PA: Peter Alexander
PK: Paul Karlstrom

PK: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. An interview with Peter Alexander in his studio in Marina Del Rey. This is session number one, December 13, 1995. The interviewer for the Archives is Paul Karlstrom.

We were talking earlier about experiences that we shared, experiences in time and in place. We both grew up, or certainly, at least, went to high school in Southern California. As a matter of fact, we both went to school in the San Fernando Valley. You graduated in, I think you said, 1957, and I graduated in '59. Presumably, we crossed paths in one way or another, whether it was exactly at the same times, or in the same places. What I want to talk about today has very much to do with that. What I want to ask you about has to do with this place, which presumably, formed us.

I'm still working in my job as an art historian in California, very much in Southern California. You made a choice at some point really to establish your career here. However, this process worked itself out, here you are, you're still here, and are very much identified with California. So the first question I would like to ask with all that in mind is how was it that you made that choice to be a "California artist," an American artist working in California? I guess that would be the first question. But then leading on to what were the consequences of that decision, how did that affect, finally, your career, as you look back?

PA: Just as a way of explaining, my brother, who was also raised under the exactly same circumstances as myself, decided in 1965 to leave California and to go to New York, where he eventually became an art dealer, which he still is.

PK: That's Brook?

PA: That's Brook, yes. I say this in response to your question, that idea never even occurred to me. That is, I had no interest at all in going to the East. I went to school back there, and I like it a lot and blah, blah, but to move there was completely out of line with anything that I had imagined or do imagine. Just, there's no reason. Well, what I mean no reason, there was no sense to it, as far as I was concerned. There's many reasons why one would do it, but I couldn't find sufficiently good ones to act on it.

PK: Did you say though that you did go to school in the East?

PA: I went to school in Philadelphia for three years. Then I went to London. Then to [University of California-] Berkeley. Then another, USC [University of Southern California], and then finally to UCLA.

PK: I didn't realize you had this multifarious academic career.

PA: Most of that was in architecture. The University of Pennsylvania was for architecture, and that was three years. Then I went to the Architectural Association in London for a year. I did nothing but go to Paris for wild weekends. I was twenty-two and it was like that was just a joke, but it was a lot of fun. Everything's been downhill since then. [Laughter] Then I went to Berkeley for a year. Then I went into the Marine Corps. Then I went to the SC, and then after SC, and just short of graduating in architecture, I realized that I couldn't do it, because I was working for a couple of architects and it was just awful. So then I went into art. That was sort of the sequence. That's where we met.

PK: So that's when you appeared at UCLA--

PA: UCLA. Yes.

PK: --in the art department. You were through with architecture by that time?

PA: Yes. I had no interest in it as a profession for myself.

PK: Where did you get your undergraduate degree? Just to lay in a few basic points.

PA: I got it from UCLA. I was about three months short of a degree, and that's when I made the switch. I'll tell you if you're interested, I'll tell you the quick story of the switch. I was working for an archi--well, I worked for Neutra for a couple of years.

PK: You did?

PA: During the summers. I found that enlightening, because it gave me an opportunity to get close to a sort of international architect of some renown. Sort of got a sense of what his lifestyle was like and what it was like being--by lifestyle, I mean that in the broadest sense. That is how he behaved, what he thought about, a kind of sense of priorities, you know, all that business. I was, oh, God, nineteen, I guess, at the time. Eighteen or nineteen. Then after Neutra, I worked for Perreira, which is a whole different kind of architect, but equally interesting, because he was a corporate guy. I was working on a project in Perreira's office, and I had worked on it for three months. I was the chief. I was the designer. It was a small project that they turned over to me.

PK: You hadn't even actually graduated?

PA: I hadn't graduated from architecture, no. That's because I talk fast. I worked on this thing, as you can imagine, diligently on weekends and nights, and, you know, all my time, because they weren't going to pay me for that, because I just loved to do it. Well, about three to four months into it, the project was canceled, which was economics, but nothing to do with my involvement in it. I thought when that happened that I don't have the patience to do this again. I was driving home from the office, from his offices on Wilshire Boulevard at that time, and I was driving home, and I almost hit this telephone pole, I was so distracted by this thing. It was so vivid, the sensation, that I said, "This is it." The next day I applied to UCLA in the art department. So that's how that happened.

The aspect of working any place other than Southern California never occurred to me. I was in my early twenties when I started. I mean, mid-twenties, like twenty-five, when I started seriously considering being an artist/painter, whatever that meant. I've always been so connected to this place. It has meant so much, which I won't even begin to describe what it meant, but there was a quality, a connection, that leaving it was too sort of sorrowful. It was inappropriate.

PK: Is this beyond the basic attachment to home?

PA: Nothing to do with home. It had to do with the ocean. It had to do with climate. It had to do with the drive-ins. It had to do with all the aspects of what constitute this a place. Even though I loved being in London and Philadelphia, and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it never occurred to me to live in any of those places, other than beyond what I did as a student. It's still the same. I don't want to live anyplace else.

PK: Thirty some years later.

PA: Thirty, yes. Well, this is 1965. That means, yes, it's thirty years later. Yes, right. So I mean, certainly, I like to go to places, but, you know, all that business. So that without even describing what these qualities are, which are not really relevant, the point is, is that there was something pulling me, keeping me here, that was unequivocal.

So now the next part of the question, which has to do with what effect did that have on my career as an artist. It had a significant effect. I stayed here for the reasons I've just described, or for the feeling that I just described, but also I stayed here out of pure arrogance, which is that I wasn't going to buy, or I never felt that buying a system that was being presented in New York was what this process is all about. Whatever one thinks, feels, does as an artist/painter is not about buying, it is not about becoming part of a system. I mean, in other words, one can, and I'm certainly part of a system here, but to transpose myself into a system that was foreign to me was beyond my acceptance. I couldn't do that. I would be giving up too much for something I didn't really believe in.

If I had gone to New York as my brother did, I'm sure I would have had a much more illustrious career. There's no question about it. I think that's also a comment about how all systems work, which is that a great deal of it is based on flesh connections, on intimacy. I don't mean that in a carnal way. I mean, it's how we relate to each other. You can't do it from this distance with New York. New York certainly was the precedent that I was familiar with in the mid-sixties, and it still is in certain ways a precedent, not a precedent, but it certainly is the power, by virtue of the word, if for no other reason, that all the words come out of New York for whatever they're worth, which I have significant questions about their value.

PK: Remember when we were in UCLA in the early sixties, art form was here.

PA: In L.A. Right.

PK: So there were words for a brief time.

PA: Yes, but the fact that it couldn't sustain itself in L.A. is another comment, which is a much broader comment. I mean, I think that in itself will tell you what L.A. art, what this place is about.

PK: Well, how so? What do you mean?

PA: Well, because the fact that the place couldn't sustain a magazine, you could read that as--there's two ways of reading it. One is that there wasn't sufficient enough of an art world, so to speak, in L.A. to sustain it, and/or the interest in those issues were not sufficient to sustain it. By those issues, I mean that kind of writing.

PK: So what you're talking about here is, at least in part, the support system, or lack thereof, that we've heard so much about. What does it takes to make to create a critical mass, they say sometimes, to then really support, in a meaningful way, the creation of art.

PA: Well, I don't know. That raises all kinds of questions. We're talking about two different things. One is economics, and the other one is the making of objects. Now, the making of objects can be done anywhere. Primitives produce, without a doubt, the best objects that one can get, and certainly it's not based on an economic system. But within our context, and we're not primitives, although many of us wish we were, there is an economic system which you plug into, and that economic system is what one survives in or out of, or in some way related to that system. That system is the hierarchies that we all know, which are museums, critics, collectors, and so forth. As a package, it's a system which is incredibly suspect from an aesthetic point of view.

PK: Is this part of your resistance, your protest, your arrogance, that you recognized that at that stage? Is this true, or is this sort of retrospective?

PA: No. No. It is retrospect. What happened in the first few years of my involvement in the art world, I mean, it was remarkable in certain ways. I was a graduate student, and I got my first show in New York when I was still a graduate student.

PK: What year was that?

PA: That was 1968 or '69, one of those. Which meant that all of a sudden--and then I started selling. I thought, "Jeez, this is easy." It was like, whatever I did was a few hundred dollars, but in 1968 or '69, you know, a few hundred bucks meant something. So all of a sudden I felt I could sustain myself as an artist.

PK: Here?

PA: Here in L.A., yes. A lot of that was because of Bill Wilson, and also Billy Al Bengston, because they're the ones who sort of found me, so to speak. Because I entered a show at Cal State-L.A. called "Small Images," and they saw a piece of mine, were very impressed by it. Bill had just, by coincidence, been to the house a month prior to that to talk to my brother about something, because he was hustling some stuff from Marlboro in New York. I don't know why he was talking to Bill, but they met down there. So I had met Bill once. So anyway, that's how that happened.

PK: They helped get you--

PA: Bill did it critically and Billy did it economically. He called up his friends, who were collectors, and said, "You should buy one of these. They're cheap. They're a couple hundred bucks," and so forth. So he introduced me, so to speak, to the art world.

PK: What about the "Small Images" show? Were you in that show?

PA: Yes.

PK: So was that the first--

PA: It was the first sort of grand show. I mean, it was the first sort of show that I was in.

PK: A debut.

PA: It was sort of, yes. It was an open competition, and you submit slides. Then after the slides, they select, and then you submit the object. Then they did this exhibition.

PK: That's certainly a good beginning when you've got good support. It's hard to get attention. But I gather very quickly you ended up with a show in New York. Is that what you were telling me?

PA: Yes, very shortly after that.

PK: How did that happen?

PA: A combination of reasons. One, is that it was a very small world, as we know. There were very few players. If you were the least bit articulate, I guess is the word, or the least bit sociable, you could enter that world without too much difficulty. Both those qualities being present, I entered it easily. I remember the excitement, the thrill of being included. That was fabulous to me. That is, suddenly I was a part of something that was greater than myself. It was a system that I had complete--I was young enough and naive enough and I had complete belief in it, a belief in its hierarchy, a belief in its judgment. To me it was like, let's just say, at that time, to me, in my sort of psychic state, it meant a great deal. I was very pleased. I was very social.

PK: Well, you still are.

PA: No, much less so. Much less so. I mean, I'm not trying to be--I'm just giving you the facts. I was, at that point, very social. I loved it and I loved going out and going to shows and blah, blah, blah, and doing all that stuff.

PK: But it interests me that right at the get-go, practically, you established some contact with New York.

PA: That was Nick Wilder. Nick came to me because--

PK: Well, he had moved by that time.

PA: He was, at that time, on La Cienega.

PK: Yes, right.

PA: He hadn't moved to Santa Monica.

PK: Right. He certainly hadn't gone East yet.

PA: No, no. Oh, no.

PK: That was years later.

PA: Oh, that was years later, yes.

PK: But he had the contacts, because -Nick Wilder, of course, was a--

PA: He was sort of "the" dealer in L.A.

PK: "The" dealer--

PA: In contemporary art.

PK: Very much known in New York, as well. So he then introduced you to?

PA: To Castelli and to Bob Elkon. I had my first show with Elkon, but Castelli is the one who sold it out, because he liked the work.

PK: I won't say this begs the question or raises the question, but this is a most auspicious beginning for a rube from California.

PA: Tell me.

PK: What it tells me is a couple of things. One, is that in fact, New York, if you are situated rightly, and you knew the right people, always through contacts, that New York was receptive, interested in finding new talent, and it could be outside of New York.

PA: Well, now just a minute. No, I'm talking about--the show was very successful. It sold out. It garnered a significant amount of attention. It was highly criticized, both positively and negatively.

PK: Well, that's good.

PA: Yes. No. Fine. Fine. Of course, the only thing you ever remember is the negative criticism, you don't remember the positive ones. The negative ones called it sort of a decadent California art, which is to be expected. The positive ones sort of spoke of it in all sort of ethereal things. Whatever it was.

PK: So it's a lot about sensibility right there.

PA: Yes, of course.

PK: Not to mention prejudice.

PA: It was at that point that I became aware to the point where I could feel it, rather than just observe it, what polarity existed, and you would begin to get some sense of how you were going to deal with it. I dealt with it okay. I wasn't really that good when it came to criticism. I think that's also the reason why I was so happy to be included in this sort of so-called art world, was because I felt that need. That was very important to me, because I was sort of--I'm not going to digress on this, but I was sort of asking--I wanted it to be something other than what I really thought it was; that is, that inclusion. I thought it had a lot more emotional content than it really did.

PK: Did you think of it as kind of a fraternity then that you had invited to rush?

PA: I thought of it affectionately. Let's put it that way, affectionately.

PK: It had a paternal feeling to it.

PA: Yes, but also I must say the relationships that I have now with the artists that I knew then are the same. That is, they really haven't differed. But my relation to other people, people other than artists, has certainly changed.

PK: Let's pursue this a bit within the framework of that first question. You acknowledged that you would have had a more successful career, and I think in terms of economically, in sales, if you had gone to New York and reinforced this connection with the New York art world, which you chose not to do for reasons that you've expressed. How did that play out? Clearly at this point you have enjoyed--maybe you had some bad reviews, but, nonetheless, you enjoyed a success there. Dealers love to sell art. Your show sold out. Track it. What happened then?

PA: You mean why didn't it just go up and up and up and up?

PK: Yes.

PA: Because it wasn't in me to do that. For better or for worse. I mean, in a way I've answered my question. I would have been destroyed in New York. Had I gone to New York--

PK: Emotionally?

PA: Emotionally I would have been destroyed by it. It's not in my nature to do a lot of that stuff. I don't have the ambition, or else the aggressiveness, or the competitiveness, or whatever it may take to do that. What happened is that after--this was the late sixties. It was the first time that California, L.A., was being recognized as a force, and as a result, there was enormous national, international attention being focused on a small number of people. Ten or twelve people.

PK: That so-called Venice--

PA: Whatever it was.

PK: Yes.

PA: It was [ Robert] Irwin, it was Billy, and Bill and--

PK: Ferus.

PA: --it was Craig, and blah, you know, everybody, right. That whole group. I was sort of almost a second generation to it, because I was not involved in the Ferus group. I came in later.

PK: No, but people, I think, would, in some ways, associate you with it in spirit.

PA: Yes, sure.

PK: If not actually in the stable.

PA: Right. So we used to do these shows like in Cincinnati, in Minneapolis, in Akron, in Kansas City, in Vancouver, where as a group, not always as a whole group, but it would be at least three or four or five of us, [Ed] Moses, you know, and we'd be invited to go to these shows. It was like a minor rock-and-roll band, and it was just as bizarre. Well, I somehow made a point of starting to burn bridges as fast as they were built, by behavior. So that was going on. There was something that was--what all that was, was there was part of this process that I really disliked. I couldn't identify it. I could only say that there was something about it that was for me was not right, and my behavior was a way of my telling myself, "You don't like this." But I couldn't articulate it. I could only do it sort of animalistically, so to speak. But it was also the sixties and our perception of life and behavior was significantly different than we would--

PK: Our role models were rock stars.

PA: Right.

PK: Still are to some degree.

PA: Yes. So I was always pushing. I was always pushing the edge of civility and of taste. Not so much aesthetically, but I mean, more in terms of behavior.

PK: Did you feel that this was part of the bohemian idea?

PA: There's lots of ways you could rationalize it, and I was not the least bit--and I rationalized it beautifully at the time. But I'm saying in retrospect, if I were to look at my behavior and how, in fact, I feel about that world, I would say the behavior was about this. Meaning, it was saying, "There's something wrong here."

PK: Well, what was it that was wrong? Now you do have the benefit of hindsight.

PA: I'm a romantic, and I believed in it. I believed in the value of things. I believe that objects can be made that can have an extraordinary effect on me and others. But I'll speak very subjectively. So, given that premise, I believed that I was a participant in the making of these objects. There were times when I made something that I thought was extraordinary. I saw objects made by others that I thought was extraordinary, and, some, still do. That being the basic belief, anything outside of that process, or anything that deluded that process to me, was sort of corrupt, and that was being very naive. Okay? And I'm giving you the extremities of it. Again, this is in retrospect. So, having that sort of rather naive belief system--I'm exaggerating here. I mean, I'm not that naive, but I'm emphasizing this so the point is clear.

PK: It sounds like idealists are in some ways naive.

PA: Yes.

PK: I mean, what you're describing is an idealist.

PA: Yes. I don't feel that way now. I mean, I feel what I'm saying about the value of the objects, but I don't in any way have any illusions about the process, where I think I probably had some illusions about the process in those days.

PK: Were you trying to get yourself rejected? You mentioned behavior.

PA: In a way I was, because what I was doing, I was pushing my value. I was trying to determine the value, my value.

PK: "Just how good am I? How much will you put up with?"

PA: "How much will you put up with?" Exactly.

PK: You could do that in New York very well.

PA: Well, a lot of people did. A lot of people still do.

PK: Yes. That bad boy [unclear] still is at work.

PA: Yes.

PK: Do you feel that that is--well, this is maybe another topic.

PA: This is a completely other topic.

PK: We'll do this later.

PA: Yes. But I think that it also is an indelible comment on my relationship to this whole deal.

PK: The whole enterprise.

PA: The whole enterprise, exactly. If I was involved in the enterprise on that level in some way, it was a fragile, not necessarily appropriate situation. It was bound to be difficult.

PK: You felt, apparently, that to pursue the career, even from here, but in New York was--

PA: Frankly, it was a pain in the ass.

PK: Pain in the ass. The rewards, you were aware of the rewards were not worth it?

PA: They weren't worth it. I didn't care that much. There was too much hurt for me.

PK: Just through the bad reviews or through the--

PA: Oh, no. No, no.

PK: --through the recognition that this idealist--

PA: No, no. You know what it was? It would even get down to having to spend that time in New York. It would get down to getting on a plane.

PK: It wasn't your place.

PA: It wasn't my place. It was even exaggerated even more so by the fact that it was my brother's place.

PK: Well, this is good, because what we're talking about here, you know, our subtext here is the notion of place, of where you belong and the choices.

PA: I didn't belong there. I never felt I belonged there, ever. I mean, when I was in college, I used to spend weeks there, but it was always another place to me. It was never my place. I never felt it. But my brother did. He went to school back there, too, and he always sort of gravitated it. He gravitated to it much easier than I did.

PK: Was there a moment, a decision, or a moment when you recognized this, and made this decision, and said, "I'm just going to back off from this"?

PA: No, it was felt all along. I think what happened is that it became--

[Tape 1, side B]

PK: Continuing the interview with Peter Alexander. This is tape one, side B.

We were still talking about place. But then also consequences. Flirting with New York, having an initial success there, but then a decision that was made for the reasons you've expressed. It had consequences.

PA: But again, you can't remove arrogance from this, from what we're talking about. That was a big part of it, too.

PK: But you didn't need it, in a sense.

PA: Didn't need what? Yes, I didn't need New York. Fuck 'em. I remember, for an example, a dinner party over at Isherwood's and Bachardy's , with Pete--what's his name? Not Plagens, because that was much earlier, when Peter was still a painter out here.

PK: The critic?

PA: The critic.

PK: Not Fidel?

PA: Danielli? No, no, no. The guy from New York.

PK: Big critic.

PA: I keep thinking Stremmel, but it's not Stremmel.

PK: Schemel?

PA: No.

PK: No, no, no. Not Schemel, wait a minute. Well, we'll think of it.

PA: You know the guy I'm talking about. He wrote for Art News or not--for Art America, and also for Art Forum for a long time.

PK: Schjedahl.

PA: Something like that. Yes. Anyway, he came out, and this was sort of in his heyday, when he was sort of a hot--I don't know, maybe he still is. We had a small dinner party over there. He and I had always been very friendly. We were friendly in New York. We played cards together and all the rest of it. Basically, the content of our conversation was, I said, in no uncertain terms, that, "I don't see any reason to go to New York and buy into that shit and/or to feel as if we are in an inferior position because we're out here." And he never talked to me again.

PK: Now.

PA: No, seriously. He was really hurt.

PK: Hurt?

PA: He was hurt, because essentially what I did was I said that the value--his apparent sense of self was such that I had attacked that sense of self, and he wanted nothing to do with me after that. You get my point?

PK: Yes.

PA: Okay.

PK: I sure do.

PA: Greenberg, which I had dinner with Greenberg once, and he was with Ken Noland. I mean, that's when Greenberg's word was law. I remember having dinner with him, and just his behavior, I said, "This guy's fucked." The same way Neutra was. Neutra's arrogance I couldn't bear. I don't care how good he was. I used to take him drawings, or take him blueprints, which he would then color with his colored pencils. He'd spend a couple of hours in the afternoon lying in bed because of his heart condition. So he and I would sit around and talk. He would talk to me; I didn't talk. After a while I said, "I don't want to be like this guy." I mean, I don't see any reason for anybody to be like this. It was tragic. That's what I felt about Greenberg, and that's exactly what I felt about this other guy. So obviously something was operating there which said to me, you know--you know, you've got the picture. You understand what I'm saying?

PK: Yes, you resented the notion that you were obliged to conduct your career in a certain way to give it a value.

PA: Yes. Not only that, but that presumably once I had gone through the processes in order to attain stature, look at the kind of person I was going wind up as a result of that going through that process. I saw no value in any of it. You get what I mean? Not that I was going to--I'm just saying not that I had the wherewithal to even begin to do it, but it was that the whole process just was, I thought, was sort of disgusting.

PK: It sounds to me as if you thought it didn't have very much to do with what you valued.

PA: Exactly. Okay, let's not put a value judgment. My life was not really relevant to that, I didn't think.

PK: Did you observe, as you got to know these artists, East and West, that in some cases the other artists, or some of the other artists, were being distracted from what you felt was important now?

PA: We're all distracted. We're all distracted.

PK: But that there were greater distractions and it tended to be along commercial lines, you know, showing, being in the right place.

PA: Yes.

PK: Is this what you feared happening to you, in part?

PA: Well, I'm not exempting myself from all that shit. I mean, I do it out here.

PK: You did it here. Well, you chose where you wanted to do it.

PA: Yes, more or less. Also I could chose the degree to which to do it. I mean, I always felt that--I observe, for an example, yes, other artists, or even my brother, in what he has to do to sustain that process. He's been very successful, and there's a reason. Part of that reason is that it's a job. You do a lot, and a lot of it is not very savory for me. I didn't want to do that.

PK: You didn't want to curry favor. You didn't want to kiss--

PA: I'm not trying to take myself out of that. I'm no sweetheart. But I'm just talking--I suppose it has to do with the degrees of tolerance, and I suppose a part of that has to do with the ambition. I think if one is really ambitious, then those things don't trouble you. But evidently I didn't have sufficient ambition and/or I wasn't sufficiently competitive because all of those issues troubled me.

PK: What you've said, as I understand it, is very interesting, but the consequences of not going to New York were both positive and negative. You were recognizing that that's the issue, that the consequences of going to New York would have been probably negative to you as a person.

PA: To me as a person, yes.

PK: I mean, maybe to your art, you can't say that for sure.

PA: Yes. But as a person, I knew it would do me in.

PK: But you also recognized, again, back to wrapping up this question, that the consequences professionally by staying here, staking your claim, setting up shop here, could be negative to your career, or at least--

PA: Diminished.

PK: --diminished.

PA: Yes.

PK: Now, this has nothing to do with the quality of the art that's being made; it's just your perception.

PA: Exactly. Because it's immediately limited. I mean, you put boundaries on it almost by virtue of the fact that you don't have the access to Europe and that whole sort of process. The other thing, which is that I think you have to consider there has to also, in all of this, has to be a certain amount of fear. I may have feared that I was not up to the task. I mean, I think that that could be part of it, too.

PK: I know that feeling.

PA: Huh? [Laughter]

PK: That's a familiar feeling for all of us.

PA: Well, I don't think you can separate that out of what we're talking about.

PK: But, Peter, that's fairly universal, and you responded to it in a slightly different way. It would also drive some people then to the challenge, to test where they feel is the most chance of failure.

PA: Okay. I don't think the marketplace, or the public, is a place to do that test. I think it's an internal test. I think I feel that the biggest problem that I have is with me. I mean, it's bad enough with me, let alone to involve all those other people or all those other circumstances.

PK: Did you then have additional opportunities to show in New York? Did you show again? I don't know. I don't have a little catalog with your exhibition history, but, say, at that time, early on, there was this one successful show.

PA: No, I did two, I think, three shows, with Bob. Then what happened is that I stopped making the pieces that I was doing.

PK: Were those the boxes?

PA: Well, they were the boxes, and then there were the big wedges. Then they went into the wall pieces. The last group I did, which was in the early seventies, was the wall pieces. That was the last show that I did in New York for a while, for years, several years, because it was at that point that I stopped using resin and started drawing pastel sunsets. It was '72, '71. That was also a reaction; that is, those drawings was a reaction against to several things. That was the beginning of minimalism, and when rhetoric starting getting real heavy, a lot of words.

PK: Theory, we call it.

PA: Thank you. Theory started getting real heavy, and I got angrier and angrier about theory, and wanted to do something that was really stupid. So I figured about as stupid thing I could do would be to do a sunset. I wanted to do a picture. I wanted to get away from all that stuff and just do a picture--P-I-C-T-U-R-E. I figured, well, a sunset would be about as dumb a picture that could be done. I mean, that is it was not--okay, it has all those qualities we're talking about. But more important in any of this, I was building a house up in Tuna, and the site looked west, and I was building it in the fall. You know, bang, bang, saw, saw. Every day I would see these incredible sunsets. So I thought, well, something could be done with that. And that was really the incentive. That's what got me into sunsets. But the other reasoning, having to do with wanting to make pictures and I wanted to rid myself of this material that I was getting toxic poisoning from. For an example, I have always drank, but I never drank vodka. At the end of the day, it started to get to the point where I would drink a whole bottle of vodka. Then as soon as I stopped using the resins, I stopped.

PK: How do you explain that?

PA: It was the toxicity. In other words, it was--

PK: Was it like an antidote, the vodka?

PA: Well, it was like--oh, I'm exaggerating, but I mean it's good drama if I say a whole bottle, you know, but a lot. It was a lot. But it was only vodka, and I never drank vodka up until this time. So something had to be going on that had to with the toxicity. Then I stopped, and then that was it.

PK: So when did you start the sunsets?

PA: '71.

PK: Well, this is perfect, because we're now beginning to talk about--

PA: Environment.

PK: --environment, but, yes, and your work.

PA: Yes.

PK: And your work. The next question I have for you, following from the fact that you cast your lot here, I was wondering if you would be willing to acknowledge, or if you, indeed, recognize in your own work a kind of sensibility, a kind of view you would call West Coast art?

PA: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

PK: Distinguished from--

PA: I'm not even sure I could describe it, but I mean, I could--but before you get into that, I just want to make one comment. Eva Hesse, for an example, I always love her work. I remember having a meal with her in New York before she died. She went to Yale [University] and she's real bright, and she was very connected to the cerebral world of art in New York, and very much respected, and justifiably. I was sort of envious that I couldn't do art that was as whatever hers was. I mean, how could you describe it? There was sort of an intellectual, and yet a sensual combo that I thought was fairly unique and very enviable.

PK: The art of idea.

PA: Well, it was idea, but she would always give it a little kicker of sensuality because of the nature of the materials and all the rest of it, so that they both worked. I mean, it grabbed you on both levels. I could never quite get the intellectual stuff in there. I am much more of a hedonist and much more sort of a populist.

PK: Well, do you think that then is one of the--

PA: It's inseparable.

PK: --issues that also separates East and West?

PA: Yes. I think so.

PK: So do I. Would you hazard that it might constitute a kind of world new, separable?

PA: Yes, absolutely.

PK: Would you go that far?

PA: I would.

PK: Would you expand on that just a little bit? You gave a good example.

PA: Well, if art is about ideas, then ideas are not a populace concept. Populace concepts really originate from something that's felt. One of the reasons why I've always dealt with clichés, more or less--I mean, when I started working in resin, it was plastic. Art was not made out of plastic in those days. Art was made out of all the things that history has said art is made of. So one of the reasons why I liked plastic was that it was sort of anti-art, so to speak.

PK: Sort of like a Dadaist.

PA: It was very hedonistic. Well, I'm not talking about the Naum Gabos and those others. Also the reason why I got into it was because of surfboards. I mean, when I used to glaze surfboards, my surfboard, I remembered the resin in the bottom of the Dixie cup. That's how I got into the idea of casting the resin. I didn't know that there were other people here doing the same thing.

PK: Really?

PA: Oh, no. That was completely coincidental. I subsequently met them, meaning I met De Wain [Valentine], and I met Ron Cooper, and Terry [Terrence] O'Shea, and Ron Davis, and Doug Edge. Who else was in there? There were a couple of other guys whose names I've sort of forget. Eventually Bruce Beasley was another guy. Oh, the guy who was at the County Museum, did those really kind of beautiful pieces, and he sort of disappeared. Maurice Tuchman was a big advocate. He was in that show, the Sculpture of the Sixties. And [John] McCracken --

PK: McCracken?

PA: No, not McCracken, but another guy who did these sort of layered things that were beautifully made. They may be acrylic and they had color in them. I don't know. I don't know what happened.

PK: Not Fletcher?

PA: No, no, not Fletcher Benton. No. Well, actually, McCracken, I think, was teaching at UCLA. He was teaching there, wasn't he?

PK: Yes, I think so.

PA: So I remember he was like ahead of me in terms of the introduction. He was already sort of established when I came into the arena. I was sort of always very admiring of him. Yes, he was teaching down in sculpture at UCLA at the time. I'm off track. We were talking about?

PK: We were talking about--

PA: Oh, the populace business.

PK: --the populace and world views. The distinctions between Eastern and Western.

PA: Well, you're a historian. I've often thought about making a comparison between Florence and Venice in the 18th century. That is, Florence was the intellectual center, and it's the one that we know most about in terms of what was written, and all the rest of it. It wasn't until sometime later that history began to sort of catch up with all those guys that came out of Venice. Venice was much more hedonistic than Florence. I mean, you had Veronese. You had--who's the "Angels in the Sky" guy?

PK: Well, I don't know. You've got Titian in Venice, a little later. "Angels in the Sky" guy? [Laughs]

PA: Simon's got a fantastic painting of his out there, you know, the babe and then all the putti floating around. He always did this. [Jacopo Robusti] Tintoretto.

PK: Yes, and then later [Giovanni Battista] Tiepolo.

PA: Right. No, it's Tiepolo.

PK: Yes.

PA: Yes, that's the guy. There you go. But all those guys came out of Venice, right?

PK: Right.

PA: And, of course, Canaletto, which is always pretty funny.

PK: Yes, there are these kinds of differences. But let me ask you this. You mention this group of artists who, of course, became, in fact, to a certain extent, they're the ones that attracted attention to especially the Los Angeles area at that time. These then were identified with--

PA: Ken Price, Bob Irwin, Larry Bell, certainly, because of the glass. Then myself to a certain degree, and McCracken and Valentine and Cooper, at the time, and Terry. I mean, O'Shea was a real odd bird. Did you ever know him?

PK: I don't think so.

PA: Craig Kaufman.

PK: Certainly Ron Davis.

PA: Yes, and Ron Davis and Craig Kauffman.

PK: So these were the big shots. My question is this, because here I have a chance to ask somebody who was really there and involved, and you said something interesting that I didn't know that you, because of your involvement with the recreational side of your life, which is surfing, surfboards, that you, for some reason, which we might be able to get into to try and speculate about this, were able to make that leap, take this activity, this craft, this fabrication, and transform it.

PA: I mean, I can tell you exactly what was going on. I was doing a piece at UCLA. It was a little bust of plaster. I don't know why I was doing it. It was a figurative piece, and I was carving this little--chipping away at this piece of plaster. I thought, "Jesus, this would be much more interesting if it were cast in resin, because I could put this head inside this box, and you could look into it." It was the looking into that I liked. Like [Jan] Vermeer. I always thought Vermeer was incredible, because you were always looking, you're watching. The idea of watching, that kind of voyeurism, or that kind of containment, that is, a place that's still, that's quiet, that is full of light. I sort of would transport myself into these objects.

This bust was ridiculous, the object itself. I still have it, in fact. It was sort of stupid, but it was the beginning of the process. Then I got rid of the bust, and went to using straight abstraction.

PK: Did you know the work of Joseph Cornell at that time?

PA: Well, sort of. We all loved Cornell for the same reason, because you're watching. But I would say that he was not an influence. I would say that, I don't know, it was the material. I think permission came from Larry, because he did those glass boxes. Even though what I was doing was different, I'm sure that there's a relationship there.

PK: So this was all going on at that time. It brought a great deal of attention and fame to L.A. In fact, rather extraordinary when you think about it. This was like all of sudden, there was art in Southern California.

PA: Right.

PK: There are those of us now who maybe are a little more reasoned to think that perhaps there was some art beforehand. But, nonetheless, this really attracted the big attention.

PA: There was plenty of art beforehand, which we know, but it was never--

PK: But nonetheless, the exciting news--

PA: The system wasn't in place to allow this to happen.

PK: Of course, this is how we read about it now. This is canonical. This has become the art history of this region. But from what you're saying, it sounds as if that was very much the case. I mean, the descriptions that you read about entertainment--scratch that. But recreation, low art, or, it's not even art, it's that lifestyle indeed was--

PA: A participant?

PK: Yes. For artists here, artists here, it was an easier bridge for some reason. It was less of a leap from--

PA: Lifestyle was inseparable from what you did.

PK: Cars, surfboards, and so forth to art.

PA: All the rest of it. Oh, yes. Because it was all an extension of.

PK: So this is not, then, a convenient sort of art historical construct.

PA: Right. Where suddenly you took on art with a capital A, and you mold over what is history expecting now, or what can I do now which is significant, in the lineage of art history. If you look at [Frank] Stella, he's a perfect example of those black paintings he did at Princeton. He thought those out. I mean, you don't just do those. You know, you think them out, because the guy's really smart. He knew what was not expected, and he knew what would work, and he did it, and they're terrific. I think they're the best paintings he's ever done. But I don't think anybody here thought anything out. You felt it out, or you kind of went blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. But you didn't do it--you know, my point's clear.

PK: Yes, and it's a good one. I just wanted to make sure that I understood that, indeed, is what you were reporting here.

PA: Billy was one of the best proponents of this, too. That's the best work he's ever done, those Dentos.

PK: When did it become, or did it, become self-consciousness? Let me tell you what I mean by that. [Brief interruption.]

I don't know if I was very clear in my asking this particular question, so I'll try it again. But I was trying to ascertain that, indeed, what has now become sort of an accepted notion of California art history, a sixties' style, and very nicely written about in a way that sounds important, it gives a certain character to this area, is, from what you said, indeed, the case, that there was a lack of self-consciousness about developing these new forms and materials, in particular, and that there was apparently something in place that would allow this kind of mood without conceptualizing it the way, perhaps, similar moves were made in the East.

PA: Yes. I mean, this is presumptuous, but I think, yes. It's not completely one or the other, but certainly I would say that the emphasis had less of a historical consciousness, and it was more sort of felt or fallen into than contrived.

PK: What we're seeking here, it ain't easy, something that's ineffable, really, and that is, what is the spirit, in a way, of an art environment context. Would you say given that, indeed, these developments, the experiments, that you tried, you and the others, were possible because you were working at a distance from New York--

PA: Sure, of course. Of course. You could not take on what was taken on here and not have that distance, because then that was the virtue, and from other points of view, it was a negative.

PK: Well, next question. At what point did you see that as one of the attractive qualities for making art here?

PA: It was not even about a choice. It's the same. That story I told you about the architecture and saying, "I can't do this anymore." It was the same thing. I think the reason why I never even imagined going to New York was because there was something telling me that this is not for me. In other words, which meant that if what is possible here, I somehow sensed what was possible, and knew that whatever I was could only be done here.

PK: So for Oliver, it was philosophical. I mean, there is no question, he is a--he has written about. Let me try to ask this question. Or maybe you know where it's going. That Robert Irwin, I always thought, was finally, in some ways, in the realm of the senses, and that it hadn't been articulated as high philosophy, in theory, which, of course, now is, if you read Ren Weschler's book--

PA: He's a fucking hedonist. You know, he had the best butterfly collection I've ever seen. Would you think of Irwin and butterflies? No. But he knew what it took. He knew what had to be done was that it had to get put into words and it had to be put in sort of philosophical discourse. Which is exactly what he presents, and he does it incredibly well. But if you've ever heard him speak, you come away from one those things and you say, "What the fuck did he say?" [Laughs]

PK: But this isn't about Irwin.

PA: No, and I have enormous admiration for Bob.

PK: No, I know that.

PA: And all the rest of it, but it's like "Huh?" But look at Nauman. Nauman was here, and nothing happened. He went to New York--WHAMBO!

PK: No, I wouldn't say nothing happened [unclear] Bruce was here.

PA: No, but Bruce's sensibility is not about this place. It is sort of, because--

PK: Well, yes, what about that? Tell me about that.

PA: I was thinking, and I'm thinking out loud, is that actually Bruce is about this place in an odd sort of way. And probably--oh, I don't even want to get into Bruce. Let's keep on a subject that I'm more familiar with, which is not Bruce.

PK: Well, okay. This is not a bad way of doing this, though, because what we're describing--and we'll stop whenever you want to stop--we're trying to identify--we agree, more to the point, you agree, you feel that there is finally a certain sensibility that you associate with California, or especially Southern California?

PA: Let's just call it comfort. I can only speak subjectively here. It has to do with my level of comfort, and, yes, I find it here and I don't find it in New York. I find it here and I find it in Mexico.

PK: That, of course--and you can't speak really, only for yourself.

PA: Right.

PK: But what we're also trying to do, another part of this question, maybe it's a little bit speculation, maybe it's based on your relationship with other artists over time, going through this period, we're talking, I guess, about the sixties' generation, sort of two generations a little bit, but close together, and saying, "Okay, they're making art in this place. For some reason they're here. How does that show?"

We have to turn this tape.

[Tape 2, side A]

PK: Continuing an interview with Peter Alexander. The date is December 13, 1995. This is the first session, and we're now on tape two, side one.

Peter, we were still wrestling with another one of these difficult questions that have no final definitive answer. But it's about trying to identify some quality, whether it is a perception, an attitude, a psychology, that one could attribute to this place and to its culture.

PA: Well, you know, man, we used to surf and smoke dope. You know, I mean, you can't surf and smoke dope in New York all the time.

PK: No, you can't. You especially can't surf.

PA: You can't surf. [Laughs] That was the prevailing Eastern thought, and my brother was a great exponent of that.

PK: So you couldn't be what? You mean that you couldn't really be serious here.

PA: No, I'm serious. Many Easterners, the collective Eastern thought appeared to me, at that time, to be that all "we" do out here is to--man, you know, smoke a little dope.

PK: Well, they were taking their share of stuff. Well, it's a dismissive attitude to me. What you're describing is very simply dismissive attitude towards the coast, which was seen in many other areas, as well. But turning that around a bit, at this point we're more interested in what was here and not how it was dismissed or perceived in the East. That's a later question.

PA: Well, part of it, and I was thinking about your question, and in many ways what it has to do with, how do you spend your day. What do you do? How do you spend your day? By what are you confronted or not confronted on a daily basis. What one is confronted by here is completely different than what you're confronted by in New York. I will say New York, but, you know, other cities. And that is what's different. This could be a real stretch, but the ephemera of Hollywood, probably that fact has a great deal to do with the nature of a lot of the work that comes out of here, or certainly did for a long period of time. I suppose that Helter Skelter was probably the biggest breaking point, or that Helter Skelter established another generation of--

PK: You mean the show at MOCA?

PA: Yes, that show. Not so much that show, but it was the first collective demonstration, it seemed, of a point of view that it became apparent that L.A. has now become a city, because it's painful. Cities are not a city unless it's painful. So what happened in the sixties, L.A. wasn't painful then. It wasn't until of sort of the mid-eighties, I suppose, that this place started to garner pain.

PK: So you really do believe that hedonism is part of the character of the sort of the situation?

PA: Attention to the senses.

PK: That's what I said about Irwin that didn't fit. That I see it much more as an interest in the senses or perception, if you want to.

PA: Than in the cerebral.

PK: So in general you would--

PA: Well, look it, when the Santa Anas blow in the fall and you smell those orange blossoms, which you still do, I mean, I can't think of any equivalent anyplace else. I mean, there are up in, I'm sure, in Morocco and blah, blah, blah. But that's certainly pretty unique.

PK: Well, I think that's a very interesting observation that you really then are describing a major change in the environment and in the quality of the urban experience here from the sixties to the eighties.

PA: Oh, yes.

PK: You sort of document it by that exhibition at MOCA.

PA: Well, I think, again, it was the most public statement, to my knowledge. It originated here. Certainly, the work that was done in that exhibition is not anything like the work that was being done at say the one that Fred White did at UCLA. What's that one, you know, the little one he did which was Irwin and Larry and myself and Craig Kaufman.

PK: I probably saw it. I don't remember what it was called.

PA: Well, it has a certain sort of infamy to it. There was a beautiful little catalog that came out, Light Reflection, something like that. I forget the name of it. But it was always being referred to.

PK: Oh, that color light thing?

PA: I don't have the catalog. It's in the biography. The catalog, actually, is very rare. I mean, it's unfortunate you don't see it very much. It's a beautiful little catalog. I'm only using that as a reference to how exaggerated the differences are between Helter Skelter and that exhibition.

PK: Yes, this is for the benefit of our tape audience. Show entitled Transparency, Reflection, Light Space, four artists: Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, and Craig Kauffman. It was the 1971, end of the sixties at UCLA. The point you're making is that--

PA: That was an authentic representation of how we thought, how we felt and how we thought, meaning not just this four, but how collectively we thought and felt about Los Angeles, about this environment. Well, Helter Skelter is equally a collective thought of this environment and they're significantly different. You could gear the changes that have occurred by those two exhibitions.

PK: Very interesting. Was there more of a--despite your notorious behavior, the sort of bad boy image, to a certain degree, or playboy image--

PA: I didn't do anything anybody else didn't do.

PK: I don't mean you. [unclear].

PA: But everybody did it. But I'm just talking about why I was doing it.

PK: But I'm talking about the sixties, which, of course, and the group at that time. But despite that kind of behavior, the liberated behavior, the bohemian ideal, which is associated with the--

PA: I don't think bohemian. It was rock and roll and Hollywood. That's not bohemian.

PK: Yes, but if artists are involved, we call it bohemian.

PA: No, we don't. That is a perceptual shift also. If you were talking about 1950, I'd say bohemian, but we're talking about the late sixties. I wouldn't say bohemian. I would say it's not about black leotards. It's about being a participant and equal to other systems that exist, and those systems could be Hollywood and rock and roll. But not bohemian.

PK: So in a conventional sense, it's not--I mean, bohemian basically has to do--the notion has to do, go back to the--

PA: It's a fringe. Bohemian suggests a kind of fringe.

PK: Outside.

PA: It's outside. This is not outside. This is part of and equal to, and that's critical.

PK: You're right. That's a very good point.

PA: We thought of ourselves as being as good as, and as important as, all the other industries in this town, which were rock and roll and movies. Not certainly economically, but from a point of view of aesthetic impact and so on and so forth. It was a distorted perception, but at least it--

PK: Of course, rock and roll--

PA: That's what it was.

PK: --does have an aspect, at least a lifestyle, of counterculture. Anti-establishment. But that's perhaps rhetoric as much as anything [unclear].

PA: Yes.

PK: Posturing, shall we say.

PA: Look, you don't have Capital Records and A&M and Warner Brothers. That's not counterculture. [Laughs]

PK: No, no, of course not.

PA: That's business, and anything other than that is just flash.

PK: Let me rephrase this question. Despite--

PA: Look, everybody thought of themselves as being artists. Okay? Actors. I mean, this is when Jack Nicholson started and this was Easy Rider. This was all that stuff, right? They were artists. The rock-and-roll people were artists, and we were artists, and we were all the same. We were all either a part of, or on the fringe, interchangeably, or simultaneous, or something, but what I'm saying is that it was an equal playing field. At least that's how we thought of it.

PK: But you're still sixties' people. Forget the term "bohemian," which has connotations of the beat era, and then going way back to Whistler and so forth. Forget about that. But indeed, the people that you've described, whatever industry, and I think it's real interesting that you're saying about the self-perception as participants with these other more lucrative industries.

PA: Yes, but we used to go to the same parties.

PK: Well, that's right. But the notion of devil-may-care, of pushing the limits as Michel Foucault would say, I guess, his theory, that behavior, in some cases outrageous, seems to be a part of that with--well, certainly with rock and rollers, devil-take-the-high-most kind of attitude. You know, we are operating by different rules, because we are special.

PA: That's right. Exactly.

PK: So this is what I would describe. But despite that, what you--

PA: People were so forgiving.

PK: Well, you know, everybody had their day to a certain degree. But the fact of the matter is, it seems, from what you've said, that in terms of the work itself, and as a response to an environment, there was a kind of innocence in the work itself, or a reflection of an environment that was more forgiving, more salubrious, more comfortable, less problematic than what we have at this stage in Los Angeles.

PA: Yes. Oh, yes. Much more tolerant.

PK: I don't know if "innocence" is the right word, but it's--

PA: I think innocence would certainly would be a word of many. It was cultural innocence. It was the first go, so to speak, so nobody knew what to expect. All these factors came together at the same time, meaning the sixties and rock and roll and drugs and art and blah, blah. So there weren't many judgements being passed around, because nobody was in any position to make these judgements, except the ultra right, and nobody paid any attention to them, so you were okay. You were in safe territory. You would not be in safe territory now by any matter of means.

PK: Things have gotten--

PA: I mean that behavior would never be acceptable.

PK: Well, things have gotten, of course, more complicated.

PA: I'm not sure it would want to be repeated. I mean, it couldn't. There's no context for it.

PK: Certain things have their place in time, there's no question. We've got other problems, and there's always far more antisocial dangers and antisocial behavior now, if you really want to look at it. Not necessarily in the art world. But remember also you and I have grown up a bit, too. We're middle-aged gentlemen.

PA: Middle-aged. Gentleman, I don't know. You are. But there was an innocence in it which was--meaning there was no malice in any of it. I think a lot of behavior today is malicious. If we're talking about the same thing. We're talking about the urban environment and the kind of activities that occur here, but that was so rarified.

[Laughs] For an example, I'll never forget, it was really great. This is how removed it was from reality. Maurice Tuchman organized an exhibition for the Black Panthers. It was at the Grinestein's house, and what it was, was an auction. The money for the auction--it was to go for black political cause. It wasn't the Black Panthers, but it was for black political cause. It was a white boy supporting the blacks. Well, the guy who organized it, got Maurice to organize it, all the checks went to him, and he just took off. [Laughs] I don't know what happened to the money. It didn't go to any black organization; it went to this guy. But, it was perfect. It was like the fact that it happened at the Grinestein's. And here we all were, right? Sort of all giving pieces, and all the collectors were there, and everybody was all being real cool, da, da, da.

PK: Tom Wolfe gave that a name.

PA: And this guy just--what?

PK: [Unclear].

PA: Yes, right. And that's what it was. This guy just walked with it and it was just great. [Laughs]

PK: When did you find out about it?

PA: Oh, much later. Much later.

PK: Somehow that would seem fitting.

PA: It's completely fitting. Completely.

PK: [unclear] .

PA: But the guy who was doing it, I mean, you know, that was reality. That wasn't art. That was "Give me the bucks, babe."

PK: I'm very interested, and I want to make sure I get this right, this business of theoretical, or philosophical, if you will, intellectual underpinnings for art, because it seems to me really are touching on an important distinction between the L.A. art world of that time, of the sixties, and the situation in New York. Do I understand this correctly, that most of the artists you associated with, and in many cases now their work is understood and described in highly theoretical terms, post-structuralist, post-modern terms, early, that they, in fact--this really had nothing to do with their art-making and what they brought to their art, the theory.

PA: You're talking about people out here?

PK: Yes. You're friends, your colleagues here in Los Angeles, who are now, in fact, shortly thereafter by New Yorkers began to be described, their work began to be described very much in formalist first, and theoretical--

PA: [Laughs] Those words never were part of the vocabulary I knew.

PK: Isn't it interesting how--

PA: Yes, but so does this surprise you? [Laughs]

PK: No, but on the other hand, as you say about Frank Stella, you feel that he brought that with him to his work, that this informed, the theoretical underpinnings, the intellectual discourse or concerns, were consciously brought to the art that in the West--and you can tell me if this is right or wrong, but I'm trying to make sure that I understand what you're saying--that in the West, in California, these artists, whose work eventually began to be described in similar terms, be interpreted in similar terms.

PA: Had no concept. They had no concept at all on many of these issues.

PK: Including our friend, Ed Ruscha, of all these artists. If you read the critiques of Ed's work and his compositions--

PA: Today.

PK: --absolutely extraordinary.

PA: Oh, yank it higher, baby. It's like--

PK: What do you--

PA: That's it. That's the way the guy is. That's how he thinks. It's nothing to do with any of that shit.

PK: Would you point to Ed as one of the quintessential L.A. artists, in terms of what we've been describing, or response to a place and liking it?

PA: Yes, yes. Ed's response to L.A. is one of the best. But I think where Ed was brilliant, or is brilliant, is that he put words into it. And by putting words in, then he took it out of the strictly hedonist California territory and brought in and allowed those in the East, so to speak, to chew on something.

If you look at [Jasper] Johns, Johns is fucking brilliant. Twenty critics could write books about Johns, nobody would be wrong, and nobody would be right. But, boy, they could sure go on and on. Going back to Stella again, I remember the Protractor Series he did in the late sixties, seventies, in the seventies. I wondered if, in fact, which I thought was a brilliant notion, that those things reproduced so beautifully that he called his colors, and the idea came from the idea of reproduction, which I would not put it past him. He had the smarts to come up with that kind of concept. I mean, talk about marketing. Some of those paintings are pretty good. I don't think they're nearly as good as the black ones. But if you look at it from the point of view of, nobody ever did that before. What? You mean, God, making these paintings that are big, flat, bold colors that, God, they reproduce so incredibly in offset. [Laughs]

PK: Why not?

PA: I don't know, it's just a possibility. True or not, it's a good idea.

PK: The work that we've been discussing, or the artists that we've been discussing, who are your friends and colleagues here, out here, enjoyed rather amazing--well, they were overnight sensations, when you consider what it takes sometimes to get attention in the art world and so forth. The right things were in place at the right time. For some reason--

PA: I wouldn't say overnight.

PK: Well, it doesn't mean that many of them hadn't been working for sometime, but they certainly didn't work like--

PA: There was something that coalesced, which was outside of the artists themselves, and they were a participant in this coalescing. I'm thinking about some of the artists that came out of New York in the eighties. I would call some of them overnight sensations.

PK: Schnabel.

PA: Well, yes, but I think Salle and Schnabel, they purposely put themselves on that track. Meaning that they maneuvered--

PK: They're careerists.

PA: All of it. I'm not saying this to diminish any of their accomplishments, but that was their priority. They made moves based on--and that comes from an enormous amount of cynicism. I mean, that's the only way that that can operate. They were educated out here. But the difference is John Baldessari who, I mean, he's a whole other territory. I shouldn't say Baldessari, that's not entirely true. I mean, there were other factors.

PK: He was real influential.

PA: I think he was very influential in it. But we didn't possess nearly the smarts, so to speak, or the cynicism to allow that maneuvering, or else to be that sophisticated at maneuvering.

PK: So you can't point to any strategy. It wasn't strategic.

PA: There was some strategy, like, what are we going to do tomorrow? No, there was no strategy. Not in that sense there was no strategy. Even in my time, it was strategic to go to New York. Some tried and didn't last too long, or did it for a while, or what have you. Moses was always making little forays into New York. You do that because you know it's good strategy. Look at Vija Celmins, she was at UCLA when we were there. Vija is amazing in the sense that she, even at UCLA, she knew exactly what she was doing. And she's not changed at all. She's still doing exactly the same thing. Her moving to New York was not strategic. It did a great deal for her, but she was very comfortable here. I mean, she was certainly accepted, respected, and all the rest of it here, it was just a bigger audience back there. But I wouldn't say her move was strategic in any way, as I would call Schnabel's, or Salle's move strategic. I mean, she just happened to go to New York, but for completely different reasons.

Now Bryan Hunt, his was strategic. Nothing happened to Bryan out here, although I think some of the best work he's done was done here. But he couldn't get any attention, and I don't know why. But as soon as he went to New York, off he went.

PK: Let me tell you briefly, since this is your interview, not mine, a story that--I don't know if it's really set down anywhere. I was interviewing some years ago, at his Dana Point home, John McLaughlin. He was absolutely a dear man and much admired by his group of artists.

PA: One of the best.

PK: Yes.

PA: Without a doubt.

PK: One of these youngsters, who was beginning to get a reputation, younger L.A. artist, I think it was Jack Barth, if I'm not mistaken, came down, interrupted our interview.

PA: He showed up?

PK: He just showed up, knocked on the door and there he was. Well, of course, John had to receive him. He was actually annoyed, because I had come down--

PA: No shit.

PK --from San Francisco to do this interview with him. He was gracious, always the gentleman. I said, "No problem." Jack--I do believe it was Jack--had come to say goodbye, because he wanted to say goodbye to John and he announced that he was moving. He had a studio downtown L.A., I think, and he was going to be moving to New York. The Holy Grail, I suppose. I don't know. So they chatted, and actually it was touching, because Barth really did--

PA: It was like an homage.

PK: Yes. So anyway, we chatted for a little bit and then he left. As soon as he left, McLaughlin looked at me, and he said something to the effect, he said, "I don't understand it. What's wrong with these kids?" He says, "He has everything he needs to make his art. He has a nice studio. He has a home. He has his place to make his art." I really got the sense that McLaughlin simply didn't get it.

PA: "Why go there?"

PK: Yes. "Why go there?"

PA: Right.

PK: Now, that may be disingenuous to a degree.

PA: No, I don't think so. You can't make the paintings that he makes and be disingenuous. One of the great things about those paintings is the fact they're so fucking sloppy.

PK: Yes.

PA: That's an inseparable part of the joy of those paintings. You could only do that with enormous confidence and comfort. I mean, I'm not saying he didn't. He knew what New York meant, he was not naive from a career point of view, but I don't think he cared. You tell me. You interviewed him.

PK: Well, I will. But at this moment, I'm much more interested in your view of somebody like John and what he might have represented.

PA: The only thing I know about John is that Nick Wilder adored him and also adored his paintings. When I first saw his paintings, my first reaction was, "I don't quite get it." Then after seeing them and being around them a little bit, I began to get it, and thought these things are unbelievable, and not the least of which you would never know that in a reproduction. You would have to see the painting. That was one of the things I really liked about them, was the fact that they were made the way they were.

I met him once in the gallery just to say hello. I didn't know anything about him, other than the paintings. Presumably that says a great deal. If he were like the paintings, I would think the guy was terrific. I'm sure that Greenberg must have been praising his work. I could not imagine that Greenberg was not aware of it, particularly since Nick was so keen on it. So, given that, he certainly had the opportunity to go East, or he must have been invited or something. I don't know what he did, but he didn't. I mean, he didn't go there with any permanence.

PK: No, although he came from the Boston area.

PA: Originally?

PK: Yes.

PA: How long was he out here?

PK: Well, from right after the war. He was in the service in intelligence, Japanese language.

PA: He was a cryptologist?

PK: Language instruction, I think. I'm not quite sure.

PA: Did he live in Dana Point all his life?

PK: That area of Laguna.

PA: Really? Isn't that interesting.

PK: Yes. But it seems instructive to me, in terms of our conversation, hearing this, this issue, that he's a useful one to look at, because in some ways he doesn't seem necessarily to fit, or be necessarily of this place and yet--

PA: He's the same territory as Graves, in that he's sort of an oddball, in the fact that he knows Japanese, or the fact that he's familiar with Japan, suggests that Buddhist influence or that kind of--

PK: Zen.

PA: --Zen stuff. So you tell me, I mean, that's where he comes from. He would not come from Greenberg.

PK: No.

PA: He came from across the ocean, basically.

PK: Even though it would appear on the face of it--

PA: On the face of it that he might, yes. But he did not.

PK: Let's switch this over.

[Tape 2, Side B]

PK: Peter Alexander. This is tape two, side B, and it seems an opportune moment to--

PA: Change questions?

PK: Well, move on a bit. We're still dancing around the same issues, as we will for the remainder of our time.

PA: It's all connected. It's inseparable.

PK: I don't want to post this in any way as simply an East-West confrontation or a binary thing, as they call it now, either/or, because things aren't that simple.

PA: Well, but it is and it is not. It's a constant issue. Certainly much less constant now then it ever has been, thank God, because nobody gives a shit.

PK: Well, this is exactly what I wanted to get to next. We talked a little bit about this earlier, attitudes in the East towards what they often call "the coast," and they really mean, I think, usually Hollywood by that. I'm talking about on the part of certainly critics, those who write about art, the dealers who are in a position, curators, and, let's face it, there's a collective in New York, it's very powerful, and our view of our own art and art history is formed, perhaps disproportionately, by that perspective. To a lesser degree maybe artists, and it interests me to know your experience and how much they participate in these kinds of these perspectives, these attitudes towards the West and towards the regions, regionalism. I guess the next part of that question has to do with just what you said; that is, have the attitudes changed as you watched from 1960s to now.

PA: Dramatically. In the sixties, I remember Michael Balog, whom you may--no, he's dead now. But I remember he was part of the group that went to Chouinard with Laddie and Chuck and Guys and a few others, Tom Little, I think. Michael was a surfer from Ventura and a very, very funny guy. In fact, he was having an affair with Keaton, Diane Keaton. He was wacko. But I remember his going to New York. He was like Barth. He was similar, meaning he said, "Oh, I'm going to go to New York." What he did is, he went to the dentist and got all of his teeth cleaned, and he had a physical checkup, went down to someplace and got a suit, and his ticket and went off to New York. It was like the hick, so to speak, going to the big city. That's exactly what it was like. I think Michael--I mean, he was amazing. He started living with [Robert] Rauschenberg, or else set up--he became a participant in Rauschenberg's entourage. I'm not saying sexual, but you know.

PK: Right. In the orbit.

PA: Definitely in the orbit. And he had the personality where he could do that very easily and very well. He had a show at Castelli and then that was it. But what happened to Michael isn't so much the point as it is about the preparations of going there, and that was the prevalent attitude.

So now, no, for a number of reasons. The primary one, I think, is that as Los Angeles started to develop an economic base and a support system, the need to go to New York was less and less. You didn't have to go there from an economic point of view. But from a career point of view, from a critical point of view, you had to have representation, or you had to have some contact with it, because that's where the words come from.

Now what's happened is that the economic base is as strong here as it is in New York. Of course, you don't have Europe here, and Europe is still significant. We did have the Japanese, but they bailed, but they'll come back in again.

PK: Sure. And the Koreans.

PA: Yes, the Koreans are real hot now, too. But now what's happened is the critical aspects of it, you don't give a shit about, because there's something about the art world has had too many critics for too long and it's too transparent, so that even that factor, that is, the rhetoric that is supplied, doesn't have nearly the effect that it once did. I'm not saying it's impotent, but it doesn't have the potency.

PK: That's very interesting. Would you look at a magazine like Art Forum as an example of that shift and change that at one time it seemed to be--

PA: It was the magazine. When was the last time you read Art Forum? Do you care?

PK: No.

PA: It isn't just our age. My daughter's an artist. She couldn't care less.

PK: Has it become irrelevant in a way?

PA: It's become irrelevant. Who cares?

PK: Because it's too--

PA: Art and Auction is much more interesting. Art in America is a little bit better. I mean, better than Art Forum, but not as good as Art and Auction. I think Art and Auction is good because it just talks about trends in a broad sense from the point of view of the marketplace. It doesn't talk about--it gets into esthetics, but not in the same way that that analytical stuff is. What was the other point? Oh, I know. I was reading a thing on Ross Bleckner. It was a review on Bleckner. I think Bleckner is a good artist. I like him. But this review, I couldn't believe it. Just a minute, let's find something in here that's sort of, if you care.

PK: Yes.

PA: "Furthermore, we may wonder what subject is that designated in Remember Me by the pronoun 'me.' Is it the artist speaking in propria persona, or perhaps the painting itself through a trope of personification? Or as in Poussin's Arcadian Shepards, could death be the speaker? The tone of Bleckner's work makes it hard to exclude this reading, yet the painting itself could never show us how to decide. Remember Me tells us the someone or something must be remembered, but we never know," da-da-da-da-da. Okay, you got the idea?

PK: Yes. Who wrote that review? It's in the New Art in America, Current Art in America.

PA: Yes, Barry Shabowski. Shabowski . Swabski. I don't know who Barry Swabski is, but he--boy, he's got a stiff dick on this one.

PK: Is your point that it's difficult to imagine what this could possibly have to do with the--

PA: Yes. Who cares?

PK: Well, it's a separate industry.

PA: "Or a disabuse contemplation of the simulacrom." What's a simulacrom? The head?

PK: No, no. It's a substitute for something. Something that appears--

PA: Oh. Similar to.

PK: Yes, but it's not the real thing. It's a stand-in kind of thing.

PA: Okay.

PK: But I take your meaning, and I guess your point is that criticism has detoured so far, veered so far off having a connection with the art itself, in many cases.

PA: There's a great piece written by Umberto Eco, which was written in 1980, How To Write The Introduction To An Art Catalog.

PK: Oh God, I'll have to read that.

PA: I may even have a copy here.

PK: I'd love it.

PA: It is fabulous. In fact, I thought it was written in the nineties, because it's so cynical, but apparently it was written in the eighties, 1980. [Tape recorder turned off.]

PK: You couldn't find the Eco book, but that essay on How To Write An Introduction To An Art Catalog, to you, seems very much to the point in terms of the irrelevance of much art writing except, of course, the kind I do. [Laughs]

PA: Yes, exactly. That's one of the reasons why I appreciate Wilson so much. The downside is that he gets into that place which you kind of go, "Oh, give me a fuckin' break," but which is not over intellectualizing. It's just exposing himself too much. But when he is on, I mean, for an example he wrote a review of a Monet show, it was unbelievable. I mean, the fact that he would hit on the points that he could hit on with such clarity where anybody could read it, and you'd get it by the tone as to what was going on. I mean, he was translating these paintings into words as best as that could be done. And I think that that is extraordinary. As opposed to, at a distance, commenting about the paintings. He wasn't doing that. I mean, you felt the paintings.

PK: Peter what you're saying--what I think as I listen to you--is very much in keeping with your point of view from the very beginning, as you expressed it, and that is that you, yourself, are attracted to, feel more comfortable and natural with an art that comes perhaps even more directly out of experience and out of the [unclear].

PA: It's biographical.

PK: It is not laden, too heavily burdened with the theoretical instructions to give its meaning.

PA: Right. Yes.

PK: I gather also that you feel this is one of the qualities that you associate with--

PA: It characterizes work that comes from this place, and that's one reason why I'm comfortable in it. Yes, that's a very good point.

PK: That's well said. To dispatch the question about attitude--

PA: But that point of view can be very easily dismissed and very easily nailed, meaning that from the cerebral point of view, the position that I take is very fragile because of the level of the attack.

PK: What do you mean?

PA: It's not supportable. It's not easily supportable.

PK: Well, it's an opinion.

PA: Exactly.

PK: But, so what? There's no science in this art.

PA: Well, no, but if you read the critics, there's a science and they believe it.

PK: That's the whole interesting aspect of theoretical theory and literary criticism and so forth, that there's this enlightened group that can bring methods to bear, to understand, to tell us what things mean. what is the meaning. But this leads to another, I think, important question. We agree that there is less method, less concept, intellectual underpinning, theoretical underpinning, of much of the work that came out of California, Southern California, through the sixties, and perhaps up close to our time. That becomes a different issue, I think. But, nonetheless, I've said this earlier, when something is prominent and is evident, shown, it has to be written about. It has to be explained. It has to ascribed importance by critics in certain terms. It doesn't do for them, given the way the intellectual side of the art world operates, this world of discourse and ideas. It doesn't do just to say--

PA: This is not very fertile territory for that group or for that point of view.

PK: Yes, but the point is, when they have to deal with it, or choose to deal with it, then it has to be somehow validated in these terms, and you get art writing about, as you're saying, Irwin and O'Shea. Ed just keeps his mouth shut. Irwin, of course--

PA: Right. Tells everybody. [Laughs]

PK: But this, then, is like the scholar [unclear], the philosopher, looking at products, cultural products, and assigning meaning to them. It doesn't mean it's not there. How do you, and others that you've talked with from the sixties who were involved in making these products, feel about some of the take, the writing about these works? I don't know how much that even interests you.

PA: Well, it depends on who's writing. I think Hughes is one of the best. He does not take on much in this territory. I think he did a great article on Kenny Price when Kenny had the show, I think, down in Texas, sort of a retrospective. It was a very reverential and very accurate thing on Ken. But I don't think he's written about many others in this area. He's very good. Is that your question?

PK: Well, sort of.

PA: Your question is not about who, but I think the question had to do with, how do I feel about the people who do?

PK: Well, not so much the people who do the writing, but the fact is that this art has been written about. The sixties have been written about, and not just locally. But finally, certainly, in the sixties and afterwards, everywhere else you get your essays about this art. It has to be written about in terms of [unclear] . I know this as somebody who writes about art. So you gotta get a hook. You gotta get a hook.

PA: No, it's a difficult problem.

PK: So here you have an art that doesn't demand, as you say, and certainly in terms of artistic attention, this kind of post structuralist if you--

PA: No, there has to be an incredible leap of faith when you take on the territory. I keep thinking of Asian art. I keep thinking of classical Chinese and Japanese painting. One of the things I always loved about the structure of Japanese, let's say, Japanese painting, is that the subject matter is always a given. You've got bamboo, you've got birds, you've got monkeys, you've got frogs, you've got whatever. But what differs is the attitude. The materials are always the same, too. It's always pictorial, and there are very definite boundaries within which the artist will operate. But if you take Hokusai, or if you take--what the hell is the guy who did the twelve stations on the way to Kyoto?

PK: Hiroshige?

PA: Hiroshige, yes. And a bunch of others. Even people that only scholars would know about, like early 14th century stuff. You look at these and you look at ones that--you can have ten views of Fuji, and one of them would just jump out at you and you'd go, "Wow!" Now, okay, how do you describe that? How do you take on the difference between all of this? Basically, the problem is the same. I'm not saying that there's the artistic similarity. Well, there is, but I don't want to be too presumptuous here. But what I'm saying is there is a territorial similarity, which is that, how do you do it? What do you do?

PK: Well, that is the question, and without the devices of, let's say, of formalist criticism, Marxist criticism, if you will, or literary criticism, which is pretty much what has been operative recently in the art world, just about completely, and [unclear] art criticism almost everywhere else. But without these constructs or methods, it's awfully difficult. As you were saying, this is awfully difficult to make these distinctions.

PA: Well, maybe we should start with Japanese criticism, or is there such a thing? Are there critics who write about--

PK: I believe there are, but it's not something I'm real knowledgeable about.

PA: It could be an interesting start.

PK: This is a big subject, because I think you're right on. There may well be that there were certain conventions that were so carefully observed, in fact, you didn't breach them. You didn't jump outside. So you've got a difference between Eastern and Western, at least, as it developed in the late century.

PA: Oh, no, I'm not even suggesting anything that's similar.

PK: So criticism, in other words, -has a different function, I think, in the East [unclear].

PA: Well, it would be interesting to see if there were Western criticisms of Japanese work, for an example. Or also, is there such a thing as an Eastern criticism? Of the books that are written, certainly there must be Eastern critics who write about whether so and so is better than so and so. But I would be curious about is, if they are, how do they describe it, or what do they say? They don't talk about materials. The materials are all the same. They might just identify it, but we both know from our observations of this territory that there are huge differences in quality between all these visions of Fuji.

PK: I would think that that would be the key then to criticism and qualitative distinctions and of skill, and perhaps some evidence of dedication, or [unclear] over and over again. It's like something [unclear]. Morandi would be more like--

PA: I see. I see. Well, okay. But that--

PK: I'm talking about an Eastern aesthetic. I'm speculating. I'm suggesting a more limited, more closed, art environment then what the West [unclear] opened up to make it possible for you guys here in the sixties to do almost anything, and it was the possibility that it could be [unclear].

PA: Oh, no, I'm not making any comparisons between the lineage between the Eastern and the West. I'm only talking about, how do you discern, since what you're basing your response on to these objects is basically emotional. It's how it feels, because you don't have the rhetoric to back it up.

PK: Well, I think there's certain standards of accepted [unclear] and measures of qualities beyond just the--

PA: The felt.

PK: The emotional response. I think that it would be a combination of these things.

PA: Yes, yes.

PK: But I believe that the emotional response, since they're limited subjects and so forth, as you indicated, derives somehow comes the most effective use of the means. So that's where the art [unclear], because you certainly aren't going to shock people with assumptions like what happened in the West quite early [unclear].

PA: Yes, which brings up another question, which has to do with the avant garde, if you want to get into that one. It's really fascinating to see. I was thinking about the guy, the British guy who cuts the cows in half, or the animals in half, and they are exploding in formaldehyde. I was thinking about--

PK: Yes, I can't remember his name.[Damien Hirst]

PA: Yes, bit he's up for the big award, the Turner Prize or something. I was thinking about the work, which I saw once, and I was thinking about that work, and I was thinking about Rauschenberg's The Venice [unclear] , and when he did the goat with the tire around it. Maybe it's animal to animal, but the impact that image made in the Venice [unclear] , and to the art world as a whole at that time, was significant, and, I think, one that showed enormous sort of optimism and balls. The guy who's doing the things in formaldehyde which, I would imagine, is sort of the quintessential avant garde.

PK: Apparently.

PA: Apparently. Who gives a shit?

PK: That's a good point. It's shocking only in terms of what I would say [unclear].

PA: It's certainly not optimistic.

PK: Oh, I see what you mean.

PA: Or it doesn't allow for--it doesn't provide a departure for a lot of other things, whereas the Rauschenberg was an incredible departure for many people.

PK: Let's pull this then back again to California art in general, but particularly the period when you started out. What about that notion? We talked about innocence, but what about the notion of optimism?

PA: Things were very optimistic. But it was inseparable from the sixties, meaning that the art was really a reflection of the sixties. It was the optimism that--you must have had that feeling, as fleeting as it was, along with the rest of us, that we really thought that our generation was going to change things. I think every generation does to a greater or lesser degree, but I don't think any generation since then has believed it as strongly as we did.

PK: So this is, indeed, almost a utopia, or social component of the activity of making art.

PA: They were inseparable.

PK: You really did feel this.

PA: Oh, absolutely.

PK: It's not retrospective.

PA: No, no. At the time, I remember feeling it vividly, feeling very potent and very powerful. I mean, internally. Like I was in the right place, at the right time, on the right track.

PK: How did you imagine that these objects you were making would accomplish--

PA: Objects have no sociological--I've never asked them to have any political influence, any sociological influence. What I do are surrogates. They are narcissistic, and they are all about wherever my state of mind is at the time. That's as far as they go. And they do it in some kind of historical context. I make pictures, because it's populist. That's the populism in me. So it's not difficult. Certainly, there's no intellectual challenge at all in it. That's where they come from. There's no political statement. I mean, don't misunderstand me when I was talking about the sixties. I use that example of the sixties because it was the sense of optimism, it was the sense that things--

PK: In general.

PA: In general. Things would change and what I made at the time was simply a reflection of that, and not in any way--what I did was not--I didn't think these objects would--I was not desirous of these objects to make change or to have that effect. It was more of a manifestation of a feeling.

PK: Well, in part is that then acknowledgement that the times gave permission, made possible--

PA: Absolutely. "Permission" is the perfect word. It gave permission for that.

PK: So then it was just another form of participating in these bigger changes, which were hopeful?

PA: Yes.

PK: And that the world, indeed, would be better, not because of the specific, the actual objects within the art itself.

PA: No, it was consistent with the time. At least how I felt. But you know, it was sunshine. I mean, it really was. It was the sixties. This place was still, you know, all the things you remember it, and I used to surf a lot.

PK: Is this something, though, that you would talk about with--was this part of your discourse with the other artists? Was this Peter Alexander's personalism?

PA: No, this is mine.

PK: Responding to your [unclear].

PA: This is mine, yes.

PK: Yes, but would you speculate on any of the other artists around here?

PA: Well, I think everybody sort of acted it out. People didn't talk about it much. I mean, behavior was consistent with what I'm saying. Behavior was more important than the words.

PK: What about the works? You know, there are those who say, it has been said that, especially the Venice group anyway, the Southern California artists of that time, that the lifestyle, to a large degree, became as much the work of art as--

PA: That's Hollywood.

PK: Well, do you agree with that? Do you think that's a fair--

PA: How would I know? I was in the middle of it. [Laughs]

PK: Well, what do you think? How important was that?

PA: I don't know how much it affected my lifestyle. If I were living in Oakland, I'm sure my lifestyle would have been different. I'm sure it had an effect, but to what degree, I have no idea.

PK: Well, what I really meant--and I maybe didn't ask that exactly clearly--it has been said that the lifestyle, that lifestyle itself, the way--

PA: You mean, fuck the objects, this is all about--the objects are a means to the lifestyle?

PK: No, no. That's not it at all. That would be a very simplistic and simple-minded way to look at it, and talk about cynical.

PA: No shit.

PK: No shit, Charlie. But the idea that more than just the objects themselves, the way you lived your life, the look, the style, the parties, and other things like that, become, in a sense, a kind of performance art.

PA: Oh, yes. Oh, completely. Totally. But that was not unique to here. That was happening in New York, too. I mean, Max's Kansas City was, like, what went on in there was unbelievable. I mean, like Barbara Rose, I think this is true, when she was married to Frank Stella had a child by Carl Andre. Andre was the father, but Barbara and Frank were still together. Now, if that doesn't suggest--I'm not saying it's unique historically, but it does suggest a certain kind of--it goes back to Bloomsbury and it goes back to all those times.

PK: Taos and Santa Fe.

PA: Yes, it's all the same stuff. Maybe that is of a time which repeats itself, and this was a time of repetition. That is, the sixties was. Where things became very permissive.

[Tape 3, Side A]

PK: Further continuing this exciting interview with Peter Alexander on December 13, this is tape three, side A.

Before we started taping, we jumped into the dangerous area of modernism and so-called post-modernism, trying to see what term might be most applicable to the situation in L.A. You had some thoughts on that.

PA: Yes, okay. If we were to take Greenberg as being the manifestation of modernism, the only place that Greenberg, in theory, was going to go was to nothing. The closer it got to nothing, the more it was. But I don't think nothing in the Zen point of view, but I think nothing from the point of view of if you took his thinking to a certain conclusion, that's what you'd wind up with, So the great thing about so-called post-Greenbergian theory is that suddenly everything got embraced all over again. As a result of that, then it allowed for not only very many different points of view--I mean, suddenly taste got much more catholic. As a result of that, everything got very confused. So nobody knows what's up from down, at least comparatively speaking, certainly compared to what it was in the Greenbergian times.

It makes me think of sort of a theory that I've sort of diddled with, but have not really pursued much. It makes me think of Rembrandt and Van Gogh as painters, and it has to do with the touch. You could also take Frans Hals and--who was another one who was more contemporary that sort of had that touch of Hals'? He was good.

PK: Dutch?

PA: No, not Dutch, but just--particularly somebody who's not Dutch, but let me just go back to Rembrandt and Van Gogh. There are several things being said here. One is that most of us are learning art history, most of us are seeing paintings as reproductions and not as objects, which that in itself has had and will continue to have, if Bill Gates has anything to do with it, a big influence on what art is without really having the vaguest idea of what it's about. The reason why I use touch as an example--and this addresses the issue of "better than," that things get better, is that if you look at Van Gogh and Rembrandt, let's say for the sake of this argument that their touch is pretty much the same. I would say also that the manifestations of that touch are similar. So what you have is not a "better than something else," that things get clearer or what have you. I think what happens is that it's part of a cycle.

We identify with artists because these artists most represent how we feel. Artists are like everybody else; all they do is paint, so to speak. I use painting in the broadest sense. I'm going to digress here for a minute. But the thing that's remarkable about painting, as opposed to any other of the so-called forms is that it has touch. It has more touch than virtually anything else. This aspect of the touch is critical to others, the observers, connecting to it in ways that are quite ill-defined.

I'm not sure that many people address this issue, meaning critically and otherwise, but I think it's a conscious/unconscious means of communicating with the audience. That's why I use the business of Rembrandt and Van Gogh. It's like Van Gogh was not better than Rembrandt, or Rembrandt was not necessarily better than Van Gogh, it's just that they were the same person. They were very similar in people.

So then it comes back to this business of post-modernism, which has allowed us in many ways to see that these objects we make are really about people, and they're about the relationship that they have to people. They're not about historical lineage. It's not about ideas. It's about expressions.

PK: Presence.

PA: It's about presence. Exactly. Thank you. That's a much better word.

PK: The notion then of what you're describing could be, in current jargon, have to do with marks, maybe. The marks on the surface. This is a term that tends to be used.

PA: Is that a popular term these days? [Laughs]

PK: I've seen it once or twice.

PA: If it's popular, I don't want to use it. [Laughs] But, yes, sure. We could talk to marks. What's so interesting about Gates, as an example, is his wanting to digitalize all the famous paintings. It's a pictorial. It's a distant pictorial consideration. It's got nothing to do with a mark, which means it has nothing to do with the flesh. which means it has nothing to do with people.

I know this is not addressing your question.

PK: No, no, no.

PA: Well, it is, actually. It is in the sense that out of this sort of so-called catholicism, I think something really good is coming out of it ultimately.

PK: I framed the question off tape regarding modernism and the post modernism. I made the statement that, or expressed my opinion, that Los Angeles, in particular, was a prototypical, almost textbook, post-modernist environment from the very beginning.

PA: Because it was such a melting pot?

PK: Well, that's part of it and the things I said earlier off tape.

PA: In everything we said earlier about the lack of precedence and the invention.

PK: And the diversity, but also the openness, the openness to try, to take certain risks without being, what shall we say, restricted, or at least burdened, by the notions of how it is supposed to be. This high modern stuff.

PA: It's always been more so here. It's always been. I think it's getting less so. The more the city, the larger, the more popular, the more economic base, all those things tend to chip away at the invention. But it's always been more so. It's always allowed more than New York has. There's no question about that.

PK: One of the things, Peter, that you said earlier, you've said several times, is the presence of Hollywood and film in this area, which is certainly not to be denied. You acknowledge that it's like being in, literally in the air or in the drinking water, or something, it's part of being here. What we often associate with Hollywood, and I don't want to make this, again, too simplistic, the connections too direct, but there is, of course, at base, an artifice about it, it's storytelling. It's in effect--

PA: It's sinful, too.

PK: Well, sinful, but it is artificial. That is to say, that which appears real on film is fake. I'm thinking of movie sets. These are real simple images, but images that are very telling. There are those, of course, who characterize the whole legion in these terms.

PA: [Unclear] fake.

PK: Well, artificial. Disneyland to name one. A lot of the greenery, transforming a semi-arid desert, reinventing the tropical paradise. I don't know that this is unique, but it gets, in modern times, pretty close to it.

PA: It is.

PK: I guess what I sense, without going on, the architecture, the appropriation of styles, the casting about and trying to find that which invokes, that symbolizes something, invokes feelings, regardless to how it may have been appropriate to a certain setting, how it grew in a certain setting. Pick it up and then reproduce some of that feeling, age, antiquity. This is not, of course, unique. America has done this in many ways from the very beginning.

PA: Yes, but it's definitely catalyzed here in a way that it has not anyplace else.

PK: So I was just wondering--

PA: How that is effecting our behavior? Our artistic behavior?

PK: Well, that or just kind of a way of--

PA: Our artistic choices?

PK: --viewing the world. Exactly.

PA: I think it's definitely there. To what degree, I don't know.

PK: Well, what about you? You can't obviously draw direct connections, but would you describe that kind of environment, that kind of situation, as attributing to these images that you produce?

PA: I'm sure. But I don't know how.

PK: But you don't know how.

PA: Maybe in my adherence to sort of pictorial imagery of late. Maybe it's pictures. Pictures, pictures, pictures. Maybe that's it. But we're all exposed, anybody in the world is exposed to film. So it's not about the film. It's about--what is it about? I don't know. I have no idea, but I certainly feel it.

PK: See, it is different here. There's a good feeling of the ephemeral. You used that term.

PA: Well, I did, but you like it a lot more than I do. No, I shouldn't say "more than," you keep coming back to the idea, even though I did bring it up. But you like holding on to that, to the artifice, which is sort of the same as the ephemeral.

PK: Surface.

PA: Surface.

PK: Look.

PA: Look.

PK: Style.

PA: Style.

PK: Blah, blah, blah.

PA: Okay. Okay.

PK: Prettiness. Beauty.

PA: Pretty. Beauty. Yes, "pretty" and "beauty" are words that you'd never use in New York. That would be sinful, if you thought of something as being pretty or beautiful. Beautiful.

PK: Young.

PA: No, let's take young out of it, because then that gets into flesh.

PK: Not necessarily. That's just the way you think. [Laughs]

PA: Well, okay. People sometimes would describe my work as being very beautiful. Sometimes it still is, but I used to get a pang when I would hear that.

PK: You didn't like that?

PA: Oh no. Because--

PK: It wasn't serious.

PA: It wasn't serious. If it was beautiful, it was too easy. Now, fine. I feel fortunate to be able to make something that's beautiful.

PK: Well, you should, and you do. Well, I suggest that we could sort of worry this one for a while, and it could lead into some interesting discussions, but for our purposes, I think we'll get back and get grounded, as they say.

PA: Okay. So are we going on to number six?

PK: Yes.

PA: Haven't we said that already?

PK: I think we probably have touched on this. Yes. I think we have, in terms of California culture being separated in certain ways from New York. Another question, separated from other regions, but I think that that's inherent in the descriptions we've made. I suppose, and, again, this is maybe not easy to answer directly, but I asked, and we've talked about these issues, a good number of them. Your own work, we haven't really talked about its development or its evolution. We got to the sunsets, and you explained why you shifted to do them. I thought it was real interesting, and I think this is key. Maybe this can key a little further discussion. You wanted to do something that was dumb, I think was the word you used, and that was the dumbest thing you could think of.

PA: Well, something that didn't need a lot of rhetoric. You didn't have to explain it. That's the thing that troubled me most about what was going on in those days, is that you just couldn't understand stuff, because it all had to be explained. As soon as you have to explain something, as far as I'm concerned, forget it. I'm not interested.

PK: That is a statement, of course.

PA: What is? As soon as you have to explain something?

PK: No, no. The reason. The reasons for you choosing, as your subject, as dumb. You use the word "dumb" to describe these sunsets. That was actually a provocative statement, I think, making those words. Deciding to make those words was an answer to something that you were critiquing, what you view to be an important aspect of the art world, or understanding works of art.

PA: I was reacting against it.

PK: Yes.

PA: Yes, but I want to preface it by saying, first, I came to the idea of picture-making, because the idea of wanting to make a picture was a combination of, one, to rid myself of this material, which the thing that's characteristic of this material is you can't touch it. There's no touch, and no touch speaks of a kind of anonymity. I wanted to do something that was all about touch. So it was a 180 on that one. So I did pastels, the pastel sunsets. I wanted to do something that--maybe I'm doing exactly what I was accusing Frank Stella of doing. I wanted to do something that--but I must say it was not received as well as his paintings were. I mean, I was devastated critically of the first few years of my doing this.

PK: Of the sunsets?

PA: Oh, man, it was like, I didn't know how we were going to live, it was so bad. It was just like--I was oh, God. Nobody would touch them. It went on and on. But whatever.

PK: Where were they shown? Just here?

PA: No, well, they wouldn't touch them in New York until much later. But, yes, I showed them here, sort of a lot of reluctant showing. I did a show at Irvine with Jim--not Jim, what's his name, not Glickman. Hal Glicksman and he was great. This was the pastels and the velvets. I started doing the sunsets on velvet, which I did about ten of them that were sort of framed. Irvine was a very cool place in those days. This was like '74, '75.

PK: Melinda Wortz wasn't there.

PA: She wasn't there yet, no. Poor Melinda.

PK: Yes, sad. We have her papers, by the way.

PA: You do?

PK: Yes, we have a lot of them. All her art history.

PA: Really? She's just completely non-conscious--I mean, unconscious, isn't she?

PK: Alzheimer's, yes, I think that's the case.

PA: Yes. So Hal did the show down there, which was fabulous. It was one of the best things he ever did, because it gave me the confidence in what I was doing, because I was so battered around by the public.

PK: Were these reviews and so forth? Maybe the works were reviewed and it was so negative--

PA: No, it was just people. People would see them and just--

PK: Didn't like them.

PA: Yes.

PK: These were your friends?

PA: Like completely thought of them as retrograde.

PK: Did you feel that you had gone off track? Did you doubt yourself then?

PA: Oh, yes. I mean not--no. Yes and no. I mean, I didn't doubt how I felt, but I thought, well, maybe there's a better way to express this than what I was doing. But the positive aspect of it was the fact that the source of these images came from a real source. I was reacting to something that I was feeling that was real.

Let me briefly go through a series of things. There was the resins, and there was the sunsets, and there was the velvet sunsets, which were followed then, more or less, by the big tapestry velvets, which were sort of underwater-at-night images. That came from an experience that I had, that is, finding that image. Then after the velvets--and those were probably some of the best work I've done. They were critically very well received, but economically nobody would touch them. But about that time, the sunsets started to work, so you know, it was like this.

Then after those, then after the velvets, I started painting. I had been avoiding painting all my life, because I was terrified of it. I was afraid to put my--I was always using exotic materials like pastels, resin--not pastels, but resin, velvet, you know, da-da-da.

PK: Well, how were the images put on the velvet?

PA: They were spray-painted, and I used metal flake with an adhesive.

PK: Oh, boy, L.A. materials.

PA: Oh, yes. I went out to this place in the valley called Sparkelit Company. They had the best metal flake going, I mean, the best colors. It was fabulous. I'd go out to get bags of this shit, and I'd sprinkle it on, and do all that. Because I didn't want to do imitation Tijuana paintings, but I wanted to use velvet because it was so black. Which is, that's how I got into it, because it was so black. I was doing some black paintings. I had a piece of velvet pinned up to the wall next to it, and I could not even come close to the blackness in that velvet. So I took a leap of faith and said, well, fuck it, I'll just do some painting on it. Boy, did that get me. Jesus, people just gave me shit for that. But after the velvet, then I started painting. I started painting sort of sunset-type paintings.

This was all sort of autobiographical. Those went into sort of explosions and things like that, which I'd been playing with for a while, and fire and burning the city. Then those paintings led into the city nights, which is because I was seeing this girl who lived--lady who lived in Burbank, and I kept driving over the San Diego Freeway and looking down in the valley all the time, and saying, "Jesus, something could be done with that." Just like the sunset. So that kicked off the city night paintings. Then after the city nights, I started doing these really dark--that was when L.A. started to really get painful, sort of around the riots. Before the riots, and I started doing these gloomy, dark paintings that were black and white. Here, I'll show you.

PK: That's before the L.A.--

PA: No, after the L.A.--

PK: --after [unclear].

PA: It was all biographical. Then I did these riot paintings. These are the resins. Then these are [unclear] sunsets and then those are that. I have a thing for the velvets. Then these, here are the sort of the darker paintings. The L.A.--

PK: Oh, yes, I've seen these.

PA: I mean, dark, they were a little bit gloomy, but not--but they're actually sort of optimistic. Then I did the riot paintings. Then I left L.A. and went to Las Vegas and did the Las Vegas paintings. That's sort of the last batch I've done. Then somebody said, all of these periods usually has something to do with a woman, which it does.

PK: With a woman?

PA: With a woman, yes. One way or another.

PK: We like that. [Alexander laughs.] That's the way it should be.

PA: There was a terrific girl that I was seeing, who loved Las Vegas, and so that's what got me there.

PK: So did you actually work there then?

PA: No, no, no. I'd go there. I went there back and forth for over two years.

PK: Did you take pictures?

PA: Taking photographs up the yin-yang. I had no idea what image to hold onto, until I got to Caesar's Palace and the fake statues. So most of the Las Vegas paintings came out of that.

PK: Of course, for many of us, many would say that Las Vegas is the great post modernist environment. It has a sort of kinship to L.A. in many respects.

PA: Well, it--yes, it definitely--yes. It's an extension. It's artificial. I responded to it. My first response to it was, of course, it was an extension of lights. So my first response was the lights and thinking, well, yes, something could be done with the light. I did a few sort of signage paintings that had to do with--I think there's one in here that had to do with the Vegas strip. Like this one.

PK: Oh, yes.

PA: Which was sort of out of focus, and you couldn't look at it. It's real bright. It's much brighter than that. So you can't really look at it, just like Las Vegas. Then after that I did the finger paintings, and that was sort of about it.

PK: Come back to the microphone.

PA: Oh, yes. Sorry.

PK: We don't want to lose any of these things.

PA: Well, this is not answering your question. This is sort of a chronology. I only give it to you because its an affirmation of something that I wasn't even aware of, was how autobiographical all this work is. That painting was done--

PK: Which one?

PA: The big one there. The long one. That one was done, I was in India in the early eighties for about four months. I stayed with a family that lived in the jungle that had this incredible pool, swimming pool, that I would sort of swim in at night in the moonlight. A year later, a year after I came back, I had these dreams about these paintings, and I started doing them. I did about ten of them. Small ones. This is the biggest one. And that was it. I mean, that's where they came from. That's called "Vindaloo". They're some of the best paintings I've done. They all came from this dream, and it was about a certain kind of peace that existed there.

PK: One of the things that I've realized by this conversation now is that you really are a landscape painter.

PA: Basically.

PK: Gee, surprise, surprise. I should have noticed that anyway.

PA: Yes.

PK: But very much of it is, and this, I think, is the best kind of landscape, an interior landscape, as well. Nature itself.

PA: It's just a vehicle.

PK: A vehicle for the realization of--

PA: A state.

PK: A state. It now becomes very, very evident that that is the case. What I would like to do now, just for wrapping up, is to take a look specifically at one painting, then sort of the series, what that represents in the series that's up around it. But this is the Delean, from the Delean Collection. The specific work, well, it wasn't helpful at all. It's untitled, 1985, it's oil.

PA: No, it has a title.

PK: Does it?

PA: Yes. Hold on a second, I'll get it. [Tape recorder turned off.]

Oh, here it is, it is titled. Just a minute. Yes, it's called "Chapala."

PK: Is that Mexican?

PA: Yes.

PK: 1985?

PA: 1985. Thirty-by-thirty-three, oil and wax on paper, on paper on canvas.

PK: What can you tell me about that work that would place it, fit it within this Peter Alexander story?

PA: At that time, '85, I started painting with oil, or acrylics, or some combination thereof, and in 1984. I think in order to do that comfortably, because I was so terrified of painting, that I started using images that I was familiar with, which would have been the sunsets or explosions. But it was landscapes with horizons, and it had to do with light and clouds. These were inspired by--the thing I like most about this particular piece was that it was one of the first ones I did using wax. The use of the material was very critical to the nature of the image, because I could get brilliant color, brilliant translucent color, and also be able to apply the material with my fingers. So, in other words, what I'd do is make this--which I'm doing now. I mean, I haven't done it in years, in ten years, and here I am doing it all over again. It's part of that cycle. I use this wax--

PK: You're finger painting.

PA: Yes, it's finger painting. Yes, that's exactly what it is. Which is, speaking of the touch, that's what that's about. That's all finger painting. There's some brush work, but it's all--mostly--

PK: Indian?

PA: Yes. There is brush work in it, but most of it's done with fingers. And that's what I liked about that particular piece, was that it was the best of that group, of which there are maybe eight or nine.

PK: But they're not all done in Chapala? They all done in Mexico?

PA: No, no, no, no. They're all done here in L.A., but the series--

PK: Based on photos or sketches or memory?

PA: No, no, no. I just looked at the map of Baja and pulled out names of places.

PK: Oh.

PA: That's what I did for the city of lights. I'd go to the Thomas Brothers and pull out Alhambra and Monrovia, El Monte, you know.

PK: They're all constructs. They're all made up.

PA: Yes. They're all made up, yes. Your observation about it being a state of being is, these are just vehicles to explain a state. These were of a certain state. Sort of explosive, you know, exuberant.

PK: So they're really not about the place at all.

PA: No.

PK: It's not even that Baja evoked these things.

PA: No. No, it had nothing to do with it.

PK: Gee. [Laughs]

PA: But I love Baja and spend a lot of time there.

PK: Yes. Well, I think this is a good time to wrap up since we're running out of tape.

PA: Good.

PK: What do you think?

PA: Yes, I think so. You've gone through three--how long? Three hours.

PK: Two and a half.

PA: Two and a half. It's okay with me.

PK: We'll pick up another time. This is great. Thank you.

PA: Thank you.

[End of session]

[Session 2, Tape 1, Side A]

PK: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, an interview with artist Peter Alexander in his Marina Del Rey/Venice area studio on April 11, 1996. This is session two. There was an earlier session in December last year. The interviewer for the Archives is Paul Karlstrom.

Okay, Peter, here we are again, finally getting started after all this setting up. You were about to tell me a story, so tell away.

PA: Well, you brought it up when you were talking about aging, but one of the things that was interesting about last night was that most of the people who were at this party were--everybody had known each other for twenty years or more. So it gave a kind of density to the gathering, and it allowed--because everybody has seen everybody else be a fool. So nobody had any pretenses, and there was enormous comfort in that and that can only happen after a long period of time, I mean after significant amount of time of knowing each other. I thought to myself, this is one of the pleasures of aging.

PK: Right, exactly.

PA: That's all.

PK: Exactly true, and that's pretty much the observation I was going to make, that you perhaps allow one another a little more and you want to be cut some slack yourself. You know you need it. God knows. And you're grateful for it. Also, maybe another aspect of this, which could be relevant to you or to us in this interview, is the fact that your expectations and also your requirements for yourself are not really the same. You can become comfortable with some of the realities of your situation. You don't have to necessarily be the absolute greatest at whatever you do. You can become comfortable with who you happen to be and what you're interested in doing and then you just enjoy that.

PA: Well, I think you don't have any choice either way. So that, well, the point is, I think that after doing what you do for the period of time it has been done, you do reach a point, hopefully, where you realize that you are impotent in it, meaning that it is going to happen and be exactly what it is and there's nothing you can do about it. And whether it's going to provide you with whatever the fantasies are is irrelevant. They will or won't, and that's context.

PK: Tell me, for the sake of this interview, about the party, at whose party, what was the event. This was last night?

PA: Yes, it was Chuck Arnoldi's fiftieth birthday party and Frank Gehry gave it. I guess Frank--I don't know who did the guest list, but it was either--I don't know who did it. But everybody knew each other.

PK: About twenty people?

PA: Yes.

PK: That's pretty small.

PA: Yes, but it was at Valentino's. The food was not very good. It started off slightly tight, but then everybody got shit-faced and--

PK: See, some things don't change.

PA: No. [Laughter] It just got funnier and funnier. And somehow everybody made it home. But it was a real pleasure. It was real sort of joyous. It was very joyous.

PK: Let me ask you this. It brings us back to something we discussed, actually at some length in the earlier interview, how does this represent a continuing sense of community among artists in this area, that particular group? Just think about last night, the people who happened to be there, going back these years you're talking about. Looking at that group, how would you describe the art community, or at least one part of the art community here in the L.A. area?

PA: I don't think it had anything to do with the art community, although the people who were there were all involved in the art community, but I don't think--that was just sort of coincidental. That was just the glue that--but it was not the issue. It had more to do with everybody had been friends all this time and the fact that those relationships have been sustained, all of which have to do with the interaction of people has nothing to do with it, and art is only incidental to it, or that is the fact it's the art world, so to speak, is only incidental to it.

PK: I can understand that. But, of course, the reason that you're friends--

PA: Is you interact a lot, and the reason why you