one of my oldest friends is cindy
sherman she said something to me like
all your work is like orgasms
she says all like about coming there was
a wave there was a bomb up there was a
rose hanging on the wall and what's the
rose supposed to do rose is supposed to
bloom a wave is supposed to crash a bomb
is supposed to explode it was like
interesting it was all about this moment
of being which i thought was incredibly
consistent but i had never it was never
intentionally planned on my part
someone asked me what do you think about
the style of my work i said i don't have
any style and my youngest son said all
you're trying to do is own all the black
and white images of the world
i realized he realized how what a
megalomaniac was but it was interesting
this person asked me why do i work in
black and white and i grew up learning
the world through pictures magazines in
the late 60s early 70s on the cover
would be a picture of meryl monroe or
president in color but then he turned
the page and it would be an expose on
the vietnam war and is always in black
and white or the of calcutta
they're always in black and white and i
started thinking maybe i work in black
and white because i think it's the truth
it's like
when you have an idea you have to beat
the idea up in which whichever idea
survives which is the strongest is
something that you made like the one in
the far end is something it will make
these are to take care of all the dust
in the studio because it's like quite
insane like you can see
this is a new filter too
there you go snort some of that man
as a young artist i was playing a band
making movies doing performances making
drawing paintings and sculptures
and i was in this show called pictures
right and one of the pieces i had five
pieces in the show but one piece in
particular
got a lot of tension it was a relief
that was based off of the end of a
fassbender film called the american
soldier of a guy being shot
and he was like arching his back and is
he dying or dancing and that piece got
an enormous amount of tension i realized
that is the thing i should investigate
so i also put everything else away and i
focused on men in the cities that time i
stopped doing the performances and
things like that and that's everything
exploded at that point
if you're lucky enough in your lifetime
to establish a recognizable image you
tend to spend a great deal of your life
running away from that so i was really
lucky in the 80s to establish an
architect the men and cities drawings i
got an enormous amount of attention and
after that i was one of those guys i got
blamed for the 80s things went into
chaos in the 90s for me and the thing
that's interesting as you get older as
an artist you have to figure out a way
how to stay relevant
my work in the 80s had been a lot about
a meditation on power so i came to the
studio and i didn't know what to do and
i just taught my middle kid victor how
to surf i'd always surf since i built a
kid and here i was in nature with this
ultimate power of the wave and i said
what the i i'll try to draw
this wave the charcoal represents
regeneration of like a whole way of
seeing things for me and
what's interesting for me is that all of
a sudden this incredible freedom opened
up to me that made it so that
now i could do whatever i wanted
in the old days people will remember
radios when you would like tune a radio
station and you too much one way another
way you'd lose it you had to find that
perfect spot
i think making art is about this balance
between
something that's very very personal and
also very much social in the world so to
find that balance is really important to
me if it's too social it becomes like
bombastic and political if it's too
personal it becomes too narcissistic and
who the cares about it because i
think as an artist your job is to deal
with the idea of truth because you don't
have a sponsor
so
do you tell the truth or you do fashion
the truth you know there's a lot of
out there that's fashioned truth and i
don't care about that i want to see
the work that's trying to tell the truth
so
you