Winston Smith
Interview by Todd May/June 1999
Page 2

What's INRI?

Usually over the cross is "INRI," the abbreviation from Latin, "Iesus Cristos Rex Ebreo." something about, "Jesus Christ, king of the Jews" which is what the Romans put over the thing to mock him. So I replaced that with the anti-Christ symbol because money essentially, if you want to get abstract about it, money is the anti-Christ. The bible says you can't serve God and mammon/wealth. It's mammon that's become their god, not that I'm a bible thumper, but there something about our culture...It's what in our culture we've absorbed, what becomes prominent in our culture. And in the "United States of America" I took out the letter "s" so it's the United State of America, and then behind the 1, I made it into a German iron cross. I had a cat named 208 so I changed the serial number to read 208 there and I put it as series 1984. And then I put two eyes over the pyramid and it says something like New World Order over it in Latin so I just changed to read "Nuit," which I think is French for "Night." On a few record artworks, I would put my name at the bottom right-hand corner to be indiscrete. Unfortunately, by the time the record got made, it had to be cropped here and there to make it fit and then, boom, my name's gone, and it's not like I'm making a big fortune doing this anyways. So you'd like to get credit if you're not getting any money for it. By and by, I learned a lesson from Michelangelo.

Incorporating it into the middle.

Apparently, people thought when he made the "Pieta," an incredibly beautiful statue, that they though tit had to have been made by Leonardo. "Only a master like Leonardo DaVinci could make this." And he hated Leonardo and Leonardo hated Michelangelo. They were rivals. He was 20 years younger and it was a different generation. That was the old shit and he was the new shit. He went in the middle of the night and he carved on the sash across the Madonna's Chest, so it said, "Michelangelo Buonarroti made this." (I made it, damn it, and nobody else. It's mine.) So on some things I actually wound up putting my name in the middle which people may have thought, "Oh, this guy has an enormous ego." Well, not quite as much as that, it's just because I figured that if it was in the middle, then it can't get cut out. So it's right underneath the torch, right above the hand of Lady Liberty on the "Bedtime for Democracy."

What other jobs have you taken to keep yourself fed?

For a long, long time, I worked digging ditches. [laughter] For the last 17 years I've lived on this ranch up in northern California and I'd do carpentry for people. I'm not much of a carpenter; I can swing a hammer, but that's about it. That, and I worked at a solar power company for a while doing packing and shipping and stuff. I did lots of illustration work for local magazines and illustration work for newspapers. A few years ago for a couple of years in a row I was working at a photocopy place which was great because my work is basically based on photocopies. I even told the owner, "Do you realize that by hiring me, it's like hiring an alcoholic to work in a brewery?" I was pushing that button all day long, but he was very cool and he very much liked my work and I think without his help, a lot of what you see around me wouldn't even exist because I wouldn't have had the opportunity to experiment with things. So that was actually very good. Now I'm successfully "self-unemployed." I don't know how successful that will be in the future, but at the time I'm still here and I actually do have somewhat of a roof over my head even though by this time next month or next year I could be living behind a 7-11 eating out of a dog food can. "Mighty Dog. Mighty good. Mmm." Maybe I could get a job advertising that: "Winston says: Mighty Dog is great."

Have you ever gotten into any trouble with the images you've used from a copyright standpoint? Have you ever been approached by that?

Knock on wood. So far, no. Most of what I use is copyright-free and it's so old that it's over with. I try to stay away from photographs of inspaniduals -- photographs of celebrities. I'm not going to use a picture of Sinatra or Coca- Cola or Disney. These guys will clobber you if you try to do that. I also take pictures out of context; pieces of "elements," is what I call them. Like here you have somebody holding a fish. Well, he was holding a flashlight originally and I put a fish in his hand so the fish came from another piece. The fish came from maybe a famous painting or something. But being taken out of context, it no longer is associated with that painting or that product -- fish food or whatever it was. If I ever get hauled into court, I guess I'll have to practice saying that again in front of the judge. [laughter] "I'm just a working stiff trying to get by, your Honor."

Name some of the bands that you made up. That you said were playing at the Mabuhay Gardens.

WE used to do these posters. When I first started out, I didn't know a whole lot of people in the scene in the late '70s. I knew different bands and stuff and would go to shows. It wasn't like I was associated with them in any sense so in order to do band art, I wanted to show people in bands what I would do. They would say, "Well, what kind of style do you do?" So I'd make up some bullshit bands. Names of bands that didn't exist.

The Twits

The Clip-Ons, Lenny and the Spitwads, PTA, the Dip Shits, Anonymous Technicians -- a whole series of weird, bullshit bands. The Clones, The Rejects, and one called Half Life and then Biafra reminded me that there was probably a band called Half Life in almost every major American city. Certain ones were pretty obvious names. They were really obvious and by and by, some bands took names just like them. I'm certain I had nothing to do with it. They came upon them on their own, I'm sure. Biafra has a long list of the most repulsive combinations of names that are possible to have... They could never have been thought of by anyone else. I mean, other people could think of them, but it's not like it could be duplicated by accident. George DiCaprio (Leonardo's father), I was having lunch with him - - not to drop names or anything -- but he has his own long list of names that were so funny that as I took a drink of beer when he was telling us these names, I spit out my beer. It's the only time I've ever done that in reality. It was so fuckin' funny. And he was saying, "Gee, I wish there were bands with these names." I can't remember it, though. My memory fails me. It's Alzheimer's. It's incipient, advanced Alzheimer's. Don't do drugs, kids. Either that or do lots of them and if you do, share them with me.

What's the biggest lightbulb that's gone off when you made a connection that wasn't there before -- like putting a strategic bomber in a lady's arms -- or was there one idea that was the catalyst for a lot of other ideas that came along that burst upon you?

That's a good question because that's happened. There were some things that I know were watermarks of evolution that changed the course of things -- the concept that less is better when it comes to composition. Imagery is more effective when it is most direct visually.

Have you ever met somebody who Winston Smithed you that used your images or ideas that you've used and done it to you?

Yeah. Actually, one time I saw a zine -- this was a hundred years ago, like in 1979 -- and I saw a zine at a little punk shop somewhere in San Francisco and it was exactly my picture, only the guy was in a different position, and it was the guy cut out and put into another picture and he was floating the wrong way and I thought, "Oh man, they ripped me off." But then I thought no, they couldn't. If they had cut it up, the part behind it wouldn't even be there. So it means that whoever did this had to have gotten the original stuff and did it on their own separately and decided where to put it because otherwise the figure would be gone -- there'd be a hole there and it wasn't there. It was nice and clear. You saw the background as it was in its entirety. So I got in touch with this cat. His name was Keith Ulrich and I think he lived in Pasadena at the time. I have not heard from him for years and years. We corresponded. He sent me a lot of his work and he did incredible collages and he just happened to be using the same stuff I was using and the same idea occurred to him as it occurred to me only he made it a little bit trippier by making this guy floating around where I put the guy on solid ground. That was kind of cool. And then I've had people send me things or I saw pieces of my work photocopied from my books or records cut up and made into collages and the first time I saw it I thought, "Oh, they fucked up my thing," and then I had to think about it and I realized, "Oh, wait a minute, that's what I do." The reason I'm doing what I'm doing is to fuck up other people's things. I'm screwing up other people's hard work. And so I thought, "More power to him." That's fine. And there's this guy named Joachin; he is in a band called The Hellworms that has anew record out on Alternative Tentacles and he does really cool collages. He made an entire collage based on one of my pieces and without knowing it, used that same piece; exactly the same picture; the Last Supper and put a bunch of my figures in this Last Supper thing and he didn't even know that that was one I used myself. That was irony on top of irony. He sent it off to me and said, "Look, I hope you don't mind my doing this. It's just kind of a thank you note for what you do." I thought it was totally cool. It was an honor to have someone make something out of what I've done because now I don't feel bad for all the things that I've ripped off of other people. One time I met an artist who was one of the commercial artists in the '50s who made some pictures that I'd used and when I met him, he mentioned that and I went, "Oh, man, I hope you don't mind... It's strictly for laughs. I'm not getting rich off of this or nothin" and he said, "Oh, no, I totally approve." Art is art. Even in the history of art where people see paintings and then a generation or later it changes to a different style of panting, but it's because those artists would study the work of the past and then alter and change it. None of us have any original ideas. We all formulate them off of the things we have grown up with. So many of the 1950s images of housewives make them look as though they just had a nose full of cocaine and their eyes are big and they're so happy to wash that pan. Happy white guys with little bow-ties. That was the image people wanted to live up to, but I've seen some things from other countries, especially from behind the iron curtain, that I think really hit the nail on the head because they live that life. The live what we protest against.

Secretly, do you wish that Reagan was still president?

Yeah, yeah. I wish Newt was still around. I would join the Republican party just to get votes for the bastard [laughter]. We made these shirts: "Newt Hates Me."

Newt Hates Me

Yeah, I even told the guy I made them with, "We should go out and campaign for Newt so we can keep peddling these shirts." Actually we could re-sell the shirts by writing underneath the image of Newt, "I Voted," because the vote that took place when the Republicans lost all those seats in the mid-term vote here in October and the Republicans lost pretty much big time after they thought Monica was going to help them win. Monica helped them lose and Newt had resigned probably for a lot of reasons and he knew he didn't have the votes to remain the speaker, but who knows, maybe Larry Flynt has some shit on him. I told Biafra that when Reagan had completed his second term, "God, now that Reagan's no longer president, we're gonna be unemployed real soon. Now what?" Reagan was only Bush in sheep's clothing.

Reagan looked better, though.

He was a better actor. People think he was a bad actor, but he was actually a very good actor. He swindled the public and the world into thinking he was a President for a long time.

Eight years.

I call that...

Pretty damn good acting. Have you ever wished that the worlds which you created would come true and that you could live inside of them?

h yeah. That's why I wish I'd shown you this video tape I had. I was doing this interview for this woman from the Canadian Broadcasting Television Company and she was asking me "Why do you even do these silly pictures?"

Enough Is Enough

I pointed to a picture called "Enough is Enough." [It's in the new book. There's a platypus all harnessed up to a little cart pulling a pygmy hippo down the road and children holding bunnies and spacemen and robot dolls] And I said, "Well, because I wish that there was a world where a platypus could trundle down the road with a pygmy hippo in the back of a cart and a meteorite would be coming down and a man would be being chased by a dinosaurs in the background and a clown would hold a sledgehammer up to the meteor." But there aren't any worlds like that, so I make them up myself and I do these things to create my own little dream states and nightmare states. Although on the same level, I'm glad that these things don't exist in reality. It would be pretty scary.

Have you ever dreamt of driving an Austin Healey into ancient Egypt, running into a snowman [referring to the piece "Eclipse of the Gods"]...

Yeah, the snowman is definitely in the wrong neighborhood and in the wrong time of the year for him. [laughter] When I was a teenager I used to draw rooms where all of these spanergent things would be put together because I couldn't cut them out so I would draw them in and make these surreal environments. It was during the craze of the pop art thing in the late '60s, like Roy Liechtenstein, and I kept thinking, "Well, why not? This could be. You could make one of these. It could be this way." If you cut them out precisely enough and assembled them closely enough, they would appear to be the way they are. My thing and my personal style is that I try to make these things look as though they were born that way. I've actually had people look at certain pictures I've done and there will be two or three subtle changes and they'll think, "Well, what did you do? So what? Big deal. There's no change here." And I'd kind of point out that, "Oh, here's a fish coming out of this guy's hat." I wanted to create the illusion that you should be relaxed while looking at them and then be startled by the things that you notice; the nuances that you see that are out of place and then perhaps that would surprise or shock people in a certain way.

Have you ever been accused of being a "bastard artist?" You don't create anything yourself. You don't paint anything, you don't draw anything with the collages and the montages.

Every now and then I have to paint some edges to make them match up with something else, but I try to avoid that. Even though I can draw, I definitely can't draw as well as some of the people who I rip-off. I had someone tell me about 10 years ago, "Winston, what you've been doing for years and years, that's all the rage now back in New York. They call it 'appropriation.'" Unfortunately that didn't help me. [laughter] It doesn't mean much to be a pioneer. I rarely have people get completely on my case over that. I guess that I change things significantly enough and make enough alterations that it does create a new work of art, a new composition. And not all of them are works of art. They're simple compositions. I may like them, but they're not masterpieces in any sense of the word. It's funny, too, because you never know what people are going to hit on. Some things that I like a whole lot because they mean something to me and it's relevant to me but it doesn't grab anybody much. Other times I've had things I've liked because they were kind of interesting to make and I liked it at that moment, but later it didn't grab me but other people just flocked to it and they said, "Oh, this has such deep meaning." And that's OK. Even if it has no meaning toe, if it has it to them, then that's what art's all about. I t means whatever you bring to it. I have people interpret things good and bad. Sometimes people will look at things and go, "Oh, that things' about animal abuse. You're terrible." No, I'm not talking about the abuse of animals. I'm not into that. This is strictly pygmy hippos being taken down the road by a platypus. Marsupial abuse is probably the proper term. You can't second guess people. You can't take guesses of what they're going to be offended by or intrigued by so my thing is just to do what I do. These images are in our culture that we've all grown up with or we've all seen in one form or another or we haven't seen those images but have seen the things that have been created through their inspiration. Not everyone has seen certain ads that I'll use, but they'll see the things that were made by people who did. There's a generational difference between it and it all contributes to the great cosmic swarm that makes up our society and our civilization, and when people see things they brig to them whatever baggage they have psychologically, emotionally, or mentally. I have things that I've made because I just thought they were funny looking and one guy would look at it and go, "Man, that reminds me of a story I heard when I was in Australia about one of the first men on the moon that said he saw a Russian base there and that he couldn't be quoted in the American newspapers." And I'm all, "Whoa, back off, this is a picture of a space man holding a fish." It was called, "The Fish on the Moon" or "The Fish That Knew Too Much" and this guy's like, "yeah, this was the astronaut who knew too much and they had to silence him because he claimed that he was up there and there was a Russian base. He was one of the guys on the Apollo 16 or 15 and in the United States. Everything he said was completely blacked out from the media and he had to go to Australia to get it on the air." It could be bullshit or not, but the thing is is that he had a different take on it and it had nothing to do with what was going on when I made it. We could look at a painting by Michelangelo or Botticelli and think, "Well, we can see clearly that Botticelli meant that this is an allegory between good and evil but maybe he just made it because he got the money up front. I can just hear the guy who commissioned the artwork: "I want a naked chick over here and a babe over here, I want another babe over there and I want a water fall in the middle." [laughter]

And make her hair flowy.

Same thing with "The Birth of Venus," the woman on the half shell. She was a beauty pageant winner in Florence at the time. She was a big star. She was apparently a very nice woman, beloved by everyone, and she died very young. Botticelli was hired to glorify the prince's concubine. It was his girlfriend. He was married and had kids and this was his mistress. She was the cousin of Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator for whom they named America. She died at age 24 of consumption (tuberculosis). A lot of people died young in those days because of consumption. Naturally she caught pneumonia. She had no clothes on... what did she expect?

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