Page 36 - Studio International - February 1968

didn't like the company very much.... They made me
mad. I was down in Texas at a plastics company that was
making canopies for jet planes. I was trying to get a
plastic thing made there and was waiting around. A
typical young salesman was standing there; and they had
a small laminated plastic American flag lying on the desk.
I said, 'Take that flat plastic flag, for instance, that's
typical of a novelty item, a dime store item that doesn't
sell too well.' The salesman said, 'What do you mean,
won't sell? General Electric just bought ten thousand of
them.' And I said, 'What do you mean, General Electric
bought ten thousand?' And he said, 'Well, probably to see
which of their employees are American or not'. He said
the employees would put them on their car aerials. So it
was very interesting, and I started putting G.E.s on my
paintings of Circles of confusion.
Why does the painting sit on the floor?
Because that way it's more attached to the ground. This
idea would look rather ethereal— a ball or a tondo is a sort
of floating thing. So I put it on the floor.

When I talked to you before an earlier show, you were
thinking of doing a whole show of plastic waves.
I did three of these big bent plastic pieces in 1964. I
liked them so much without any paint on the canvases
that I didn't paint one until now. I still have two; I may
paint them. They're from being out at Malibu beach, on
the Pacific. It turned me on, because the Pacific is pretty
wild out there. The Atlantic seems pretty tame; a few
sharks may come around. In the Pacific sea monsters
come right up to shore. You may be out in a boat a
hundred yards, and a big sea monster will come up and
take a big look at you and go away. Unless you're an
ichthyologist or something, maybe you'd never know
what it was. To me it was scary. I went swimming there
at night. The waves just bump; they come in and bump,
monotonously. On a normal day it's just a steady tidal
wave.
At first I was going to do a standing plastic piece and
start at the bottom and still have the top you could see
through. There are two images in this painting. At the top
is a blurred colour television set with the red missing;
below is a soft green deep pile rug on the floor. It could
be a totally realistic idea of a rug on the floor, and a
television set on the wall, and a wave, the piece of plastic
coming out of it.

What about this other picture with a rug and a hand?
It's like bringing a little bit of nostalgia with you where-
ever you go, like an Arab bringing his rugs or his tent
wherever he sets up. It's an itinerant piece of home-sweet-
home, an idea of the way art is sent around, all over the
place, the way people move and don't stay in one place.
It is like the meaning of one place; there could almost be a
suitcase handle on top of this picture.

And the four TV-shaped pictures?
The middle painting with the two figures and the boat
might almost be like a figure painting for some people.
Originally they were all going to have titles of the towns
or small cities in the U.S.; Waco, Texas; Mobile, Ala-