because I didn't know anything about it. I had no clue about how to work a camera. But I thought, well, all my friends are picking up guitars and they don't know how to play

the guitar, but they're going to CBGBs. And within a week, they got a gig. So maybe I could do the same thing with the camera and I called it an electronic scissor meaning if I looked at another image through the viewfinder, let's just say if I tore out a advertising image of a cowboy like the marble and I push pinned it to the wall and then stood, put my camera in front of it and looked through the lens and kind of cropped in. Two things would happen. I could look through the viewfinder at 10 in the morning and come back at four in the

afternoon and I would see basically the same thing. Nothing was changed. So the whole idea of the decisive moment, completely eradicated. So then it's a new form of photography. And the other thing was the idea of the electronic scissor. Instead of tearing the page out of the magazine and scotch taping or cutting it and pasting it and collaging, I made a real photograph. It wasn't a collage anymore.

There were no seams. And it was a new piece that didn't exist before. And it was a real photograph. Yeah. So those two things happened, but it took a while. Because I didn't know what I was doing, so I started writing about it. But my audience at the time were just a few artists who kind of dug it and thought it was interesting. Tell me how you felt about it at the time.

Did you think it was interesting? I thought it was new. I thought it was interesting because, well, the photography part of the art world completely rejected it. And I was also picking images that weren't necessarily aesthetically pleasing, you know, advertising images. Because I was working at Time Life magazine. And they published seven magazines at the time. And when I would come in Mondays,

there would always be a set of new magazines. It's like, I would be excited then because I would go through the magazines and say, well, maybe there's a new cowboy or maybe there's a new watch. Because my job was to tear up the magazines and give the editorial, which they call hard copies. And what, at the end of the day,

all I was left with were these images of advertisements. But nobody called for them. And I kept looking at them thinking, well, there's no real author. Who's the author behind, these are art-directed images. And they're very real, they have a virtuoso reality that's so real that it's unreal.

So it's something I didn't really need to think about, the meaning they didn't really have. I just could organize them. I think it was what was William Gibson's some subtle pattern recognition. And I would notice there was a lot of watch ads, a lot of pens, perfume. And so I would just start to re-photograph

what was plentiful, what was always there. I wasn't on a treasure hunt. I was just whatever was presented to me that week. Did you call it re-photography right away? Yeah, I did. But what's interesting too is that at first I was calling what I was doing pirating because I was very aware of what was going on with sampling.

And it just started, you know, but I thought I didn't really was comfortable with appropriation. That seemed a little academic. But I also ran into other artists who were also working with images. So that was important to me too, to become friends with other people

that had that kind of sensibility of growing up at a particular time. Do you think it's just the nature of the time and the place and the way information comes at you that other people see? They don't see what you see the way you see it, but they are looking at the same thing and then having their own interpretation of how to deal with this information. Absolutely. I think we were the first generation to grow up with television. And, you know, there was always television, magazine, movies.

At least if you ask the artists that I came up with, they would probably say have a very similar experience. And if you think before television and magazines, there wasn't really a place for advertising. Advertising was a new thing. Yeah, and it certainly was, for me, it was a conceptual thing, too. How do you frame this particular type of thing, this product? And I was always interested in the concept of, And in 1949, the year I was born,

this guy LeCombe, this photographer, did an essay on cowboys. And on the cover of Life, if you look at that cover, it looks like a Marlboro, kinda like a Marlboro guy. So that was in 49, and guy, Leonel Burnett, I think pitched the idea to Marlboro in 53. You know, he wanted a more masculine deal. So all this was very conceptual and I liked it.

And I liked reading about the background of all this. It was kind of interesting to me because I was living inside of a giant novel in time life. The building itself became the incubator. It had its own hospital, cafeteria, bookstore. And it was right across from Radio City Music Hall. Cool. And I would just, I basically haunted that place,

went to the archives, I would go and do research. But yeah, Time Life was my studio. I mean, because I didn't have a studio. No, but it's amazing the resources and the information. And I actually looked forward. I had a stupid job, of course. It was just a bullshit job, tearing up the magazine. But I actually, and I had to have something to pay the,

I had a crappy little apartment in the East Village. But I had to have something to pay the rent. But I actually didn't really mind going there. Because it kind of like, that's where it happened, really, for me. For some reason, there was this kind of thing going on where artists were documenting what they did in photographic and then narrative form, and

they would like be pasting it up on these pieces of cardboard, and that's what they would show. And there was a gallery called John Gibson that was kind of dedicated to this way of working. And I really hung out at that gallery like I really was a pastor, kind of like a, do you need, I mean, I would do anything, and I became friends with the wife's owner, and she tolerated my presence on Saturdays.

But Vito Acconci would show there, Dennis Oppenheim. But then there were these other people, James Collins and Peter Hutchinson. And they called it narrative art. But they used photography. They weren't photographers. So that was a kind of a stepping stone also. So I think the combination of that gallery and then the time life experience.

I remember there were four advertisements in the New York Times magazine section that came out, I think, of living rooms. You know, really dumb looking, generic. Like from a Sears catalog, what would you see in a Sears catalog? A model living room. Like from a sitcom. Yeah, nothing that anyone would ever actually live in.

You know, but apparently that's what people did. Hard to know. You know, and it wasn't like I looked at them as some sort of alien or sci-fi or social science fiction. I just thought this isn't something that, if I put this up at a gallery, I don't know if I'm gonna get away with this. I don't know if people are gonna like,

because I don't know if I even liked it. Yeah. And I felt very uncomfortable. And it kind of, visually, it wasn't very inviting, it wasn't very, it wasn't beautiful, I mean. But there was something that I needed to do. But what was my contribution? What was, how was I, you know, transformative?

And that's where the camera came in. That's where the camera really surrounded the living room. When I looked through the lens, it was like absorbing. Yeah, I was gonna say the nature of photography also adds, you can call it a filter or a... Adds a truth. Yeah, yeah. It's in music sometimes if you have equipment with tubes,

it's more pleasant to listen to the sound through the tubes. And you could say it's more truthful, but in a way it's more colored. It's more beautiful than what the musician heard. The tube is doing its thing, and photography can do that. You know, in films, you can see technicolor. Obviously, technicolor is not what the world looks like. It's beautiful.

Yeah. No, it's... And you know that these images are highly art directed after the image is taken too on all the prep work that goes in before they're published. But the idea of presenting these living rooms as a stand-alone photograph, which then I presented

as normally as possible, just like other photographers. I matted it, framed it. Ordinary. Very ordinary. Yeah. It was the content that was radical. Yeah, it was the content that was radical. And I remember when I first exhibited, people would look at them and they weren't quite sure,

is this, it wasn't even a question of, is this your photograph or who took, I mean, What is it? It just like, what? It's just like what? And that's what I was kind of, that was the kind of reaction that I received, that I got, but I knew that that was a reaction

that no one else was getting from their work. And I felt that, yeah, maybe this is a little different. Did your opinion of it change after you showed it? Did you have a deeper understanding of it when you showed it? A little bit. I remember trying to, is there a way to make them more beautiful?

I remember thinking about that. Because at first I was, not only, make them more beautiful. I remember thinking about that. Because at first I was, not only, I mean the living rooms, you know there were always more than one. I mean one, you might not believe, but you have to believe that there's four of them. Yeah, four different living rooms, different furniture, different. You have to believe that there's four of them. Yeah, four different living rooms, different furniture. You have to believe that this does exist.

I was always trying to take the speculation out of the work, the idea of the guessing, the umpiring, the judgment. I was trying to take as much interpretation and put as much non-fiction into the work as I could. And the idea of making it into a real photograph, I believe, well, photographs, you tend to believe a photograph.

Yeah, a photograph is non-fiction. But interesting, what you're photographing is sort of fiction, sort of. It was until I rephotographed it. Yeah, but it was real furniture, but it was art directed in a way where it was not someone's living room, likely. It was likely a set.

But when you photographed it, then it became real. Then it had this virtuoso reality to it. And I think at the time, what was in the air at the time, around 77, was this idea of like, what's real, what's not real? That was the big question. Who do I believe in? Oh, what do I believe? So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world.

Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best-in-class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus. So your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. You can change fonts, imagery, margins, and menus. So your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with Fluid Engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experiences required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools.

Squarespace has everything you need to succeed online. Create a blog. Monetize a newsletter. Make a marketing portfolio. Launch an online store. The Squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere. Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go. Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand,

Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today. What else can you remember that was going on in 77? Well, I mean, there was the, I mean, I thought the pump thing was. Sex pistols would have been 77. And I thought 77 was a year in which And I thought 77 was a year in which I thought a lot of things in the art world were beginning. My generation was just starting with their, getting their chops together and just starting to have the opportunity to maybe form collectives

and show each other what they were up to and then maybe even showing publicly in alternative spaces. And I think the conceptual in the minimalists and the post studio were kind of winding down. But I think back at any time during, at least in my experience, there's always three or four, maybe even five things going on at the same time.

Different types of styles or different types of scenes. I belonged, for lack of a term, they call us the picture generation. And I sort of was hanging around with that crowd. Who else was in that group? Well, people like Cindy Sherman, people like Troy Brontok, Robert Longo, Jack Goldstein was very important.

He was a little older than us, but he was a guy named James Welling, Barbara Krueger was a really good friend of mine at the time. And I'm not sure what happens now in the art world, but I don't know if people get together. But it's one of the things that I remember. I mean, luck has a lot to do with all of this,

but I think I was very lucky because I only, when I came to New York in 74, I came for like the idea of staying for three months and it just turned into like forever. You know, I just kept staying. With the idea of becoming a fine artist? Well, I was already making work, very traditional. Tell me before that, like, how did you come to the idea

of this is what you want to do as a kid? I was always interested in making art, drawing as a child. You know, like when people say, you know, people can play the piano by ear, I think they call it. I was able to draw. I could sit down with a pencil and draw a portrait of my grandfather or my sister or whoever was around and I could make it look like without any, I could do that when I was like nine.

I mean it was just like something natural. It was easy, I never really thought about it. I never had to, never even gave it a second thought. But mostly I got really sidetracked into wanting to become a musician. I mean, that was my first. What, do you play an instrument? I do.

I have over the years played in little bands. I mean, every artist, we were all in bands and everything like that. What instrument do you play? Play a little piano and a little guitar. It always seemed with the music thing, I didn't like the idea of performing or being, you know, having to do it in public.

The idea of collaboration wasn't a big thing with me. And the idea of acting or, you know, having that kind of shtick on stage has never appealed to me. And I'd always thought I'd hit a wall. I always hit a wall with the with the even even the idea of playing the guitar. I could only go so far. With the art, there's never been a problem with that. There's never there's never been a stop. Things just come out of that, you know, and they and they still do. It's great.

It's very strange how they all, and I go back. So you might go back to re-photographing. I re-photograph, I still re-photograph, I still occasionally, I'm trying to make a new cowboy type of image. Great. I've never given up on the jokes. The jokes are just endless subject matter.

Tell me the story of the jokes. How did it start? I wanted to draw again. This is like 85. I moved into a house with musicians. They were friends of mine and they were trying to make music. But I wanted to draw again,

because I had given up drawing, I'd given up anything associated with the hand. I had read things that always not associated with anything with the hand anymore, and I kind of said, well, maybe I'll turn that around. So I decided I wanted to draw, but what do you draw? That's the thing. For me, subject matter is first,

interpretation or how to do it is second. So going through all these magazines, I always loved the cartoons. Whether it was in Playboy, New Yorker, Easy Rider had some really great cartoons. And I said, I'm gonna draw something that's already been drawn, again. I didn't wanna make things up.

I had this idea, I didn't wanna. You were like documenting something that's already in the world. I didn't wanna like, I didn't want it to start with me. Yeah. I wanted to start out. Do you know what it is about that? It's interesting.

Because I wanted it to be believed. I wanna believe what I look at. I wanted people to believe what they looked at when they were looking at what I did. But if it came from me, like if I said, oh, I dreamt this, why would anyone believe that? I was interested in the truth. So again, if I could just take as much interpretation out of it, and like the idea of the critic

or the judge or the umpire weighing in, I didn't need that, I didn't want that. Subjectivity was something I wasn't interested in. It had always been associated with art. I wanted to go beyond that. So the idea of drawing something that was already drawn, oh, cartoons are drawn. So I just redrew my favorite. There's this guy named Whitney Darrow

was one of my favorite cartoonists. So I redrew it. But I knew what to do and how to do it because I, you know, craft, unfortunately, it makes it easier if you know a little bit about the craft. And I knew, you know, you could spend years in an art supply store just picking up paper. But I knew what paper to use.

I knew what hot press dars was. I knew a number 4B pencil. I knew exactly what to use right away and I could just do it that day. So very little experimentation. So I just redrew the cartoon. You draw it scale, same size? About this big.

And the original was smaller? Yes, a little bit. And it was a spot on reproduction but it was hand drawn. Even the punch line. And I started calling, but the thing was, I called them jokes. But they were comics. They were cartoons, yeah.

And I realized after a while, so I would send, and it was funny, I sent these cartoons to this guy in Chicago, and lo and behold, I would get a check in the mail for $3,500. Astounding to me. Because none of my art ever sold. These were the very first things. Is that true?

So up until this point, nothing sold. I mean, nothing, nothing. The cowboys when they were first shown, nothing. Nothing. Ever. None of the photographs ever show. So I sent them to this guy, Hudson, who had a gallery in Chicago.

And he didn't have a show, he just sold them. I said, this is great, this is unbelievable. Were you operating under the assumption that nothing would ever sell at that point? Oh, of course, yeah. I was trying to find jobs. How many years has it been? It had been like since 1970, 71.

I was making drawings. But long story short, I was calling them jokes and I realized it's not a joke. If I wanted a joke, and again, this is what happens. I wanted a joke. And again, this is what happens. I said to myself, I've gotta drop the image and just concentrate on the punchline. Because you're calling them jokes.

You also could have gone the other way and decided to call them cartoons, but you didn't do that. And yeah, but, and then I had this. Did you feel like the fact that you were calling them jokes was like a clue? It was wrong. No, but it also was like an arrow.

It was, and the arrow hit. So 85 turns into 86. I was invited back to the ICP, International Center for Photography, to give a lecture on my wall of, you know, like. I thought they don't like you. Yeah. And I get there, and there's a fucking line

around the block. I'm thinking there's gonna be what, five to six people. And what I don't realize is that apparently, of course I'd had shows in New York, but there was a little bit of a underground audience for the work. And so we're talking about maybe eight years into this practice that people wanted to find out more.

Of course I have a, it was organized by a very good friend of mine, Marvin Heiferman, who was the first guy to show the photographs. And of course I have a panic attack and I can hardly go in. I mean I just flipped out. Yeah. And I had subletted my apartment, go back to my apartment,

I got a call from this gallerist wanting to come over for a studio visit. And I said to the woman, I said, well, I don't have a studio, but I'd love to come to your gallery. Yeah. And the next thing I know, I move in. I move into the gallery.

Wow. They have a back room. Yeah. into your gallery. And the next thing I know, I move in. I move into the gallery. They have a back room, which I took over. And I started looking, I started buying joke magazines. I remember going to the Strand, and I'd go to the humor section. I started checking out all these jokes. And it was important that you would never write a joke.

No, not at that point. It had to be found material. And did you have to like the joke, or was it something else? The joke in the end had to be, it was a way of, for me, it was a way of surviving. It was serious. It was the way they were written too.

Jokes are very strange sentences, the way they're, you know. The structure of the sentence. The structure of the sentence is very different from other sentences. Like, my father was always drinking, he saw a sign that says, Drink Canada Drive, so he went up there. That's the joke.

And that's a very weird sentence. Awkward. Awkward. And I was very much into comedians, too. I think they're really kind of important. There's no doubt in my mind, at least for me, they're important. Who are your favorites? Well, I mean, you know, Lenny Bruce, obviously, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory was a big, you know, I just found that Bob Newhart 1959 album the button button down minded which became a huge had a good time, you know, I loved all the

Comedians I used to watch as a kid on It's all of them, you know, Jackie Carter Jackie Vernon. I loved all the Borscht belt, you know, Rodney Dangerfield is perhaps maybe the biggest comedian for me. I mean, George Cohen's a genius, you know, but. But Rodney's special. Rodney's very special. I managed finally after about 10 years negotiating with his wife to buy his archive.

How amazing. And it's, you know, I've bought two. I bought Milton Berle at a an estate sale his archive I managed to buy his all his jokes were written on these card files and they're organized by by subject. Yeah, great when you asked me About the straight arrow. Yes because to me The joke because to me, the joke was like the re-photography for me. And I never thought I'd make another breakthrough.

But the cartoons were okay. I mean, it was the idea of redrawing something that was already drawn. But when I got to New York and I went to, and I never went back to California, I just left all my stuff and I moved into this gallery and she gave me this back room as a studio because I didn't have a studio.

I said, how do I deal with the jokes? And so I decided first to write them by hand, because again, I wasn't associated. I would write them in my own handwriting. And I would pick jokes that were fairly autobiographical. So it was sort of like self-portrait. That's all. Very simple idea.

Jokes that related to you or your life. It's like I should have written that joke. Yeah. But it's okay. Yeah. I don't have to. It's already been written. Yeah.

I'll write it again. Yeah. And I'll put it on an 11 by 14 coded stock I went down to, this warehouse on Broadway. Just spent days looking for the right piece of paper, ended up with this 11 by 14 coated stock, and I wrote out, the first joke was, I went to a psychiatrist, he said,

tell me everything I did, so he's doing my act. And I didn't get it. I just, but the, and like, where do I locate myself in that joke? Am I the psychiatrist? Am I the patient? And the idea of doing my act, and what is my act at this point?

And it was the perfect joke. What is my act? And I realized, you know, I don't have an act. So what is the psychiatrist even talking about doing my act? Now he's doing my act? 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? This little, very modest $10, that's the price that I put on the joke. The very first ones. The human foot is a true marvel of engineering. With 26 bones, 33 joints, and over 100 muscles and tendons,

it's built for flexibility, balance and natural movement. Unfortunately, today's narrow, rigid, elevated shoes undermine this natural brilliance and weaken your feet. Vivo Barefoot shoes set your feet free. Feel every step. Move naturally. Allow your feet to function as nature intended with Vivo Barefoot. Thin, flexible soles to keep you connected to the ground. Wide toe boxes to let your toes spread and stabilize. Minimalist shoes designed to mimic the Barefoot experience. Whether you're running, hiking or just going about your day,

Vivo Barefoot has you covered precisely when and where you need it most. Feel the vibration of the earth. Strengthen your feet. Improve your posture. Enhance your natural movement with Vivo Barefoot. Made from 100% recycled and natural materials, they are as healthy for the planet as they are for you.

Experience the freedom of barefoot movement with the protection from the sharp edges of a man-made world. Natural movement for your feet, sustainable choices for our world. Learn more at vivobarefoot.com slash tetra and embrace your human nature. So the jokes were the first thing that sold. You said the guy in Chicago sold. Sold, yep. 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 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 their art, I would have been jealous. And when I have that feeling, I know that's where the arrow shouldn't be pointing.

I said, well, wait a minute, I don't have to be jealous. I'm the one who's doing that. It actually happened. And it happened very organically. It didn't happen overnight, obviously. It happened because I was drawing and miscalling the cartoons, jokes. 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 gonna tell you everything. And I just sort of started ripping with the idea of the joke, and it just became, okay, let's paint. And another artist, of course, would have maybe

done something very crazy in terms of materials and how it was presented. My idea was that the subject matter was radical. I didn't need to radicalize how it was presented. You presented it in an ordinary way. So I decided what's more ordinary than stretchers, canvas, and paint? Yeah.

Completely every day, and then I decided to learn how to silkscreen, because silkscreen at that point was a 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 Varick Street,

and there were no more silk screen inks because they were outlawed because they were so toxic. So the only silk screen ink were hobby inks, which when you used 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 and said, Richard, the joke has disappeared. And I said, well, I'll give you an option. And it's funny, this guy was Albert 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 Albert Brooks, but his brother was a big time Los Angeles collector, 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. I mean, I completely like bullshit that they 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. I suppose, I'll buy it back, because there's only four. Of course, that's what collectors want to hear. I suppose. I don't know. I was- It's like the stamp that's printed upside down. You know, it's-

I was doing my act. It's more collectible. Yeah, exactly. I was doing my act. Yeah. On the phone. 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? I'm probably the one by Picasso. Me too. I think, you know, you're getting, especially if it's an homage. Yeah, it's an interesting question. But yeah, I agree, I don't want to buy Picasso. It's interesting.

And I was thinking about, I know you've published well-known books that you have authored. Catcher in the Rye. Catcher in 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 I wouldn't touch it. It was very, very.

Litigious. Yes, exactly. So I think it was published finally in China. I'm not sure. A really good friend of mine, John McQuinney, who has since passed away, he 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, that when you pick it feel of that book, that when you pick it up, I mean, I'm a bibliophile, which I guess, I like books more than people. I guess that's the definition. And when we got the book back from the, when it was first published, I could feel the weight,

the paper, the dust jacket, everything was perfect. I'm trying to think what was different about, I think the only thing that was different was I doubled the price of what a normal catcher in the rye would sell for and it burns a noble. That's what was different about the book. And other than that, it's the acceptance of Richard Prince, you know.

Is it only on the cover or inside too? Like on the page, the author's page? I think it's Richard Prince. I think we removed, we, on the back of the first edition of a real Catrune write is the image of the first edition of a real Katarine Wright, is the image of Salinger. 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. I have pictures and I think Chris Rock is in the window

looking out 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 and, 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 Versus Lies or something. Anyway, and then we published it. I didn't ask permission or we just did it. And the same thing with, never got in trouble with Catcher. 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. 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 other than myself. It's already in the public. That, I need, for 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, you know.

I think. Maybe it's some sort of deniability, because it's not the contents not coming from you. You're the author of the work, but you can't take responsibility for the thing that's underneath. Do you know what I mean? It's like if you took a picture of a person, and that person goes out and kills somebody, but you can't take responsibility for the thing that's underneath. Do you know what I mean? It's like if you took 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. And give them to me.

I would look at them and I would pick one. I would re-photograph it and that would be your portrait. Done by you. By me. And I felt two things happened there. Well, a couple of things. Everybody's happy with that arrangement. That's a great arrangement.

You don't have to come and sit for me. You're not gonna be disappointed. No, you really like all five. You like all five. 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. Avedon can't do that.

It's a great idea. Now I thought I actually, when I wasn't making any money, and this was 84, this is actually how I was working with Aeroff, that's how I got to the archive of the, because then I started going through the archive of Warner Brothers, and I did Dee Dee Ramone, I did the B-52s, I did Laurie Anderson, I did David Byrne,

Brian Eno, whoever was on the label. But I had permission and they owned the car. I wouldn't get in any trouble with that. But I actually thought this could be a business, but it still can. I'm very bad at business, but it didn't work out, and 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, I made editions of two. Why two? Because it was still a reproduction. Not much of a reproduction, but because of the natural.

Most photographers do 250. 250, I mean I remember Mapplethorpe, 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 additions. He says, yeah, why do you only make two?

And I said, well, you know, I started that with the Cowboys, even though it didn't sell, but I kinda knew the idea of two was a great, you know. It was also a kinda way of, not subverting, but kind of like dealing with the photography's naturalness. The 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. I didn't want to make anything up. Or at least my way of making things up was 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. I remember buying a George Tice photograph and it was like the 250th copy of this particular image. And I was like, no. And most of my, what I would call, straight photographer friends,

not that I had that many, but they would have huge editions. I mean, I don't mind, that's their business. Yeah, 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 editions of ten,

but then I realized, well, none of them were selling. So what was the point? But so then I said, well, let's try two. Maybe again, the scarcity would help. L-M-N-T. Element Electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best?

Add Element Electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element Electrolytes. Brink it in the sauna. Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt.

Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform at your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electrolyte, LMNT. Back to the jokes.

It started with you did it by hand and then it turned into silk screen and then is that 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? No, 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. Yeah. So I would do with the situation. So you would read the text and say, it didn't make any sense. So I would do that. That's how I reintroduced the cartoon. It's really interesting. So I did that for a while. Then I did some abstract paintings and put a panel, attached a panel under the abstraction

and Hannah wrote a joke. Didn't silkscreen, 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, and one of the art magazines published an article.

So the phone started ringing because of this one article. I was completely like, gum-founded, you know? So people started visiting me in that little room. And anyway, gallery came, made me an offer, I went with the gallery, and it's funny, our first show, I didn't, the woman, I didn't, the woman, the gal, I didn't tell her anything about the choked 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. This is the new work, yeah. She says, well, where are the photographs? I said, oh, I'm not doing photographs. So there was a bit of a impasse there.

Because we had settled on, in those days, what they called a stipend, which is, I don't know if they have those anymore, but you would get a certain amount of money every month, supposedly against sales. Kind of like what they do with the I don't know if they have those anymore, but you would get a certain amount of money every month, supposedly against sales, kinda like what they do with music business as well.

And so she was a little surprised. Here, I'm giving you this stuff. What am I supposed to do with these, by the way? I said, well, they're jokes. Yeah. And I like that idea that if anything else, I started doing an act. I would tell people, would say, you know, I like that joke or I like this work.

I would, and I would kind of like say, well, what, do you like the painting or you like the joke? I would like start to kinda mess with people. 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 in most shows. So a lot of weird things happen because of the subject.

Yeah. And of course then in Europe where if you couldn't The language. 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. And cause I started to, when I started silkscreen, I started to pick two strange colors. One background and then the joke would be 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,

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 really. Would you do multiple of the 18 or no?

Only 18 and no? I would do it, yeah, but different scale. Sometimes it would be small. Sometimes the same joke, like the psychiatrist joke was done 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. 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, it's not as if I haven't had museum shows and all that, which is, you know, it's okay. I 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.

I am. That was the first show that was, I felt, broke out outside the art world. 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. Just 25 people were my audience, I felt. You know, just 25 people were my audience, I felt.

I was never expecting to make art that would be on the news. Like, that was preposterous. That's not something that I would want, or even, you know, it just never occurred to me. But. Well, it's not realistic. No, it's not, and you can't plan that, you can, it just never occurred to me. But. Well, it's not realistic. No, 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 little while. 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, I 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.

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 of could I make art

in my bedroom by myself, right? It's just so, something simple. I always liked the idea of could I make art in my bedroom by myself, right? 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. Anyway, 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 an image of you, it looks like you're somewhere in Switzerland, you're standing in front of a Brigitte Bardot Andy Warhol portrait in your ski outfit. And I said, it's fabulous, I don't know, I don't care who took it, I don't know.

I don't pay any attention to who takes photographs. I said, this is an amazing photograph. You should make a portrait of this. And she simply said, why don't you make a portrait? And then it clicked. Of course I should make a portrait of it. And that's how it started. Amazing.

Yeah, just like, again, one of those things that just allowed it to happen. The universe allowed it to happen. 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. There was never the arrow. But with the art, these things just kept happening.

It doesn't happen very often, but when it does happen, and it just, it makes sense, it kind of checks all the boxes. And when she said that, and of course, my niece, I said, nah. And of course, my niece, I'm so lame sometimes, told me how to screensave back in those days. Screensave, what's this? Right? And then the image would appear on your phone in a grid,

and it was organized. I said, this is, because I had stopped taking pictures because this analog shit, they got rid of slides. I only photographed with slides. Slide was my go-to because it didn't take up any room. You didn't have to like print a slide. It was both a positive and a negative.

It's very convenient. So when they got rid of that, I just dropped, you know, I kinda like, I did the upstate thing, I took, you know, 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 and 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 is my contribution in terms of like, and I realized it was the comments underneath. So you would just write a comment? So I would, and I started basically,

not psychic jujitsu or kind of Joycean riffs, but 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 and I'd be watching TV and I'd wait for the ads

and the ads would say something and I'd write it down because it would make no sense at all. Unrelated. Totally unrelated to the image. Most of them were in the beginning because the logarithm would change sometimes and I would only, was allowed to like maybe make a sentence or really quick.

It'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 I would. You knew how 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 feet. I see. But they weren't. It was only on my feed. 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.

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 gonna do a bunch of them I was I did a whole bunch. Yeah, and Again, I did my friends. I went on whoever had a feed. I did my friends, I did people I didn't know. I did people that maybe I would wanna know. I did people that, it's hard to explain

why I would pick someone like the very first, how did the people show up in that very first show? Why those people? Yeah, some of them were my friends, some of them I 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 some of them, it was a very strange way they would show up.

Sometimes with friends, and it was all about, maybe it was this distance thing. It was a very different looking type of portrait just to begin with, 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 fused 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. And now, of course, I can make them tall. You 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. A 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, that idea.

And everybody was painting the same painting, it seemed. So I started doing that. We published a book. Again, 300 copies? Yeah, something like that. Are all the books like that? Yeah, a book. Again, 300 copies? Yeah, something like that. Are all the books like that? Yeah, sometimes there are a thousand, sometimes they never go into,

I don't think they've ever gone into a second printing. I've never done that. But no, they're a very small edition. I like that. Yeah. But yeah, the Instagram portraits got, immediately there was tension, But the Instagram portraits got immediately, there was tension and there was crying by my kids.

They got hammered at school. I mean, it came out. It became a thing. I didn't quite understand it. Did people not like it? Oh, the hate was unbelievable. Oh my God. And then the money, right? Became a factor.

And of course then the people in the picture. The fact that you were selling them for a lot of money because they were desirable collectible things. And the people in them who had no idea that you were selling them for a lot of money because they were desirable, collectible things. Art, fine art. And the people in them who had no idea that they were in them and had heard about how much. They were selling for. I got that, it blew up into a shit storm.

It really became an issue. The way I describe my before and afters, that before I owned half a stereo. No one would sue me. I could do anything the fuck I wanted. Nobody was looking. In some ways, the before was great because I was so used to just doing my thing

and I didn't care. And if people didn't like it, it was okay. It doesn't matter. I was just gonna do it regardless because there was no. No repercussions. Nothing. Even when I did my own crazy gallery with the Brooke Shields portrait,

that was kind of cloak and dagger stuff that was kind of fun, Lower East Side. I called it even Lower Manhattan. It was really, Rivington back then was a 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.

But in those days, the idea of like, being sued would never occur to me. I mean, I didn't have any, you know. Why would anybody care? No, right. But once, but then 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, how 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 another two weeks.

And I left the gallery. I left. Gagosian, that day. I was so pissed off. That they didn't see see that something was happening. Let it happen. Let it, let it. Because first of all, I didn't ask to show these.

I never asked. They asked me. Yes. I didn't ask you. I never asked anything from a gallery. But if it's a hit. But I never had a gallery. But if it's a hit. But I never had a hit. Yeah. I never had this much reaction. Yeah.

And this much drama. Yeah. And the material. I just think 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 wanna even, I kinda know why, but I think there was some,

you know, it wasn't about a scheduling thing. They could've extended it. But when I heard that there was no, I walked in with a video and I had two assistants and we just, and the gallery assistant came running down. What are you doing, what's going on? And I wouldn't speak.

I just took them. What a great story, and you filmed it. We filmed it. Amazing. And they had no idea what was going on, and I just took them off the wall. And were they already sold? They all sold.

They all sold, but you took them back. I don't know what we did. I'm sure eventually the people got them. Yeah, people got them, but you took them back. I don't know what we did. I'm sure eventually the people got them. Yeah, people got them, but I took them. But you didn't want them to show it anymore because they weren't being respectful of it. Well, I'm not even sure that they knew what was going on. They knew what was going on.

I'm sure if I had talked to Larry, which I wasn't, I wasn't really in communication that much, but I didn't want to ask. Because I don't want to be beholden, I don't want to owe anybody anything at all, ever. So I just thought rather than wait for it to be over, I want it to be over on my terms. But what was so strange is that

We kind of made up and three months after that they did the I think was the freeze art 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... And it was Instagram again, backed by popular demand. And it really looked actually in an art fair setting, it looked good. They looked good on a wall for some reason. I didn't, I wasn't convinced.

I had to be convinced to show them at all, but the minute we hung them in this particular gallery that 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 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. And I do, you know, when you said collector, I do have one collector that I love and revere, Irving Blum. If you go to his apartment in Los Angeles, he has 20 of these things hanging in his house. He's like, 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, and to me, he's not just a collector. He's at a different level in terms of, you're walking, it's a different curation. He was the one, he pissed a lot of the California artists off but that soup can show, California artists off, but that soup can show,

he, you know, it's almost like there's another side to that coin where if an artist does something that's say, like say 62, when you walk into an artist's, well he didn't have a studio at a townhouse, and there on leaning against the wall is a painting of a soup can in 1962 or 61. Like, you know, this high, and there are several of them. They're all different flavors. You have to like, what? You've got me uptown.

First of all, you... It's insulting. It's almost like, what are you? Why are you wasting, is... So the other side of that is someone's reception. It's not a compliment, it's almost like, it's almost a way of completion. 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 these. He had to have as big a perspective as Warhol had to, 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 and agreed.

And then Ernie called Andy up and said, I wanna buy them all. Would you take $60 a month for the next couple of, and Andy 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 out was The Silver Elvises. Amazing. Which Warhol just sent out on a huge roll.

And everyone says, oh, 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. And 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 would have loved to have gone to that office building, that office and look out. Like, where did they shoot that? Because for me, I've always said I wanna make a movie. People said, why don't you make, I said, well, I'm not gonna make a movie until I can make something as interesting as Empire.

So again, full circle now, I have made a movie in six hours and 47 minutes. So again, full circle now, I have made a movie. It's six hours and 47 minutes. It's called Deposition. What's it of? It's my deposition from my... From the Instagram case? I don't know anything about the lawsuit.

Okay, so I got sued. By one of the. Two. Two of the people in the. Two, two. And I had already been sued. I had taken some pictures of Rastafarians and made them into paintings years ago. Bought a book of Rastas in St. Bart and lived with the book for three or four years

and drew in it and cut it out and didn't pay any attention to the, I didn't know who the author was. I just liked the images, but he sued me, which in hindsight, yeah, he should've. I mean, I should've asked. I could've easily avoided. But I didn't think that way. I didn't think about asking permission.

I never have. I just, I didn't think that's part of the making art. Well the problem with asking permission is they could say no and then you don't get to make your art and that's 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, I knew from the first lawsuit, 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, it had taken a toll on me. Eight years. taken a toll on me. Eight years.

Takes a toll. Just mentally, it's horrible. But on the back of my mind I said, I'm gonna have this video. Because when I went in, I knew I was gonna be videoed. And I knew it was a bit of a performance. 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.

But at times, I would answer their question and take up to 15 minutes. And there 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. 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. That's it. And I think as a movie, talking about art. That's it. And I think as a movie, we're planning on showing it soon in Rome, of all places.

In this little chapel. That a friend of mine. Do you know when? I think Easter. We were gonna call it Deposition Row, because there's a mention, they were trolling me before I did something I said, in a couple of days, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna be in deposition row. And they wanted to know what I meant by that. So I started, but I think it's cleaner just to call it deposition.

Both are good. Yeah. Both are good. We'll see. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don by that. So I started, but I think it's cleaner just to call it deposition. Both are good.

Yeah. Both are good. We'll see, I don't know. There was talk we were gonna screen it at the Metrograph about a year ago. I decided, I don't know, I'd rather, I liked the idea of doing it way, first, way away. Yes, yes. You know, on a little box.

Yeah, great. You know? I think we've cleared all the legal hurdles. Because depositions are public. My first step is people publish them, you know, so. But I never saw that coming. Yeah. That's the other thing about where does this go?

And so yeah, I get to have a movie. That's great. You know, finally. People can stop asking me when I'm gonna make a movie. You know, because the idea of making a movie, to me, is so collaborative and I don't think I could do that. So. Making a movie to me is so collaborative and I don't think I could do that. 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. Had it for about seven years, just before COVID hit. And the great thing about having, it depends obviously what you're making too, but I was making paintings.

And the great thing is you can 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. 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 wanna move on to the next body of work or another process because I have no desire to work for a living basically. I never have. Yeah, I understand. Do you think you can get to the point where

just having the idea is enough and you don't even have to make it? That too. You can file it away in your head and live with it in your head. And 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 line is. You know, where- Why do you have to necessarily-

Actually, why bring it into the world? It's still. It's still here. It's still there. Yeah, interesting. I 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, or 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, at least able to make things and put them away for years. Like the work that I'm showing 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. I very rarely 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 my wife up there and we had kids. And I found it exotic. I found it strange. I had never been out of the city. I found it exotic. I found it strange. I had never been out of the city. I found it bizarre. Where did you grow up? Well, I grew up outside of Boston in a suburb. I mean, I came, it was funny too because Panama is now in the news and that's where I was

born. I was born in the canal zone. How did it come up for you to be born in Panama? Oh, my father worked for the government, so did my mother. What did they do? Do 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.

That she told me. But my father, I was never very close to him, 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 lot.

You have brothers and sisters? I have a sister. Older or younger? Little older, couple years. How's your relationship 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.

She was a couple of years older than me and would introduce me to things that, like say I was in the eighth grade, she was a sophomore in high school or something, and all of a sudden I get turned on to her. But anyway, the upstate thing, I think it was for about, on and off for about seven years and then we moved back.

I have a body shop where we make, what I wanted to paint, I wanted to paint something that was already painted. I wanted to move on from the reef photograph. And I always liked a way, certain way, that cars were painted by teenagers, where they would metal flake, stripe, put a flame, mostly Bondo. They would put nine coats of,

but they would leave the hood like completely Bondo. And I would see that on the street and I said, that looks great. Why is Bondo so good looking? What is it? It's just great. Why? I don't know.

It is. And everyone knows it. It's like, why aren't all cars Bondo? Why? I don't know. 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? You know, like, you know, Surf, Biker, Heavy Metal. Even it seems like in these giant magazine stands. I was just mad for magazines after Time Live. I loved just pages. I loved magazines too. But I noticed in the car magazines in the back, there were advertisements 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 for not so much money, and the idea that you could send away for it, and it would arrive in the mail. It's like saving up your box tops.

And 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. Like the Dodge, a 1968 Dodge Challenger was in bullet. That's what the bad guys drove. Or a 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 work, those shippers, they would go crazy. They didn't know anything about art, but they knew about what a Challenger was. And I just loved that. 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. The Mason's handshake. Insiders. Inside World, which is a publication I published once. It's called Inside World.

It's just basically, yeah. It's a way of 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 that's cool. And so it's... It's a whole additional conversation going on. That's great. Yeah. I think it was two years ago, we had a show of the hoods. They never went over very well. People still didn't quite get them.

But I started painting them at first with very specific car colors that came out of the factories. Again, just more non-fiction to them as much as I could. And then when I moved upstate, I built a proper body shop, hired some real motorheads, and we went to town. So I'm just saying this idea of luck or juxtaposition

or when you walk into the studio and something happens, 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. I said, oh, that's the doors. I said, don't throw those away. Let's weld them together in a row. And the Chevy Impala is gonna be Jim,

that's Jim Morrison. The other three, I'm not sure what car they came out of. But that day, walking into the studio, that kind of experience for me is what it's all about. Okay, I got it that day. Yeah. Right. And it was so like.

But it's happening every day. It's always happening. It's so dumb. It was so kind of like, not moronic, but for a couple of years I've been walking around this stuff and I never made the connection. When do you make the connection? When did you make the Jim 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

And I said that's the piece I see and it'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, then I got obsessed with doors. But anyway, those are the kinds of things that wouldn't happen with me with the guitar. Yeah. Obviously it happens with people who play the guitar. Yeah. Obviously it happens with people who play the guitar. Yeah.

Yeah, a discovery happens. And, but. A realization. Yeah, I mean, I know that I played in a band, the Glenn Branca Band. Everybody played with Glenn Branca, every artist I know. Or he would come over to your apartment and say, this is what you, he hit one note,

as long as you can do this. And he had like seven guitarists on the stage. And I remember one night, we opened Irving 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 very serious.

He really took his, it was his way of the highway. And I had brought along a friend who was a real rock and roller to fill out the guitar. And that evening, something happened on stage where I looked at my rock and roller friend and he looked at me and something was happening 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 off stage and said 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 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. Do 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 Thurston Moore and Lee Rinaldo. 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 Youth. Yeah. I think that's what happened.

So Sonic Youth was an outgrowth of Glenn Bronco's 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 just because I'd love to listen to a... I haven't listened to Glenn and... His records were put out by 99 Records. That was the way that I learned about...

The Ascension. Let's listen. I'm gonna go a good boy. I I think what, I think Lee and Thurston kind of came along, I feel it just grew out of that. You know, is there a way of Richard Prince loud song? It's the only song I've put out in my life. Let's see. This is the only song that I've ever done that I have liked. The The I'm sorry. The The The The The I'm sorry. The Tell me the story of that. How did that come to exist? I had a very strange interlude where I was, do you know that guy named Jeff Aroff?

Yeah. Okay. No, well. Kidding. He's a really good friend of mine. He's great. I love Jeff. He gave me access to Warner Brothers publicity pictures.

When he knew I loved publicity pictures, I could just go through them and take what I wanted. But he also knew that I was kind of a wanna be songwriter and my goal was to try to write a hit song. That was so stupid. And so he brought me out to California and he put me together with some of the session guys from the Beach Boys.

It was a completely nutty thing to do. 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. And I had a keyboard.

And I would just play the keyboard and record it on one cassette. and I would just play the keyboard and record it on one cassette. And then I would play what I had recorded on the cassette and play more keyboard, but record it on the second cassette. 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 I came up with this thing, and when I heard it, I just said, you know, that's it.

This was 1985, I'm not gonna do anything more. I don't wanna do anything more in music, and I told Jeff that. I'm not gonna, nothing's gonna 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? Yeah, really? I don't know. Because it sounds loud. It sounds loud.

Yeah, it does sound loud. Maybe it has to do with the cassette recorder's compression or something that makes it sound loud. I have no idea, but it had always existed on a cassette. And over the years, of course, I've met thousands of really well-known musicians. I love speaking to musicians, and I've had the opportunity to actually sit down and they wanna talk about art.

They don't wanna talk about music. And everybody's an artist. But that's fine. Whether it's Ronnie Wood or Johnny Depp or Paul McCartney, or Dylan. I think Dylan to me is the more accomplished artist, I think. I got a call one day from his manager,

this was years ago, would you wanna meet? Bob wants a meeting, I said, what are you nuts? Is this some sort of lunch show? Frank? He says, yeah, he wants to meet you. I said, God, yeah, fine. So this short story was that he was playing at the Beacon as he does usually in New York. He says, he's out in New Jersey. Go to this, stay at this motel out in New Jersey. I 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 ratty old motel and I go into the lobby and there's one of his handlers there and I figured I'm gonna 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 a very nice looking, you know, it's just a regular beaten up, which he drives, he loves to drive. Interesting. I mean, that in itself was knocked me for a loop. Of course I'm nervous as hell. Yeah, Bob Dylan. You know, Bob Dylan. Scary, of course.

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 and there would be a signature. And I just love the formalism of the presentation.

You would get this photograph that they would like double-mat, but then they would like they were selling the autograph. 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.

Got you to Bob Dylan. But it got me a call from Dylan. And of course we sat there for like hours. Yeah. And he was sort of like scoping out the idea of like what, he did wanna talk about the art world and how does it operate. I mean, he had shows of 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 the gates that he makes, paintings at the time, but I soon, then I visited him again in California. What I was very impressed was the gates that he makes, these phenomenal, I just think the subject for Dylan, the idea, and he brought me to this, I think it was in Santa Monica, his studio, and 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. And 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,

it had that vibe, like he could just, if he needed to escape out the back door, five seconds flat, he could. It wasn't an artist's 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 Gregorium,

and I helped out. I kinda helped, I didn't really help, but I became friends with his manager manager who I used to visit his offices and talk to him about the memorabilia that he was organizing, you know. And the painting, I just was knocked out. The original painting from music from Big Pink and self-portrait painting was there.

Wow. You could photograph those. I have done many. You could re-photograph those. I've done many variations of those two paintings. But I think, yeah, that's probably the idea of becoming friends, or at least not friends, but acquaintances

with a musician like that. I know that I'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, year or whatever. And it gets easier. I get very nervous. or whatever, and it gets easier. I get very nervous.

He's a beat, you know. It'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. Because he likes to paint. He was very good friends with De Kooning, who was 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 them at Brooklyn. But this past visit was really interesting because he played me some of his new music that he was just fooling around with. And then of course then he split and went on this big tour and I guess it's over now. I think with artists who have, you know, their feet in 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, you know. Because one is usually experimental. For the most part, one is really solid is what they do for a living. But it's nice to share the studio experience 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, you know, like I just went to his, he had a show downtown on Wall Street recently, took over a floor, an 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, you know, he created an environment where he took over an existing environment. And I've done this before and he's known about that. It was the first house. The first house I did out in LA 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 LA to do the project. It wasn't in a gallery. I treated the house like a domestic environment. Kitchen. How did you get the idea to do that? I just liked the idea of showing work in a domestic, with furniture, with the idea of showing, you know,

hanging a work in a kid's bedroom. The idea of having outdoor space, like a garage or a driveway or park a car and then tearing the house apart and then sheetrock. I loved sheetrock like Bondo. For some reason, I love the idea of sheetrocking, taping, but don't paint it, leave the tape. I've done three houses, I did second house,

which was up near my property, but that was actually bought by the Guggenheim, the whole place. Amazing. All the hoods, there were all hoods in that house. And then it got hit by lightning and burned down. 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'd been driving by it for years. It 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.

One day, I saw it was for sale. Perfect. The son, I guess the dad had passed away, bought the house, and I just started doing my thing. You know, I treated. Did you 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. I didn't really change the shape. I didn't change the way you got up to the house, the driveway. I didn't mow the lawn. I parked a car and put it on cinder blocks because everybody has gold cars in there. I basically did what I was introduced to

when I first went upstate. Because when I went upstate, as I said, I didn't really know what it was like to live in the country. But I soon realized, you know, there's a basketball hoop in 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 in 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 hoods. And then, I don't know what happened.

I'm not sure why it was sold to the Guggenheim. I'm not sure why they bought it, but they did. 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 deal with parking, handicap. Well, 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 that, was what I call my Sid Vicious painting, which was this thing I had bought at a Sex Pistol, almost kind of like a shawl. It's some cheap fabric that I bought 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 loved his version of my way. I mean, that to me was just phenomenal. And I finally, and I did eventually meet McLaren, 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 in 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 renegotiated where I bought the house back from the, in some weird deal for like a dollar or something. And it's the house, and it's now, well, there's very little there. The car's still there. The 78, a beautiful view.

Not sure what to do with the property. Maybe the ruin is the most interesting thing it could be. It's like going to Rome. It might be. And it's all been fairly documented. I published a book called Second House. And that's the thing about books is they have a way of hanging around.

I published 300 copies. I mean mean I have my own publishing company and we publish, you know it's 300 copies and we give them away, you know. We just give them to a couple of book, you know really interesting bookstores who like the books. And. When did you start doing that, the publishing? A while ago.

It's this company called Fulton Rider. And I just decided, I've never been interested A while ago, it's this company called Fulton Rider. I just decided, I've never been interested in this idea of the catalog resume. 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, unless you want like 25 volt.

I mean, I make bodies of work and I always have. In a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something different, something clean, something precise. Athletic nicotine. Not the primitive products found behind convenience store counters. Not the aggressive buzz that leaves you jittery. But a careful calibration of clean energy and focused clarity. Athletic nicotine.

The lowest dose tobacco-free nicotine available. Made entirely in the USA. No artificial sweetness. Just pure, purposeful elevation. Athletic nicotine is a performance nootropic. Athletic nicotine is a tool for shifting mindsets. Athletic nicotine is a partner in pursuit of excellence. Slow release.

Low dose. Gradual lift. Sust 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. 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. Do you think of yourself as a curator? Upstate I've curated a bunch of buildings. I've built 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 wanna do a show called Collection, where I've taken other artists' work, and I've paid homage to them. So 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 wanna do that show. And what I've done with the homages is,

like 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 is interesting. Yeah. And we did a trade. And so all I did was I did a zine on the whole thing, him owning it,

Shep 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, it's Alice Cooper. And he, I believe he got it from Warhol. So that is part of the curating, if you were gonna say yes. Because that's my idea of paying homage. And then I have a Pollock where it's a photograph of him

by a very well-known photographer. But I bought a canceled check from Pollock made out to the IRS. But it has his signature. So that's Pollock. Then De Kooning, 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 Upper East Side. I lived like four doors down from his gallery. It's a beautiful space. Does fantastic shows, very focused on It's a beautiful space, does fantastic shows, very focused on what I like to focus on,

that 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 de Kooning drawings I've ever seen in my life. Great body, but the face looked like someone drew it, you know, like after.

And I said, and it was tall, it's big, what's the story with this drawing? He goes, well, I don't know. I said, how much I don't know. 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 them

and line them up. So that's the de Kooning. But, so when you buy these. Yeah, you could do whatever you want. You buy the real one. Yeah. And mine. You buy the Warhol.

You have the Warhol and my zine. Yes. And then I got a Picasso from 1948, and I riffed on that, and you buy all 10. But you also get, at least you get the Picasso. Yeah, that's great. So the idea is like, I'm gonna 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 caroac and that kind of stuff. And I just learned more. I became friends with people who sold first editions.

I just haunted and hung out. became friends with people who sold first editions. I just haunted and hung out, and then I met other book collectors and I learned, and I went to the antiquarian book fairs, and years and years of just studying and knowing what was going on. Because I didn't start to read until very late. I was very dyslexic. I didn't read until I was like 22,

but when I started, it flipped. I just started being start to read until very, I was 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 kinda crazy, and I buy a lot of art. The problem now is we're trying to set up a foundation. In terms of collecting my own, my friends, now I'll call them up and say,

hey, where would you like your art to go? Let's say it's the Institute of Chicago or MoCA, it's not as easy as you think, you can't donate. It's a whole process, and it's a bit of a, it's a little defeating. 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, 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'd just come back from this European humanities thing, which I never attended. It was just part of this thing that I went around to all the museums on the, and I would draw.

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. Doesn't even exist, it was like, and every loser and person couldn't take an SAT got sent there. But they had a humanities course, which was, you would go to Brant's and I, sure I'll go. But I never went to class, I just hung out.

I would just get on a train, I went to museums all by myself. But I came back from that trip, and there was a little carriage house with a little art department at that school, and there was this guy there. He was my only art teacher. But what really turned me on was going to his house.

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 aquatints, he had drypoint, he had painting, had drawings, you know, anywhere like a drypoint, Matisse to a Mary Cassatt aquatint to this guy named William Bailey,

who was a fantastic draftsman and painter from taught for years at Yale. This guy, Walt Kuhn, 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. He was one of the three curators that put together the Armory show and we're to shop. And he was the guy who always told me, 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 and because in those days it was you're in why us I'm not a huge why I love and why you can't fan, but you know there's a lot of other things out there. Yeah, you should wasn't your path, you know so and then go to New York. 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. 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. Yeah. 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 it's free, you know, it doesn't cost anything.

Not having to make an appointment, not having to make a plan. Maybe you just went to the bodega to get a sandwich. Oh, I'll just walk in and I see this Art Povera show that I don't really know much about. Or I see Avedo Acconci, who I later become very good friends with. I can't believe I'm friends with this guy years later. But in 1974 to see, go to Sonnabed or Castelli, it's just not making art. It's the whole. It's like a community.

And then bumping in to another artist and saying, well, let's 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. Yeah. You know, I loved 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, there's no walking down the street and bumping. You don't run into anyone. No. No. You wanna go see John Baldessari, you gotta go all the way to Venice and make an appointment, 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. Because if you don't do it, it's a different conversation. Absolutely. Unless you're doing it, it's like speaking another language. I think you also break through

to places where you wouldn't ordinarily. 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, and I love those docs. And then. It's a great time in music. And then them 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... That's 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, and you found it. Yeah. Yeah.

And you persisted through years of rejection. Well, I... Years and years. But 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.

There's, when you get to, yeah, it's better to have that extreme, either extreme love 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, especially these days. And it's probably not the correct one,

but I still think an artist is essentially an anti-social creature who basically just is in a room doing something by themselves. And 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. Wow. Please kill me. It's unbelievable. Yeah, well, I don't know what's next, but it's... Are you as excited about making art now as you've ever been? Yeah, you know, it's all I do.

It's all I think about. I don't really do anything else, and I never have. 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 gave up giving interviews and talking to the press and whatever for a while ago. I don't know.

I 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. Because they get it. I mean, it's even 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 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 is definitely, but 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. Something happened very young. Music Tetragrammaton is a podcast.

Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of tetragrammaton? Counterculture? Tetragrammaton. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammaton. The avant-garde?

Tetragrammaton. Generative art? Tetragrammaton. The tarot? Tetragrammaton. Out of print music? Tetragrammaton. Biodynamics?

Tetragrammaton. Graphic design? Tetragrammaton. Mythology? And magic? Tetragrammaton. Obscure film? Tetragrammaton. Biodynamics. Tetragrammaton. Graphic design. Tetragrammaton. Mythology. And magic. Tetragrammaton.

Obscure film. Tetragrammaton. Beach culture. Tetragrammaton. Esoteric lectures. Tetragrammaton. Off the grid living. Tetragrammaton.

Alt. Spirituality. Tetragrammaton. The canon of fine objects. Tetragrammaton. Muscle cars. Tetragrammaton. the canon of fine objects. Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars. Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age.

Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are drawn. tetragrammatin.com