I think art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and unrealistic, feeding on art. It is Utopian. It has less and less to do with the world. It looks inward – neo-Zen and all that. Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn’t look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.
There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Mir? and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.
My direction is very anti-contemplative. If you thought I was for commercial products, you’d think there was no irony. The irony isn’t meant to be an ironic comment on our society, exactly.
Yeah, you know, you like it to come on like gangbusters, but you get into passages that are very interesting and subtle, and sometimes your original intent changes quite a bit.
And I dont really want it to carry one. Im not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way.
I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter.
There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We’re using those things – but we’re not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism, and terrorism.
I don’t think that I’m over his influence but they probably don’t look like Picassos; Picasso himself would probably have thrown up looking at my pictures.
I think the meaning of my work is that it is industrial, it’s what all the world will soon become. Europe will be the same way, soon, it won’t be American; it will be universal.
