[atari 2600]

This would have probably held up into the next century, except for the fact that the economy collapsed. So these incredible pieces of artwork that these people have made-- like two railroad ties chained together, named "Untitled #14", that were going for a quarter of a million dollars-- can't even get pennies on the dollar. They can't give some of this shit away that they paid a quarter of a million dollars for. This is what's happening. New York is almost completely collapsed on the art market. They're approaching losing half of their galleries now, the big ones. Okay, so I come to New York with thirty oil paintings for a sold out show. Do you understand what kind of an effect this would have on the art community in New York? Do you comprehend that?
David: No, I'm not quite sure what you are getting at.
Robert: The very stanch and conservative and entrenched art world has collapsed, financially on its ass. It's on its knees, waiting for the storm to blow by, so it can try to crawl back up. It's lost half it's galleries. So, I come in there, and sell out a show of thirty oil paintings, before the doors even open. The opening night there's 2000 people in there. The police had barricades on the street. I had a lot of very important gallery people from around SoHo at my opening, telling me, "you're only one of ten people in all of New York that's selling." One of ten, out of 100,000 people that call themselves fine artists, in the art capital of this planet. But I'm doing ugly cartoons with naked ladies with big titties. The feminists were throwing rocks at me. (laughter ) I'm doing everything wrong, but here I am with a sold out show, and standing room only crowds, continually coming in. The first Saturday there was a thousand people in attendance, and the show was held over.
David: And this isn't because somebody with a row of fancy prestigious degrees after their name is praising it. People just look at it and really enjoy it.
Robert: That's right. Because it's a basic language of things that you're interested in. But it's not because I am so brilliant that I create it, it's just that I am a symptom of the situation. I came up with the rest of my underground buddies, reading underground comics, Hot Rod magazine, surfing, and all this stuff that people are really interested in. We've cooked it like soup, brewed it into an essence, and made art out of the things you want to fucking see-- not what's intellectually proper.
David: Is there a particular age group that your artwork seems to especially appeal to?
Robert: Yeah, from thirty down is who I appeal to.
David: How did you get into the underground comic scene?
Robert: I used to be art director for Ed Big Daddy Roth, and that was very much an underground think tank down in Maywood. Roth was this very important seminal character in the underground. During 1959-1961 Roth was doing monster T-shirts. He would go to car shows, set up an airbrush, and just paint shirts for people. They caught on really big. So he started doing decals, and then selling these shirts through the mail. It became an institution in the early Sixties. He used very low-brow subject matter. There's a lot of beer cans, open wounds, warts, monsters with drool coming out, and popping eyeballs, like Basil Woverton. Now Basil Woverton was an influence on Ed Roth and me too. Have you heard of the poster artists refered to as the Big Five? Stanley Mouse, Rick Giffin, Victor Moscoso, Alton Kelly, and Wes Wilson, who did the very first psychedelic poster. Mouse is one of the better ones, on par nearly with Rick. He was a competitor. He started out doing hot rod T-shirts, as a competitor with Roth. But, there's always been a West coast underground that's been like a brotherhood.
David: How have psychedelics influenced your work?
Robert: They influenced it tremendously.
David: How so? What was your work like prior to and then after?
Robert: My work before psychedelics was kind of like a Wallace Wood style.
David: The guy who did those old science fiction stories in the EC comics?
Robert: Yeah, he was big influence on me too. It was kind of like a street element, hot-rod Wallace Wood effect I had in my work. Maybe a little science fiction fantasy. But when psychedelics came along, it opened up the world of color and shape-- an emphasis was put on things that were really not paid attention to before. The predominant thing about psychedelics is harsh contrast, working one color against another. That had been done by the German Expressionists, but it wasn't done like this. The German Expressionists like to get one color against another color to make it ugly-- real dark green against harsh pink, for example-- and it would be this real obtrusive thing. But psychedelic art wasn't like that, it was colors at their maximum. It's like 100% yellow against 100% red.
David: That stark contrast which is similar to what you see when you're tripping.
Robert: Yeah, it's sort of like putting green up against a red-orange, so where they touched each other, your eye would vibrate. Then Op-Art came along, which was a product of psychedelic art. That had like a two or three year hiatus, and then fell out. When I was working for Roth I had to render a lot of automobile stuff. He always hired a lot of artists that were technical illustrators, to do really slick automotive renderings. There was a fellow there named Ed Newton, who could do the best chrome in the world. The smooth chrome would just make your mouth water, but his imagination wouldn't let him take it any further than car or industrial surfaces. He showed me the formulas for working chrome.