I love names – I often make up fake names for films and books.
I wish I could ‘write’ the way I ‘sound’ – worry that I come across as too stodgy, which is anti the personality that is me!
There’s a semi-famous museum in Seattle devoted exclusively to ‘realist art’. I asked someone who worked there ‘What was real?’ She replied, ‘Everything’. And I asked, ‘Why don’t you get some Beuys in here then?’
A friend recently sent a site and it involved x-rays of men and women’s asses and all the shit they shoved up there! Some got really creative: one guy shoved a large piece of live ammo all the way up his ass. His x-ray looks very Dada.
I would love to do art that’s really sick and twisted – like Laura Ashley!
You know Paint-by-Numbers? I think they should come back, with a twist. Images of Charles Manson; John Gacy as a clown; cadavers; maggots on meat; assholes etc.
Have I told you I became friends with John Wayne Gacy the last few years of his life? I was at ____’s office one day and she had a book of letters to Gacy. I got curious and wrote him one. It seemed like a good nihilistic thing to do. He wrote back – seemed interesting. I gave him my phone number, and one day the phone rang. I never expected him to call, but I picked it up, a voice asked, ‘Is Chad there?’ I said that I was Chad, he said, ‘Hi! This is John Gacy!!!’ Really friendly. The first thing he asked me was, ‘Are you gay?’
It only took two calls to realise that the man was a total f***ing nutter – that he should have been declared insane. Sometimes he was lucid, funny, very smart, a good guy to talk with. At others, he’d just go crazy. I listened to so much nutty shit from the man. He liked to give me advice about sex, guys, different ways to wank, use handcuffs etc. Tried to fix me up with his nephew, Ed Kasper, who was a drunk. Sometimes he’d be funny and others, so drunk that I couldn’t understand what he said.
I almost always listen to music when I work. Stimulates me. But more importantly, it gets me in a rhythm. My ideal way of working is getting into a rhythm that’s intense, where I really hear the music, but I don’t hear it, but also I like to make everything else besides the music oblivious – so that nothing else exists. Nino Rota’s music for Fellini’s films always gets me working and moving.
Karen Carpenter is a saint. Is it possible to be any more white than The Carpenters?
Ravel once said that Bolero was ‘Form without substance.’ It’s the kind of music that you can use successfully in almost any way you want, because it is form without substance. I once thought of re-scoring it – totally changing the orchestration and having it start fast and end VERY slowly.
Am listening to Kylie now. She sounds great backed by guitars. ‘Some Kind of Bliss’ is a brilliant song.
Some times when I feel like I’m not in the mood, or finding the right space in my head to roam, I’ll start painting with both hands at the same time and more often than not, it frees me mentally and I can do interesting things.
I love industrial materials. Painting on metals is so strange, but I like it.
I like the idea of art that one can’t really see. The owner knows it’s there and can point it out to people, but it’s more like a conductor that dominates the room, unseen. A relative of Klien’s ‘Zones’.
I think most people see and never think about the art of seeing at the same time. They don’t get involved in seeing and take it further.
I’ve always loved big projects. In my work I love to see art, each piece, as a problem to solved or reconciled – or, if that can’t be done, then at least fail in an interesting way. |
