My dealer, who smoked a fake plastic cigarette (and sucked) looked at the painting and said, “Archie, it’s so complicated”. The fad at that time was to make large monochrome paintings.
The background for the mosque mural came from the Unicorn Tapestries (Catholic), They would’ve banned me if they knew where it. Came from. I like to see how much I can get away with. After the synagogue I called Utrecht. They gave me 500 canvases so I could get all the imagery out of my system.
I told them to get every color ready. I painted the mural in the restaurant in 4 days. My son stayed upstairs. We ate there all the time. It was like painting dollar bills.
I’ve had 172 shows. All the critics are the same. “Don’t understand it, let’s see what happens next time”.
I was commissioned to do stained glass for a synagogue. I never had any experience in stained glass, but I didn’t tell them that. 4 out of 5 stained glass masters told me the lead lines are all wrong. The work won’t support itself. The 5th guy said he looked at the drawings and the lead lines don’t look right. I pointed at his nose, he was 84, and I said “I’ve never done this before. Either you show me in 2 weeks how to do this, or i’m taking my ½ million dollar project elsewhere. In an Elmer Fudd voice, he said “uhhh”
At 16, I got kicked out of my home because I wanted to become a painter. And my mom said “there’s an army out there and you’re the only one walking out of step!” I responded “Damned straight!”
I worked with a famous printmaker, and we decided to do a show out of potato prints. For three days, we stayed up cause the potatoes would rot if we didn’t work fast enough. At the end of the third day, I was carving stuff like this out . I was going insane at the 70th hour. At the show, a kindergarten teacher says, “I love your show. I do this in my classroom. And the best thing about potatoes is that you can put them in a ziploc bag for three weeks and they’ll keep fresh”.
I’ve never felt at home with my religion. Then I read in Russia, there’s a peculiar group of Jews in the hills where the Ashkenasi are. They’re the ones that went from Spain in the 1400’s to Russia. And you can tell these Jews because they have a peculiar last name of Schinzer. My real name is Schinzer Rand (after my grandmother) I knew it, i’m spanish, a moor.
Clement Greenberg came to one of my shows once. I could never figure him out. He liked me but didn’t like my paintings. I think he helped launch my career. So he looked at the painting, huddled with another critic and said “if you take out the elephant, it will be a good painting.”
I was commissioned to paint a syrian synagogue. Originally i was going to put a menorah, but then i had to fill up the rest. They put me on trials for my work and came up with the conclusion that the art was transmitted through god. But i was a rat bastard. The 90 year old was the leading authority on this. I wasn’t kosher enough to attend the hearings. I have 3000 texts of jewish law because of that.
I’ve always had 5 tvs on in 5 studios. So there were 25 tvs on. I put on the tv like ricki lake, not any movies, cause I’ll watch them. Bob Ross came on and was starting to paint, as I was starting to paint, He took 45 minutes, I took an hour and a half but i did learn one thing. How to make birch trees. Take magic white put in on the side of the knife blade.
I had a show based on Rilke’s poem where Orpheus goes to hell and comes back with his recounts. I painted 36 portraits of myself inspired by rilke’s sonnets. At the show everybody came up to me and told me which portrait was their favorite. By the night’s end 3-5 people liked every paintings in the room, there was no clear painting most well received. The show was run by a woman named phyllis who showed mental patients’ work all the time.
I specialize in murals. Whenever i do murals i prime my walls by hand. It costs me a lot of time and money to do myself. The construction workers say “(in italian accent) Archie, why don’t you use a rolla?” but he hand paints his walls blue, then orange then yellow. To explain it to others he says it’s a chemical thing. The first coat has special binding properties to the 2nd, etc… but in actuality i’m just familiarizing myself to the space and wall.
The jerusalem jewish women’s center murals. Did you make your own scaffolding? They actually traded oranges for wood from norway. It’s the largest outdoor mural. The paints came from dupont. And the manner in which the are put on makes them last. I was on the scaffold and it was sticks held together by rope, and i was thinking what would i say if i fell over, and i came up with “oh shit” and apparently there was a newspaper article on the last words of pilots on the black boxes recovered from airplane crashes. The most popular phrase was “oh shit”.
50’s MAD magazine. I grew up on that. I saw all my influences like cezanne, and then all the painters i hate came up like hockney… probably because i’m not that comfortable with my own sexuality.
My teacher told me, put a little red in the nose to make it stick out, so it was a little late in the night, and i was wondering how much red i could get away with. Red umber and yellow ochre.
My wife maria, my highschool sweetheart. She knew me before i went crazy at 14.
No Mistakes
Everyone tries to be the most intelligent, but no one tries to be the stupidest.
An eraser in art symbolizes a mistake. There is no such thing as a mistake in art.
Miles Davis, how do you play all the right notes? MD- there is no such thing as a wrong note. If you play one note that doesn’t sound like it belongs, you play the next note to complement it.. You continually change the context of the notes to fit your solo.
Thelonius Monk was an excellent jazz pianist and had written a song Round Midnight and had played it thousands of times. He met Miles Davis for the first time at newport jazz festival. The 2 jazz great went on stage and played round midnight. At the end miles davis angrily left the stage and said monk, he’s playing all the wrong notes.
I used to play piano in the jazz band. Dave Leibman was a great saxophonist that would later back Miles Davis. There used to the 4 saxophonists in the band and they would all play solos. The 4th saxophonist sucked. He couldn’t even read music. Anyways his turn came up to give a solo. When he messed up, he immediately asked the band to stop and repeat the measure to correct the mistake. Liebman jumped out of his chair and started strangling the 4th saxophonist. “You keep going” he said.
Julia childs was an alcoholic, and would often do her shows drunk. In the early days, i saw her burn a pot roast. Good cooking entertains guests. She took the roast and started to slice it open and then poured gravy on it.
7th grade teacher told us to draw a picture of a birthday party. Zac Stein, who used to wear a leather jacket (which meant he could knife anybody at a given time), proceeded to draw a picture of road leading into the mountains, birds and trees. The teacher came back and was furious that Zac had not done what the other kids had drawn. She asked where the party was in the picture and Zac replied “it’s behind the hills.”
Maya D’Angelou once stated what’s so scary about young people today. They’ve gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
The drawing of the 1980’s uses a lot of unconnected imagery: like a coke can and a screaming head. The viewer must have faith in belief.
The need for belief has been less and less stressed in modern art. The need for speed, computer, video and tv media have emphasized symbolism in art.
There is a fine line between portraying something as facist and portraying something that is not figure.
Hitler’s favorite artist would be one in which the form would be right, the process of drawing would have pleased him.
Vanderpold would have been Hitler’s favorite artist. In the 1930’s he believed the key to figure drawing was the knowledge of the skeleton beneath and the concept of the cubical body. Body as solidness, tremendous light vs. dark contrast. He has pictures of just arms. They say in his drawings, the arm is real, it can exist without association with the body. It is believed however technically magnificent his drawings are however (as he showed us a Daumier and degas sketch: mass was discredited in their drawings), there is no personality in his pictures.
The Vienna orchestra gets more funding than the whole NEA gives artists in America. The government is fearful of minds independently thinking and creating, and subverting the governmental agenda. Yet anyone can draw, anyone can do art.
Mayor Giuliani has just passed a law not protecting nonverbal art with freedom of speech. He does not recognize nonverbal language of art. That is, a Nazi flag does not have a message tied with it, etc…, that the colors in a traffic light don’t represent anything.
Sometimes I wonder if what I say is all bullshit. It might be, but I believe it…
A good piece of art is one that is remembered. Duhrer, and da Vinci might not have painted pleasant pictures but they painted what they saw.
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