Interview of Gordon Wagner

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE, APRIL 19, 1986

SMITH: We normally begin these kinds of interviews by asking when and where were you born.

WAGNER: I was born April 13, 1915, in Redondo Beach, California.

SMITH: Who were your parents and what did they do?

WAGNER: My father was--his name was Jay Spoor Wagner and he was sort of a sales manager at the end of his life for the EMSCO Derrick Equipment Company, oil-well-drilling-machinery company in Los Angeles. He'd always been in that sort of business and he went back to the National Supply and Union Tool when he first came to California from New York. He was born in Holland, but he moved to Schenectady, where he worked in the American Locomotive Works building railroad locomotives. They moved to Redondo, I think, in 1898. My mother, her name was Genevieve [Wagner]. She was French and was from Schenectady also, where she lived. Her father was a locomotive engineer on the Delaware and Hudson line, and he was killed on an open switch and left my grandmother with about four or five children at that time. She was just a housewife; she always took care of things at home. She never worked for anyone that I know of; maybe before I was born she worked, but I wasn't aware of it.

SMITH: Did you have any brothers and sisters?

WAGNER: I had a brother by the name of Murrel. He died when he was about eight years old, when I was young.

SMITH: How did your parents come to live in Redondo Beach?

WAGNER: Well, my grandmother moved to Redondo Beach from New York, and she got a job--her name was Anna [Austin Wagner]--she got a job working for the O.T. Johnson Foundation, which was an apartment house in Los Angeles for widowed mothers with children, who were working. This was sort of a foundation to take care of the children and give the mothers reasonable rent while they worked. This was down around Loma Drive and Beverly [Boulevard] and Third Street; the building is still there. It is no longer the Johnson apartments. It was a huge complex. I think there were probably about two hundred women and their children who lived there, and they had their own school and playground. It was near Belmont High School. She managed that all of her life until she died, and she died at ninety-seven years old.

SMITH: You lived right near the beach?

WAGNER: I lived right on the beach. I lived on the Esplanade in Redondo, about two blocks from the pier. At that time, there were several piers in Redondo; when I was born there were a lot of old piers, lumber piers. Mostly sailing schooners at that time came-- There was a huge railroad traffic there also in Redondo with the Pacific Electric Railway. After all, it was Mr. [Henry] Huntington who put Redondo Beach together, the amusement part of it, and he ran his PE Railway right down to the beach there to Paseo del Mar, right out to the south beach and along the wharfs, where they could haul the lumber and other products that came from all over the world. Redondo was an exciting place to be. It was alive, it was full of wonderful seamen and people.

SMITH: Were you pretty free to just roam about the Esplanade and the beach?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah.

SMITH: So you could go out your front steps--?

WAGNER: Oh, when I was about six years old, we moved. We moved out of Redondo; we moved to another part of the country called Athens-on-the-Hill.

SMITH: Which is where? Where is that?

WAGNER: Well, now it would be about 120th Street between Normandie [Avenue] and Figueroa [Street] --no, Broadway. Athens it was called. There was Athens-on-the-Hill and there was West Athens. My first year of school was in West Athens grammar school, where I went to the first grade. I didn't go to kindergarten because I don't think they had kindergarten when I was six years old. Athens then was out in the country, and it was developed by some millionaire who decided he wanted to build Athens in Los Angeles, [laughter] so it was beautiful. It was a gorgeous place to live. There were huge houses and sunken gardens and all of these replicas of that. It was always interesting to me that it was so Greek-oriented, because one of the gentlemen who sort of destroyed Athens was George F. Getty, who was [J.] Paul Getty's father. But in drilling oil wells right in the center of the sunken garden-- He drilled the deepest oil well that had been drilled at that time, several thousand feet down. It's always been sort of interesting that Getty built this museum around the Greek culture, all the fanciness of it; George F. Getty was destroying it on the other side, so it's often made me wonder. George F. Getty and C. C. Julian and the Barnsdall Oil Company and E. J. Miley and all of these companies started when the wildcat well came in. Well, naturally, that got the whole oil field in Athens and from then on it became very, very run-down and destructive.

SMITH: Was that happening while you were living there?

WAGNER: Yeah. It had started.

SMITH: Then did your parents move back to Redondo?

WAGNER: No, Hermosa [Beach].

SMITH: Hermosa.

WAGNER: Yeah. My first year of school was at Athens, and the people were nice in Athens. I still remember most of them by name. It was a community; the houses were like maybe half a block apart, big houses and roads that went down. I drove through Athens just recently, maybe a year ago, and most of the houses that are still there were there in those days, and not much [has been] added. It's still open fields. There was a street there called Laconia, and now I think they call it Athens Boulevard. But if you take the Harbor Freeway and you get off at about 120th, it's just south of Imperial [Boulevard]. It's up on the top of the hill, the highest point before you start down into Gardena as you climb and you'll find it there. Drive there sometime and enjoy it for yourself because it still has some of the old nostalgia in it. There were a lot of people there that did things, like Woodward Bennett Packing Company, they lived there, and the Watkinses of Watkins Products; you know, a lot of people like that had their homes [there]. I loved it there because I'd never been in land like that. We had our own gardens and we raised string beans, I remember, and I used to go around and sell string beans to all of the people in the neighborhood for, I think it was, ten cents a pound.

SMITH: You had a painting exhibit when you were nine years old, I understand.

WAGNER: Yes.

SMITH: At a pool hall. How did that happen?

WAGNER: Well, I can never really begin to tell you when I started being interested in being an artist because I don't remember how old I was when I began, but all of my life I was intrigued by looking at pictures and paintings and copying them, trying to do sunsets or trying to get the light and silhouettes and things. And if I wasn't doing that I was building something. My father had a workshop where I could-- I was free to do anything I wanted to do. I remember one time we had to build something like the first crystal set radio, with a flour-box coil and a cat's whisker, and we all tuned in to listen to Uncle John's bedtime stories--

SMITH: With earphones?

WAGNER: --on KHJ. Yeah, headphones. My father rigged it up so we could have three headphones for us all to listen to KHJ. It was probably one of the first radio stations, I think.

SMITH: Was your father an engineer or a salesman for an engineering company?

WAGNER: He was a salesman for an engineering company, but he knew how to draw, and he knew how to create things, and he knew how to build things. He was a very good craftsman from his background, and he enjoyed that sort of thing, making really beautiful furniture and things. I have a bookcase here that he built for me when I was about eight. It's made out of solid mahogany.

SMITH: Was he strict? In terms of what he--

WAGNER: Strict?

SMITH: Strict, yeah, strict in terms of how he ran the house?

WAGNER: Not at all, he was just the opposite. He was far from strict. He was a very calm, together, beautiful-- Everybody loved him. They called him Jake. His name was Jay Spoor, but they called him Jake. They all loved Jake. He was a highly respected man in his work and even many years later, you know, after he had died, everybody said, "We'll never forget Jake. He was a man of real ideals and a beautiful man, and I hope you can be like that. If you could be like Jake, then you'll be something," they said. "You've got to live up to a lot." Well, I enjoyed him because he let me build my own things. If I wanted something like a train or a toy or a ship, "Build it," he says. So I had to build all my own toys, all my own things, because [with] his Dutch background, he was quite thrifty when it came to those sorts of things. There's an old story that you can always tell a Dutch boat at sea because no birds follow it, and I think that's true of his thriftiness. He built his own house.

SMITH: The one in Hermosa or Redondo?

WAGNER: He designed it. No, the one we had in Athens, he built that one. Then he built one in Hermosa. He enjoyed building and working with architects and designing. He knew a lot. A calm man. I only saw him angry once.

SMITH: What was that about?

WAGNER: That was over his Model T Ford. It wouldn't start one morning. In those days the Model T Ford was a machine that had to be jacked up to where the hind wheels were off the ground and then you'd crank it up because there was so much grease in the transmission--planetary transmission--that it was too stiff to get it started by the starter so you had to get the wheels off the ground. Well, he's cranking and he's cranking, and he's out there and it won't start and it won't start. He looked at it for about two minutes and I saw him kick out both headlights [laughter] and he walked in the house. That's the only time I've ever seen him really angry.

SMITH: So you had an exhibit at a pool hall?

WAGNER: Yes. Well, that was when I was back down on the beach again. I was so fascinated by amusement zones, carnivals. The architecture of Redondo Beach, which was sort of a-- I suppose you might call it transported to Redondo from Europe. The buildings all looked European, all of the finials and the windows and the light and the color, and it was like gaiety, a place of gaiety and joy, like the old piers used to be in England and France where they built them that way, to give that feeling. Coney Island, Luna Park, all this mystery and fantasy and humor, and a certain elegance at the same time. Well, I was fascinated by those symbols and all that imagery and so I started painting about those things. I started painting about roller coasters and amusement piers and carnivals and merry-go-rounds and that sort of thing. I met an old painter from Hermosa; he liked me.

SMITH: Who was that?

WAGNER: That was Norman [S.] Chamberlain. I met him one time when he saw me painting outside--

SMITH: Were you painting in oils or watercolors?

WAGNER: Those were oils. And he liked them.

SMITH: So your parents went out and bought you the oils and the brushes and the canvas that you needed to do it?

WAGNER: Sure. Whatever I needed. There weren't too many art supplies in those days because there weren't very many people interested in art. California was a cultural desert at that time and so they weren't the easiest things to find, but you could send for them in New York and other places where the more civilized people lived. [laughter]

SMITH: So you met--Norman Chamberlain saw you painting.

WAGNER: Yes. So he decided that I should have a show of my paintings one time. He knew this pool hall in Redondo, and we hung them in the pool hall [laughter] when I was about nine.

SMITH: Did you get a review or anything?

WAGNER: No. They'd never heard of reviews in those days. Nobody got reviews. They didn't even have an art column in the paper in those times. Not in California.

SMITH: Southern California.

WAGNER: Yeah. California just wasn't--California was just about the same then as it is now. It hasn't grown much. I mean, basically the population of Southern California is still the booze-and-cruise set, and athletics, and body movement. You don't find too many people really involved in the arts right now even; they were, maybe, in the sixties, but not now. It's changed again. It's going right back to where it was about the time of the early fifties.

SMITH: Well, a kid interested in art and living on the beach, all of your friends must be more interested in beach things. Who were your friends at that time? I mean, what did they think about what you were doing?

WAGNER: Well, none of my friends even hardly knew that I was painting. I couldn't talk to them about that. Only sissies painted, you know. That was not for men in those days. If you were a painter or an artist or a poet or something like that, they laughed at you in school. Sissies. You had to be queer to be a painter, you know. You couldn't be a painter. They used to joke about me sometimes. The people that would know me when I'd be painting or something, they'd call me Rembrandt. I was kind of known--that was one of my nicknames. "Here comes Rembrandt." Because that's the only person they'd ever heard of. They'd never heard of any other painter in their lives. Probably from some film they'd seen or something they decided they should do that.

SMITH: You were orphaned pretty young.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: How old were you?

WAGNER: About twelve.

SMITH: About twelve. Both your parents died suddenly or--?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: And what happened? Did you go to live with your grandmother then?

WAGNER: No. No. No. I didn't want to bother my grandmother. She was very busy working away in her Johnson apartment house. I remember she was a lady who wore a lace collar and violet, lots of violet, purples. [laughter] A wonderful lady. Funny hats and very strong, like a ramrod. I remember one time she was so strong that she was threatened by Winnie Ruth Judd, the ax murderer who chopped up her husband in the trunk, the doctor. Winnie Ruth Judd lived in this place and she came to her and said, "I'm going to kill you." And my grandmother says, "Put that thing down and get out of here." That's the kind of woman she was. So I just didn't want to bother her. In those days there were lots of people-- We didn't have that system they have nowadays where you're a throwaway or a castoff, a runaway. I wasn't a runaway. There are so many runaway kids now, it makes me look like an angel. I just lived by myself. I found this box like house under the pier, a skeleton for it, and I rigged it all up, and I had a ladder. I could sleep there, and I worked there.

SMITH: Did people know you were living there?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, sure.

SMITH: The authorities?

WAGNER: Well, what authorities? They didn't have many authorities in those days.

SMITH: The police?

WAGNER: It was a different kind of a world in those days, much tougher than it is now, you know. I mean, tougher, but yet more powerful, more honest. I didn't have any problem there. I was there about a year. I worked in the penny arcade, you see, I worked there.

SMITH: What were you doing?

WAGNER: I was making change and sweeping and cleaning up, and then sometimes I would work over in the merry-go-round. putting the gold ring in for the prettiest girl in Loof s Hippodrome.

SMITH: Why didn't you just stay in your parents' house, though?

WAGNER: No, I didn't, no.

SMITH: No?

WAGNER: Because they didn't own that house at that time.

SMITH: Oh, I see.

WAGNER: This was a rented house they had.

SMITH: And your grandmother didn't come looking for you?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, well, I used to visit her sometimes, oh, yeah. I visited her, and she was my friend, and we liked each other. She died at ninety-seven, you know. She died probably about, I think, in 1952. She was a character. She'd hit a streetcar conductor over the head with her umbrella in downtown L.A. on Hill Street and told him he was an insolent man because he didn't stop for her. She caught the streetcar on the fly and cracked him over the head. That was about a year before she died. [She was] ninety-six, I think. She's buried out in Colton in a cemetery.

SMITH: You worked in the arcade and you lived under the pier?

WAGNER: Yeah. I didn't really live under the pier, I existed under the pier. I was out all the time. It was a place where I could sleep.

SMITH: So you were up and down the beach and--

WAGNER: It was like-- It could happen in Pasadena. These guys build tin-can houses down here and they live in them, build fires out in the fields at night. I was like a street person, you know. That's all it amounts to. We've got millions of them now in L.A., don't we, that are running around. It's no big deal. We had street people in those days too.

SMITH: What was the beach community like then? What kind of people were your friends?

WAGNER: My beach friends were-- I don't think I had a happier time of my life than on the beach, because everybody knew everybody and it was really a joy being on the beach. I loved to body surf. I loved to skin-dive. I was a lifeguard. I loved to dance and I loved to paint. And I would work in between times on odd jobs wherever I could pick something up. Sometimes I'd work on a fishing boat or work on the amusement park or work as a lifeguard, or I'd do different things. But the people in general were all friendly. Everybody knew everybody and they used to-- It was like living in a town where everybody made jokes about people, and you were called by whatever they thought you should be called by, nicknames. There was Rusty Williams, Hound Dog Killam, and Wheezer Jay, and Cowboy Jay, and Whiskey and Chaser Swallzman, all of these people. Goon Stevenson. My name was Rembrandt [laughs] or Shanks. My other name was Shanks because I was pretty tall and thin, and I guess I had long legs for my shorter body above so they called me Shanks. I played a lot of volleyball; I loved to play volleyball, and we had good teams. I played with a lot of people like old athletes that were UCLA fullbacks and USC [University of Southern California] fullbacks, I mean really good athletes. I played with all of those people, and they were all my friends. All my friends before that, when I was younger, I grew up with them all, we just grew up together. Our girlfriends were from the beach, most of them. We'd go to the dance, either the Mandarin Ballroom or the Hut, in Hermosa, where they had bands, like Benny Goodman, Gus Arnheim, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, all the big bands, and we danced to all those people. It was a wonderful, wonderful life. It was relaxed. You knew about people. You could learn more about people living on the beach, probably, than you could learn anyplace else, because you saw all walks of life when they came to the beach. So you became tolerant of people, and you realized, "Well, where do they come from?" We all had a saying on the beach; the way we figured it out, anybody that lived east of the Pacific Coast Highway, there must be something wrong with their head, because of the heat and the traffic and all those things. Of course, in those days, the Pacific Coast Highway wasn't called the Pacific Coast Highway, it was called Sepulveda [Boulevard], and there wasn't anything at all between the beach and Baldwin Hills. It was just all open fields and bean fields and the airport. Lincoln [Boulevard] was a drag strip for guys who built Model T's and Model A Fords and tried to race them on Sundays. The whole highway was open to them on Sunday to race, so it was a whole different thing. There wasn't any pressure, there wasn't any traffic, and everything behind Hermosa and Manhattan [Beach] was the country. Eucalyptus-tree-lined streets and roads and fields and farms. So there was no tension. And if you wanted to go to L.A., you didn't have to drive to L.A., you could take the streetcar right from your own town there, just get on and go right to downtown L.A. on the Pacific Electric Railway. The actual people that I was involved with were either mostly water people, because I loved water, or we'd talk about art and painting and things of that nature, you know.

SMITH: Was George Freith there?

WAGNER: I was very young when George Freith dove off of the pier; he'd won the gold medal. He was supposed to be the world's greatest lifeguard. He won a gold medal in Japan for saving this whole group that were drowning from a fishing boat and he pulled them all in, something like, I forget how many it was, something like sixty people or something. Imagine a man rescuing all those people by himself. So they gave him the gold medal of honor from Japan. He brought it back, and he was wearing it and it dropped off his neck through the planking on the pier, the Monstad Pier in Redondo, which is still there as a matter of fact. It's the pier that Rumsey's Concerts-by-the-Sea, the entrance is on that pier. He dropped it through the cracks, and it's about a 112 feet of water there. (They had to build extended pilings. ) He got a huge rock and tied himself to this rock. He threw it over, and he went over with it and went to the bottom, and he came up with the medal in his teeth and all this blood flowing out of his eyes and nose and ears and mouth. But he got his medal back. That's the kind of grit George Freith had. He was the best in the lifeguards at that time.

SMITH: Did you know him when you were a lifeguard? He had already retired?

WAGNER: Oh, he'd died.

SMITH: Oh, he'd died.

WAGNER: Yeah, he was an older lifeguard, yeah.

SMITH: I understand you were also involved with bootlegging and rumrunning.

WAGNER: Well, that came when I had my lobster traps between Rocky Point and Point Vicente in a place called Lunada Bay. I had about twenty traps out there and I worked there. One day I was approached by the rumrunners asking me if I would like to make some extra money by bringing the illegal whiskey through the surf onto the beach, and it would be unloaded and taken up the trail to the truck. And I thought about it for a while. They said, "You won't have to approach us. You're just out there. It just looks like you're doing your work." So I agreed to do it and I made some money that way. Very illegal. I hope this doesn't get reported to the police department; [laughter] they might come and get me. I thought I'd like to say something about rumrunners. I was just reading in this book I have on tugs where the tugs usually tow the coal and wood and ice and all those things in the rivers and the Atlantic Ocean. During the rumrunner time, some rumrunners got ahold of a tug, and they took it out to the three-mile limit and emptied out the barrels of the cylinders. They had forty-eight-inch diameter pistons with a twelve-foot stroke, so it would be forty-eight times twelve feet; that's quite a bit of gallonage, right? Then they poured the rum into the pistons, and then they called the Coast Guard and said that they were in trouble, it was impossible for them to get this boat going, would they tow them to shore. So the Coast Guard towed the tug with all this illegal rum right up to the dock. [laughter] I thought that was a funny story related to my experience. I love all those kinds of sea stories about tugs and ships.

SMITH: In the beach community was there a lot of trust? I mean, weren't there people who took advantage of others and preyed on the weaker people on the beach? I mean, you make it sound a little idyllic.

WAGNER: Well, basically, the people who lived on the beach all were like a community. There were a few undesirables around, yeah, but not like Venice. Venice was the opposite of Hermosa.

SMITH: Oh, even at the time?

WAGNER: Yeah. Venice was the Venice Gang. And the Peroons and the Ants. And if they went to Hermosa, or anybody went to Venice from Hermosa or Redondo, we were enemies.

SMITH: Who were in these gangs?

WAGNER: There was a Venice Gang.

SMITH: But who were in the gangs? Just any teenager?

WAGNER: The Venice Gang was full of all kinds of people I know. I know them well now. Some of them turned out to be lifeguards, some of them turned out to be Coast Guard captains, some are civic leaders; they all became they just liked to start what they used to call "beefs." Liked to start "beefs," liked to fight on the pier. They would wait for a whole group to come so they could get into a fight with them. They just liked to disturb things. And they played very dirty. They'd circle somebody around. They were like the gangs today. The group, you know, they have power when they're in a gang. There's no difference. It's the same as the gangs today, just early gangs. They'd go down to the old sand dunes near Hyperion, where the sewer outlet is, you know?

SMITH: Near Playa del Rey?

WAGNER: South of Playa del Rey and north of El Segundo, there was-- Well, there's, what do they call it, some big plant there now [Hyperion Treatment Plant]. It's [Los Angeles City Department of] Water and Power or something, but in those days, that was all open sand dunes. You could go there any night of the week and build fires and have beach parties and slide down the dunes. Everybody went to the sand dunes for parties and weenie bakes and marshmallows and singing, but then right in the middle of the whole thing sometimes you'd get this gang and they would come and break it all up, you see. Well, we never did that in Hermosa. We didn't have a gang. San Pedro had a gang, too. So both sides of us, we had San Pedro over there and we had Venice on this side.

SMITH: Was that because Hermosa was a more affluent community?

WAGNER: Yeah. Because it was affluent. The people were more intelligent I think, or something, it seemed like it. A different kind of bringing up. A lot of people from Hermosa were from Pasadena at one time. There were a lot of actors who lived in Hermosa, and senators, and--

SMITH: I ask this because it seems a lot of your amusement park work is more scary than anything else, and your amusement zone pictures have a very frightening quality to them, a lot of them. Why is that?

WAGNER: Well, I think that the amusement zones, I think they should be scary because that gives you a fantasy that we're all children at heart. We all want to be scared, and we all want excitement, and we all want something to really happen besides just some straight, dull afternoon in a pretty little park. A lot of people like excitement, like to be scared. You look at a child square in the face and talk to him about some Mickey Mouse little thing or something, you can't get him interested. But if you go, "Ahhhhh!" he jumps around, and he loves you. All of a sudden he becomes your friend because you can be like him. And children, they see things from a whole different eye than we do. People who really love amusement piers, like myself, I saw it from the child's eye; even now I see it from the child's eye when I'm grown up. I still see it through that excitement, that romance. Like old buildings like that, and old tug boats like I have here, and old things, old trains; I don't give a hoot about new trains. I can't even stand to look at them. But the old ones! And the old tug boats; not these streamlined things. And the old ships! There's a romance in them because they really were built with love, not production, not plastic, but with love. And all of these buildings were built with love. It might be scary to some, where for the other person it's like being in heaven. But now, Hermosa Beach had no amusement zone whatsoever. That was in Redondo. Hermosa had one dance hall and a pier and the Lighthouse and a few things like that.

SMITH: An arcade? Did it have an arcade? A penny arcade?

WAGNER: No, not even a penny arcade. They weren't allowed in Hermosa.

SMITH: What were your favorite things that you liked about the amusement zone at Redondo? What were some rides or-- I guess they didn't have many rides, did they? It was more experiences.

WAGNER: Well, let's see, they had lots of rides. They had what you call Dodge 'Em bump cars--

SMITH: Oh, yeah, bumper cars.

WAGNER: And they had a roller coaster; and they had a lot of aerial apparatus, you know, spinning things; and they had a merry-go-round, which was a jewel. It was one of the old ones, really beautiful. It was a Belgian carousel.

SMITH: A carousel.

WAGNER: A real one. Loof's Hippodrome was the actual name of it, and it was out on the pier, as you started to go around on the horseshoe pier. It was a wonderful building: all this elegance, and all the design, and the cleanliness of the place; it sparkled. And then this great devil hanging on the wall with his mouth wide open where you threw the rings into the mouth of the devil, except the one who got the gold ring, then they got a free ride. The architecture was, like I say, pure, pristine, around the sea and the vistas and the skies. And looking through the windows, and the houses of mirrors, and the reflections, and the emotions and the joy of the people just like they'd been trapped in some kind of a cage. They come to the beach and they're let out, and they can go and they can have fun and express themselves and do whatever they want to do, and laugh, and hang upside down. They go into the crazy house--well, they had the Bug House in Redondo with a big windmill, they would just go insane in there. They'd get electric shocked and burned and bumped around, and they'd slide down rollers and the floor would drop.

SMITH: Burned how?

WAGNER: All these things that are so dangerous, you know, they even had signs saying, "Enter at your own risk," not responsible for any accidents that might occur while you're in this place. So they didn't even worry about those things in those days; nobody sued anybody. If you got a broken arm, well, that was your problem, or a cut finger or something. The other thing about it was these people would come down there, the men would come down all dressed up in their best suits and neckties and straw hats, and they'd go out on the beach. [laughter] It looked so funny to see all these black suits and shoes, and men in their straw sailor hats, you know? And the women in all their bustled gear and the dusters. And the children in full-piece bathing suits with swimming shoes.

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO, APRIL 19, 1986

SMITH: We were talking about the amusement zones and the Bug House in particular, people getting burned, and I was wondering, what was--?

WAGNER: Well, they did. They got scratched and they got electric shocked. Because everything was pretty dangerous in those things at that time. There were rotating floors, and people would go into these places and then the floors would sink down; they had roller floors. If you touched the walls you'd get shocked. You were groping and grasping, and it would be all dark, and people stumbling over each other, but everybody was laughing. They were upside down and backwards, losing things, but there was still a certain-- That's what you might call scary! But people like to be scared, you know, they like that. They like roller coasters and they like-- They go on them for thrills, they don't go there for a pleasant afternoon of sitting in a contemplative position. They want to be scared, and if you think they're scary, maybe that's what they are.

SMITH: No, it's a different kind of scary, but we'll get into that later. You mentioned bodysurfing. Were people also surfboarding at that time? Did you do any surfboarding? Is that getting going?

WAGNER: Well, the first surf boarding was brought over here probably about 1935 or '34, around in there, by Duke Kahanamoku. He introduced it to a few Americans, like Tom Blake. It was basically being done down in Corona del Mar at the old jetty where the-- They have two jetties there now, but in the old days they had one, and the long, long waves from the bell buoy all the way up to the jetty. The surf rolled beautifully. There were no crashing waves. They just feathered all the time. Beautiful bodysurfing waves, too. And then it started. They had the old, hollow plank boards, and they built them like airplane compartments, with ribs and things, and you had a cork on the front with a hole to drain off the water. They usually took on a little water, so you tipped them up and drained that out when you got through surfing. Some of the early surfers were people like Spud Mormon, and Tule Clark, and Pickles Perrine, and Jim Bailey, Leroy Granis, Hoppy Schwartz, and Al Bixler. They surfed in the cove in Palos Verdes, in Bluff Cove, where the waves were really good in those days. In fact, the road was made and goes down all hewn out of the rock to carry the boards down. They cut out the reef so they could make their entrance out to the waves, yeah. Well, surfing really started about then. But bodysurfing was going ever since I can remember. I learned to bodysurf I think before-- I don't even remember when I started to bodysurf.

SMITH: You lived on your own for a year and then, I guess-- What happened then?

WAGNER: Well--

SMITH: Where did you go after you lived under the pier?

WAGNER: Well, Norm Chamberlain kind of--my old painter friend--he kind of took me in up in Hermosa and I lived in his place for a while. He had a nice studio and I could paint there and work there. I learned a lot from that man. He was really a cubist, I guess you might call him. He was influenced by [Pablo] Picasso, who he'd worked with, and he was influenced by [Georges] Braque. He could paint a very Frenchy painting, and he was good at that. He was also a good muralist; I remember that he did the Huntington Park post office mural.

SMITH: Did you work on that?

WAGNER: I ground the paint.

SMITH: You would grind the paint?

WAGNER: That's all. In the WPA [Works Progress Administration].

SMITH: So he lived in Hermosa Beach, and he had extra room and took you in?

WAGNER: He just had his studio there.

SMITH: Did he become your legal guardian?

WAGNER: Well, you might call him that, yeah. He was a guardian angel, really, I think. He was so good to me and he really liked me and my work, and he was always helping me and encouraging me and praising me.

SMITH: Were you going to school during this period? I mean, after your parents died, did you continue in school?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, I kept going to school. I went to Redondo [Union] High [School]. I went to Hermosa first, to elementary school on the pier. That's where it used to be, right on the pier. That became a library; it's gone now, there's nothing there. We used to go bodysurfing right out of the schoolroom. We never wore shoes; we had a good life there. But Norman was always helping me, and I'd get odd jobs. I'd work on fishing boats a little bit, mackerel boats or something. They needed somebody here, tenders or something. I was very good around the water and I liked the water. I was basically a water rat. I wasn't a Water Rat, because that was an organization in Manhattan Beach called the Water Rats.

SMITH: So how long did you live with Chamberlain?

WAGNER: Oh, I'd say maybe a couple of years.

SMITH: So until you were fourteen, fifteen?

WAGNER: Yeah, around there sometime.

SMITH: Then what happened?

WAGNER: Well, he took me places. We used to go off to Taos, New Mexico. He was a great lover of Taos, and we'd go up there and stay there at Mabel Dodge's [Luhan] foundation, where she had all these artists like [Charles] Berninghaus and [Ernest] Blumenschein and [John] Sloan and [George] Bellows. They would all come and stay there, Walter Ufer. We would try and make her happy, like serenade her or something.

SMITH: Were you the only kid that was--

WAGNER: What?

SMITH: Were you the only teenager who was--

WAGNER: The only young one?

SMITH: Yeah, the only young one.

WAGNER: Oh, there were a couple of others around, oh yeah. Yeah, there were others.

SMITH: It would seem kind of boring to me for a young kid to go off to these places where a bunch of older people are hanging out and talking.

WAGNER: No, because I was older than them, basically. Older than my contemporaries, because they were still fooling around with things and I liked painting and they didn't have that going at all. So I was kind of inside of myself when it came to that, more inside than outside. But that didn't seem boring to me at all because there were lots of Indians, and excitement, and mountains. Wherever I went in my life, it doesn't matter if I was two years old or now, I still feel romantically about things. If I don't feel romantically, I reject them completely. I don't want to have anything to do with them. They're just plastic dribble. So I was always recreating where I'd been when I was young. I went to some guy's house out in the country, some gentleman [who] had a nice farm or cabins and waterwheels. I'd come back and I'd reconstruct this thing, you know. When I was real young. I'd build the whole place.

SMITH: And then Chamberlain took you to Europe?

WAGNER: He took me to France one time, to Paris, and introduced me to Picasso and [Maurice de] Vlaminck and a few of these people. I met a few other surrealists there also. I really enjoyed surrealism more than I did cubism or impressionism, because it was more-- All these things where I came from were surreal, and I didn't know what to call it, where it came from, you know, but I really enjoyed that part of it, the mystical side and the-- Not only the mystical, but the fantasy and the nonsense and the humor, and the juxtaposition of dissimilar things related to one another. So that's when I sort of started looking into people like [Salvador] Dalí and Max Ernst and Man Ray and [Marcel] Duchamp and people like that, more than I would with identifying with Picasso or Braque or the cubists.

SMITH: But you spent some time-- Chamberlain's influence was the cubist because that was his generation.

WAGNER: Yeah, well, he was influenced-- His paintings were that way. He was more a cubist, but he didn't put that on to me.

SMITH: Some of your paintings from the forties, late forties and the fifties, are not classic cubism, but they have a cubist feel to them.

WAGNER: Yeah, they do; yeah, they do. Some of them. I would say so. Especially some I did of kites and of tide pools, where I've overlayed the movement of things and the kinetics of something moving around the point, yeah. And the transparencies through those. Yeah, they were from his influence, I'd say.

SMITH: From Chamberlain's influence or from the European?

WAGNER: No, I think it came basically from Chamberlain's influence in the beginning. A pile-up of stuff. He always said, "Gordon," he says, "I don't know how you do it, but you seem to be able to pile up this stuff. Look at the pile-up here." The way I'd construct buildings and things of that nature. They all seemed to be in the right place, he said.

SMITH: Who were the other artists here on the West Coast that Chamberlain was close with? Was there a community of artists that he was involved with, people who had similar ways of thinking, ways of painting?

WAGNER: You mean that Chamberlain would have influenced?

SMITH: Influenced, or were his peers? Who came to his house? Who did he have--

WAGNER: Oh, we all came to his house. There was Dave Miller, Frank Jensen, Ben Shaw--

SMITH: These were painters?

WAGNER: --Luis Monza. We all came to his house. We all centered around there and we all lived around the beach, you know.

SMITH: Were they all cubist in their orientation, too?

WAGNER: Not really, no, not really. I wouldn't say so. Dave Miller painted like Rembrandt. He really did. He was a marvelous painter from Portland, Maine. Luis Monza was a primitive who was as far removed from cubism as you could think. Frank Jensen, he was a, I guess you might call him a California impressionist.

SMITH: Did you know at that time-- I'm talking when you were younger--did you know Annita Delano or Conrad Buff?

WAGNER: I knew Annita Delano at UCLA, and Conrad Buff, I knew the Grand Canyon painter. Yes, I knew those people. And a lot of people from Laguna [Beach], like [Walter] Kuprian and [Walter] Wendt. Well, you see, Norman was the head of the Laguna Beach Arts Association for a good time, and he lived in the old milkshed they gave them in the very beginning, up in the hills, back of the town, and that's where the Laguna Beach Arts Association was. It had a lot of old people like that in it. They had Burninghaus and Blumenschein; same ones that were in Taos were down there.

SMITH: West Coast water colorism, did you like that?

WAGNER: Yeah. There were some nice things, I believe; Emil Kosa, and people like this, you know. And Kosa, Jr., a lot of good watercolor.

SMITH: When we were talking about your tide pool painting earlier and the kind of cubism you were doing, do you feel that you and Chamberlain and other West Coast artists who were using cubist techniques--was there a difference between West Coast cubism and French cubism?

WAGNER: Yeah, I think so, in the subject matter. They were still using subject matter in most of the cubism. A lot of West Coast artists were using a French cubism because they were going a lot to France, you know. There wasn't that much difference, because I don't think there ever was much West Coast cubism, except maybe S. [Stanton] MacDonald-Wright; you might classify him as one of those. He was a pure abstract artist. He was about the closest one I can say that would be to West Coast cubism, but it was still very Frenchy, you know.

SMITH: Was Chamberlain Frenchy?

WAGNER: Oh yeah, I say! He was a Frenchy guy. He did very Frenchy painting. They dripped with Frenchiness.

SMITH: But you weren't.

WAGNER: Not me, no. I wasn't at all because my mind wasn't into that sort of thing, you know. In Laguna Beach they had what they called the eucalyptus school of painters, you know, that's all they did was paint eucalyptus trees and rolling country sides, the landscapes of those early days, you know.

SMITH: You say these people were Frenchy, but what about their relationship to people back East, to the East Coast, contemporary painting on the East Coast? Do they relate to that at all?

WAGNER: Back East at that time, I think most of those artists were more, well, they were more social painters, like--what was his name? Joseph Hirsch and Bellows and Sloan. They were painting boxing arenas, and they were painting people on the street and fighting in subways, and things of that nature, while here I think that the California painters were more nature painters, and sea and flowers and houses and vistas, like their environment, where back there they were painting their environment in New York and Chicago.

SMITH: Which included amusement-- I mean, Sloan has done some amusement --

WAGNER: Well, like all of the Paul Cadmus amusement zones and beaches and things, see?

SMITH: Were you familiar with the magic realists at that time? With Cadmus and [George] Took and Reginald Marsh?

WAGNER: Reginald Marsh was the same because he painted paintings like High Yaller, which is one of my favorite paintings of his. It is a black woman coming down the street in a yellow dress.

SMITH: Well, at the time were you going to the museums here or the galleries here in the thirties when you were here?

WAGNER: Yeah. Well, there was only one, if I remember right, that you could go to, that was the [Los Angeles] County Museum [of History, Science, and Art] in Exposition Park.

SMITH: And they would show contemporary work?

WAGNER: Oh, they'd show all kinds of paintings. I saw my first Paul Klee show there when I was a young man. I liked it but the man standing next to me-- I don't know who he was--he said, "This man must be crazy, something wrong with his head." And I turned around, and I was with Norman Chamberlain, and I said, "Maybe there's something wrong with your head." [laughter] But Norman used to take me to all of these things, exhibitions like that.

SMITH: You mentioned earlier that you went to high school with Jackson Pollock?

WAGNER: Well, that was only temporary. I went to Manual [Arts High School] one year, in L.A., and I met him there. And Philip Guston.

SMITH: Were you friends with him? I mean, did you--

WAGNER: I met him, yeah. We got along okay. I wasn't any close friend of his, but we were in the same art class together.

SMITH: You bought a car in 1915? And you bought a house in 1920?

WAGNER: A car in when?

SMITH: Not 1915, 1930. You were fifteen years old. And you bought a house when you were twenty years old.

WAGNER: I was eighteen in-- No, how old was I in 1930?

SMITH: Fifteen.

WAGNER: Fifteen, yeah.

SMITH: How did you afford all this?

WAGNER: But I didn't buy that car. It was a 1930 car, but I bought it when I was eighteen years old.

SMITH: Oh. So from your various jobs and--

WAGNER: Yeah. It only cost two hundred dollars.

SMITH: Well, that's a lot of money.

WAGNER: Well, I saved it up.

SMITH: You have a real bifurcated life. On the one hand, you have a more or less typical beach kind of life, the beach culture and surfing and the body culture and that kind of thing, and on the other hand, you're going to Europe and painting. Was there any kind of interaction between these two things?

WAGNER: At that time, I was like every other young kid in the world. They don't know where they're going. I was just going. And that's the way it was until I reached about eighteen, nineteen years old, and then I started to think about things, you know, about maybe I'd better do something with my life.

SMITH: When did you go to college?

WAGNER: Well, I started right after high school in '34.

SMITH: Where did you go?

WAGNER: I went to UCLA.

SMITH: And what did you study there? What was your major?

WAGNER: I went there with the idea of getting into the arts department, but they didn't have much going in the arts department, so I got into engineering. I started taking some drawing and design work like that, basic drawing, and got into that business. In the meantime, I got a job-- Maybe you don't want to go to that point yet?

SMITH: No, go ahead. Let's go to it.

WAGNER: I went to work for this EMSCO, where my father was in his time, and I was hired immediately because I was Jake Wagner's son, you know [laughter] naturally.

SMITH: You were about twenty then?

WAGNER: Yeah. Nineteen.

SMITH: Nineteen. So you worked at EMSCO.

WAGNER: That's when I served my apprenticeship.

SMITH: What did you do at EMSCO?

WAGNER: I started in an apprenticeship. The idea was to try to train me to be a sales representative for their company, but I realized that was not where I wanted to be, so I took on this apprenticeship as a tool and die maker. All the executives around there, they said, "Oh, he wants to do that kind of thing with his hands," you know. The vice presidents and the sales managers, they couldn't understand why the son of Jake Wagner would want to work with his hands and do anything like that, because after all, they were the executives of the company. They were rather disappointed that I would want to do that, but I wanted to learn a trade. When I was going to UCLA, I started there, I said, well, I should learn something practical. So I worked in EMSCO learning how to file and work and do things right for precision work. Tool making is a very precise job.

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: It's not something that you fool around with.

SMITH: And you were also a lifeguard at this period?

WAGNER: That was a little later when I did that, in the summer. I started in my tool and die--tinkering with it, you know. I didn't stay with it. I went back to the beach, and I went to Mexico, and I came back and worked as a lifeguard. I didn't really want a steady job. It would bother me. It was in the way of what I didn't know I wanted to do. But I knew I wanted to do a lot of things and I didn't want to become involved with just-- I could see that was going to be a dead end. I went back to EMSCO, but later.

SMITH: You met Henry Miller?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: When did that happen?

WAGNER: Oh, back in 1940 in Big Sur. I met him up at his house in Parthington Ridge and I was living up there then. That's jumping quite a ways away from 1930--

SMITH: That's okay.

WAGNER: But anyway, Henry Miller at that time was writing and he was married to Lepska Miller. No, at that time he wasn't married to Lepska, it was-- The last time I visited him, he was married to another woman, I think. I can't remember who it was. But anyway, that's when I first met Henry Miller, in Big Sur, when I was living in Big Sur.

SMITH: You mentioned that Miller was the one who gave you a reason to keep on living. It seems like a very dramatic--

WAGNER: Yeah, I'd read an awful lot of his works and he was the only person I had read who gave me a justification for existing in this society that was so turned off by the arts and was so commercial and so material and so-- It was just-- The whole thing at that time wasn't what I was looking for, and Henry Miller seemed to understand it when I read his books. He expressed it just the way I felt it. Well, I loved the way he wrote about these things.

SMITH: You had gone to Chouinard [Art Institute] for a while?

WAGNER: Yeah, I went to Chouinard also. That was a long time ago.

SMITH: [University of California] Berkeley, you said you went up to.

WAGNER: I had to go to Berkeley one year to finish my engineering degree because they didn't honor-- You had to have one year at Berkeley. You couldn't get your engineering [degree] from UCLA, you had to finish up at Berkeley--

SMITH: Was this a B.A. in engineering that you got?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Did you go on to do graduate work?

WAGNER: No.

SMITH: Were you painting seriously at this time?

WAGNER: I was painting all the time, yeah. At least putting in time; oh, I'd work and do things. I'd be painting about four or five hours a day, actually painting.

SMITH: While doing all this other stuff. What kind of paintings were you doing then?

WAGNER: Well, what year are we discussing?

SMITH: Well, '35 to '40, let's say.

WAGNER: 'Thirty-five to '40 I was working basically in-- I did a lot of sea--things related to the sea, you know. I was very stimulated by Big Sur's coastline and all of that and the lyrical movement of spindrifts, and waves, and the movement of water, and the mystery. It was like [Jean] Sibelius's music. The whole place felt like Sibelius, you know, Finlandia or The Tempest, and I was trying to project that into this. This was done also through a technique I called "scraffiti," where I would paint the whole painting on a white board of a slick enamel, and oil, just rough it all in there, and then I'd go in with a knife and I'd scratch in the whole painting and the white would come in from underneath. I probably did 150 of those paintings.

SMITH: Were you showing them? Exhibiting them?

WAGNER: Yeah. I sold them all. I don't own a single one of them. I just sold the last one about a month ago that I had--it's in an old wooden frame of a cemetery that I did out in Jerome, Arizona.

SMITH: But that's much later you did that.

WAGNER: Yeah. But I've kept working it out through all of those-- I used that technique off and on, you know. I loved it. I don't do any more scraffiti.

SMITH: You went to Mexico, you said.

WAGNER: Patzcuaro and Michoacan. I lived there about a year.

SMITH: At this time?

WAGNER: Yeah. About '30. Let's see, what was that? What year are you talking about now?

SMITH: Well, '35 to '40 still.

WAGNER: Yeah. I was there in Michoacan about '35. I'd go and escape there and could live there for nothing. I'd come back and get some other job and I never really wanted to get involved in any company or work. I was always trying to avoid it by going someplace. I always managed to get by somehow and live in comfortable poverty. It wasn't easy.

SMITH: And do your painting. Painting is not an inexpensive art form either.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: There's a bit of a money layout that you have to make. Were you still seeing Chamberlain?

WAGNER: No, Chamberlain died about '38, I think. No, he was still alive. No, I guess he died around, what was it? He died during the war.

SMITH: But were you continuing to see him?

WAGNER: He moved from Hermosa. He moved to Corona del Mar.

SMITH: Was Hermosa your base-- When you were in L.A. you lived in Hermosa?

WAGNER: Yeah. I bought a house in Hermosa in 1935.

SMITH: Now, how did you afford to buy a house?

WAGNER: Well, it cost me two hundred dollars. [laughter] I put about five hundred into it and I had a very beautiful house one block from the ocean in Hermosa, Twenty-fifth Street and Manhattan Avenue.

SMITH: You lived there by yourself, or did you have roommates?

WAGNER: Yeah, at first.

SMITH: People crashed at your place or--

WAGNER: Oh, I always had a constant party going on. I had people that stayed there. It was a big place. I let them live in the place. Oh yeah, it was quite a beautiful old house I rigged up there by myself. It had a twenty-by-twenty living room in the front I built, fireplace, high-beamed ceilings.

SMITH: At that time, again, your early twenties, did you have ambitions to be a painter, I mean as a-- Did you think that-- A famous painter? Did you have goals in that direction or were you just painting to express yourself?

WAGNER: No, I painted for the joy of painting. Like today, I work for the joy of art. I don't give a hoot about being famous. It's the last thing in my thoughts. I mean, being famous: I never even considered it.

SMITH: Were your friends beach people? or artists? or poets? or engineers?

WAGNER: My friends were engineers, poets, beach people, doctors, salesmen, lawyers, a couple of first mates on a ship, a steel salesman, executives in companies. I had three friends from Harvard Business School. They were all in administration and were industrial engineers, and they all were taken away to the navy and all became ensigns in the war. They decided to join up. Oh, I had a lot of versatile friends. Lifeguards, athletes. Johnny Wilson, remember John Wilson? He was a high jumper. He was the best in the country at that time, and he opened the Ready Room on La Cienega [Boulevard].

SMITH: What's that, a bar?

WAGNER: Yeah. It was a very good restaurant and bar. A lot of people like this. I had one friend who was a first mate on a tanker, who used to sell star sapphires to all of his friends when he'd come back from India. One of my friends was an FBI agent. We all got together. We all didn't even discuss such things when we were together. Never talked about steel or anything. We'd just have a lot of fun. We could talk about everything. We made jokes and we'd-- We had other things to discuss like--nothing to do with art.

SMITH: Like what?

WAGNER: Nothing to do with poetry.

SMITH: Like what?

WAGNER: Everything in general, from politics to philosophy to psychology to religion to-- But we didn't get into our own fields. Nobody was going around giving a lot of shoptalk in our group. We kept it to ourselves, because there's nothing more boring in a party than to have somebody doing shoptalk, right? It's really dull, you know. We stayed clean of that.

SMITH: Did you have any steady girlfriends at this time?

WAGNER: Now, what year is this now?

SMITH: Well, before you got married.

WAGNER: Yeah, I had a girlfriend for five years. Her name was Joanne. My love. She was my first love. She was a nice girl. We used to go dancing. She lived in Torrance, and I had to drive all the way to Torrance. At that time it was nice to drive to Torrance, all country roads and eucalyptus-lined roads, and no tract houses, no nothing, you know. A nice trip.

SMITH: Was your circle what people would have called bohemians or was it--

WAGNER: I guess you might have called it that. It might have been the word. They called me a bohemian.

SMITH: The people around you?

WAGNER: Yeah. We were a little different. But the beach was basically a casbah and a lot of bohemians lived on the beach, that's why they lived there. They wanted to get away from all that very straight laced, uptown formality, you know.

SMITH: Who was Fatima? Was Fatima a real person?

WAGNER: Fatima?

SMITH: The Fatima that you write about?

WAGNER: Well, yeah, Fatima was a real person, yeah. She was several different persons, right? She was Egyptian, I believe. If you've ever seen the hands of Fatima, you know, where they hold the hand of Fatima, they make those hands of Fatima. How Fatima got into my life is that it just happened to be the name of a penny arcade fortune-telling machine and that was her name, Fatima.

SMITH: A machine? It wasn't a person?

WAGNER: No, it was a machine. That's how she got into my life. Fatima was just a fortune-telling machine that I really enjoyed and loved in the penny arcade when I was a boy making change. I used to try and shortchange customers so I could make her dance. As for who she was, I'd never met the real Fatima. Fatima appeared to me several times in my life at different points. I found a picture of her one day on the beach, it said "Fatima." There also was a cigarette named "Fatima" with a picture of Fatima on the cigarette. And the signs used to be around Fatima-- I called her Fateema, Fahtima is the proper pronunciation. And I guess my most recent association with Fatima is Our Lady of Fatima, who is the apparition who came in, what was it, 1915 or something, in Europe--she came to the three children as a vision. One of the manifestations of the mother. She was Fatima because that was where she appeared, Fatima Portugal, the town, so she was called Our Lady of Fatima.

SMITH: Fatima is also the daughter of Mohammed.

WAGNER: Yeah. And horses had the hand of Fatima in the old days on their harnesses, over their foreheads hung the hand of Fatima. It was a protector. This was the hand of Fatima. To keep the evil spirits away. The Navaho Indians used it as a horseshoe. But it's still the hand of Fatima. These are to keep out the evil spirit on their squash blossom necklace.

SMITH: You were in an accident on the roller coaster--

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: --when you were sixteen?

WAGNER: Yeah. It ripped out of the tracks and it took out through the air. There were three of us that lived out of thirty. That was the Giant Dipper.

SMITH: I guess it's the litho you did of the Giant Dipper; it's the feeling of this mouth devouring the roller coaster, that's one of the things I mean by terrifying. That's not terrifying like the Bug House or-- This represents something of a whole different--

WAGNER: Well, it was terrifying. It was a terrifying experience.

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: That's why. That's a dream, incidentally, that drawing. It's a dream. It's telling me, "Don't go back to that."

SMITH: Have you ever ridden a roller coaster since then?

WAGNER: No, never. I admire them. I think they're one of the most beautiful pieces of engineering that's ever been created. If they can get all that wonderful structure, and the right curves, and proper timing to come back. On a roller coaster, that's a really frightening place, because as soon as the roller coaster starts and the lever man releases the brake that lets the tracks apart so that they drop, they go down through this mouth like this, in a hole, deep, and everybody's screaming in the beginning even, before they even start, you know.

SMITH: But that's a different kind of screaming, because they're not really scared; it's kind of a fake screaming. And then when you leave the tracks, then-- I mean, during the accident, there must have been a whole different kind of screaming.

WAGNER: Yeah, it was. Well, yeah. But anyway, this drawing has a lot to do with my--

SMITH: Were you in the hospital or were you lucky enough to--

WAGNER: Oh, I didn't have anything happen to me.

SMITH: You walked away?

WAGNER: Yeah. I landed in a swimming pool.

SMITH: Oh, you were lucky.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: You were thrown out of the car then?

WAGNER: Yeah. People were dropping in the skating rink and on machinery and on the rocks. It was pretty disastrous.

SMITH: You know, the unusualness of your combining coffins and the arcade, or the Mexican Day of the Dead kind of imagery with the beach imagery, that's again--sure, there's a whole Halloween-arcade kind of a thing.

WAGNER: The Day of the Dead?

SMITH: But you're playing with something that's more serious in terms of the arcade, the beach as a kind of inviter to death, aren't you?

WAGNER: Well--

SMITH: Invitation to death? I mean--

WAGNER: My basic interest in those drawings was that I was afraid of death. I had a deep fear of death and through these dreams and through drawings, yeah, that's a rejection--

SMITH: [referring to sign on ticket booth in lithograph] "No!" Right.

WAGNER: I couldn't even get to the ticket office. They wouldn't let me in. But this is a rejection of this fear of death, and the only way I could get the fear of death out was to make these drawings and become associated close enough to it so that I could laugh at it. And by going to Mexico I was able to do this because they laugh at death and they make it--

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE, MAY 17, 1986

SMITH: I wanted to go back today to how you met Henry Miller. You had already been reading his work?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, I'd read a lot of his works.

SMITH: Where was it published? Where were you reading them, in magazines or--?

WAGNER: No, books. I was reading several of these books. The one that I really enjoyed was Semblance of a Devoted Past. A lot of different publishers were helping him in those days, like Bern Porter was doing work for him; Merle Armitage who was really an enthusiast for Henry Miller. The Letters to Emil Schnelling were wonderful; they really change your whole life if you read those of Henry in Paris writing to Emil Schnelling about "quit making drawings and watercolors, 'temperizing'; get into real painting and give up all this material world and get rid of these people who are driving around in their cars and wasting their time and get down to it." What a wonderful book of his. It's a limited edition, very difficult to find at the moment. Into the Nightlife was another one, and he actually had handmade drawings. Each book was a little different because everything in it were his drawings, original drawings, and wild poetry. Those two early books were the ones that really got me going. Then he got more into the-- Tropic of Cancer and [Tropic of] Capricorn weren't even allowed in the United States when I was reading these things. They were considered dangerous.

SMITH: Was it friends who introduced you to his works? By word of mouth?

WAGNER: No. A friend of mine in Hermosa Beach by the name of Willard Hougland, who helped publish some of his books with Merle Armitage, the two of them worked together. Willard arrived in Hermosa Beach from Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he was the curator for the Santa Fe museum [Museum of New Mexico]. He had a huge art collection, and he knew everybody in the world. He always talked about these people like he'd just seen them yesterday, and really, everybody thought he was the kind of a guy who didn't know anybody, that he was making it up. When you got down to it, the guy wasn't making up anything. He was telling the truth. He really did know all these people. He was the first one to put me on to Henry Miller. Before he moved down to Hermosa he used to live in Big Sur. He ran an antique shop and bookstore. Basically, he was into books, rare books. In fact, his whole collection was donated to the UCLA Library. All of his rare books. So you can look him up sometime. The Willard Hougland Collection is enormous. He had all these old paintings, Ogden Nash and different people like this, and some of the writer's paintings. And his brother, I think, Warren Nash. So many different people that he knew. So he ran this store, Deetjen's, which is the Big Sur Inn now, Deetjen's. At that time--that was back in the forties, Deetjen ran the place, a crazy Norwegian, and his wife Mrs. Deetjen. Later, they had to close up that shop. His wife was with him, Kisha Hougland, the two of them. They had to close the shop because Mrs. Deetjen got so ill that she couldn't live up on the top at the goat house anymore, where they used to live, on the top of the mountain. So they had to move her down there, and she stayed in the shop so she could have her service. She used to sit in bed all day, a huge, big woman, and they used to bring candy bars to her, like fifteen a day she ate. She had to be carried around in a pickup truck, in the back. She was quite a wonderful woman; I loved her, but she was ill. So Willard introduced me through these books to Henry Miller. That's how I got interested in him, how he stimulated me immensely, for being sort of, you might say, against the establishment.

SMITH: Did you go up to meet him?

WAGNER: Yes. I met him--

SMITH: On purpose?

WAGNER: I went there one time with two gallery dealers, Keith Chin and Dean Lee. We took them up there with Willard. We all went up there, my first wife [Patricia Elliot Wagner]--we all went up there. I was having an exhibition at the time in Pacific Grove in the Blue Pelican art gallery. So we went down to really visit Henry. We went to his house; he was working out in the back. He started early in the morning because he said Big Sur was a state of mind and he never knew what he was writing; he was just typing. He just sat down and let it happen, let it unroll. He sort of hypnotized himself into that. He was always surprised to find out what came out on the typewriter, because some of it he might be able to use. His wife at that time was Lepska Miller, a dancer, who loved to dance around the hills there up on Parthington Ridge. When I first met Henry Miller, I figured he was going to be one of these types of people who would be very gruff and whatnot, but the only four-letter word I ever heard him use the whole time I first visited him was "sure." Not one word came out of him that was profane. He had a beautiful bathroom; had an old bathtub out back, with the balls and the clawed feet, that you poured the water into, and a garden around there with a-- I think it was a [Alexander] Calder mobile standing over on one side, and a piece of sculpture by Harry Dick Ross, another artist who lived up the hill from him. And layed in stones on the floor of all this was this inscription, "The greatest of these is love." So he brought out all of these watercolors and showed them to these two dealers who came and was showing them all these things, and he was just jumping around. He was so happy. But the basic thing he did-- He wasn't very much interested in what he was doing at all. He was more interested in finding out what we were doing and who we were and about us. He said little of himself. They had to extract the watercolors out of him to bring them out to show them. They purchased a few for a gallery in Manhattan Beach called the Graywood Gallery. It had his works and mine and a few other artists in the [South] Bay area.

SMITH: Was he supporting himself through his writing at that time?

WAGNER: Well, not completely, no. Whatever he could get, like stamps from people, or bottles of wine, or-- He liked to trade things. He'd sell a watercolor for a very, very small amount just to exist.

SMITH: So at Big Sur was he living a life of "comfortable poverty"?

WAGNER: Exactly. A very creative time for him, because he wrote many books then. It wasn't until much later that he became famous. I don't think half the population in the United States has ever heard of Henry Miller to this day. Maybe three-quarters. He's just not one of those types of writers. And I loved Henry Miller's writing because he was always talking about other artists and other writers, other personalities. He always gave me the feeling that I wanted to read what some of these writers were writing, so it opened up my whole library of knowledge through Henry Miller; he introduced these things to me. I would have never ever heard of half of these artists and writers if I hadn't gotten them through him.

SMITH: Who in particular?

WAGNER: Oh, people like Blaise Cendrars, and very remote writings by these people, you know. And the painter--what was his name, from San Francisco--that he studied with-- He lived in North Beach, a wonderful story of how he went to study to be a painter. Marvelous, marvelous story, especially in this particular Semblance of a Devoted Past. His name was Hilaire Hiler.

SMITH: When you were getting to know Henry Miller either through his books or in person, it sounds like you were going through some sort of a crisis, an interior crisis. Is that accurate or is that an exaggeration?

WAGNER: I would say that it was a time when I had devoted my younger years to just being an artist and a bohemian, enjoying life, the beach and surfing, skin diving. I was married in 1942 and I had my first daughter in 1942 also. I had to work at that time. It was the time of the war. and I was working for North American Aviation as a tool maker and then as a tool designer. These long hours and this corporate structure and the people that I was associated with and the surroundings, I realized what a negative situation all this war was and how I was devoting sometimes sixteen hours a day to work double shifts. That's when I really was introduced to Henry Miller; it was during the war at that time. And that's the time when I really said, "What am I doing? Why am I there? Why am I doing that? How am I going to get out of this?" So there was a conflict that I couldn't help because I had to support my family. And yet I wanted to paint, but I didn't have time to do that. I could see this whole nonsensical life that I was overlaying on top of the life I really wanted. He was the man who gave me the light and really told me that as soon as this is all over with, get out.

SMITH: Well, as far as the war was concerned, did you really have much choice about it? If you didn't work, you would have been drafted, right?

WAGNER: Well, I could either be--what was it they called you?--a 2-B, or a 1-A, or something, a deferment for military work. And working for North American Aviation [Company], I got a deferment for that because they needed tool makers and tool designers. After all, you couldn't build anything without them.

SMITH: So that was your basic choice: either go into the army, the military, or work.

WAGNER: Right. And seeing that I'd already been apprenticed to this sort of thing, it was easy for me to fall into it. And I was so happy when they gave me a dollar an hour. I'd never earned a dollar an hour in my life. I used to work for--

SMITH: That was quite a-- I guess it would be equivalent to ten dollars an hour now?

WAGNER: Probably, now. Most of these people in the aircraft plants at that time were making between sixty-eight and seventy-two cents an hour. But the tool makers were getting a dollar an hour, at least in the beginning.

SMITH: Then you owned your own home.

WAGNER: We owned our own home, and I didn't have too many bills to pay in those days.

SMITH: I'd like to back up a bit to your meeting your wife. She was a writer, wasn't she, an artist as well in that sense?

WAGNER: A writer, yeah.

SMITH: I mean an artist in the big sense.

WAGNER: Well, she had totally, totally the philosophy of a bohemian and a great wit. Anybody by the name of Patricia Louise Naomi Elliot couldn't have anything but a wit. She was very Irish. When we first met she was going to UC [University of California] Berkeley. She was born in Carmel [California], and she knew the whole town of Carmel, because I think at that time there were about eight hundred people living in the town. It was a great place to be. Her father [Peter Elliot] was the manager of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in Monterey at that time. She was born in San Francisco and then moved immediately to Carmel. She was born in a hospital in San Francisco and moved. She was a northern girl, never a Southern California girl. She always said that L.A. was tinsel and San Francisco was mahogany. She could never settle herself for the triteness of L.A. and its junkiness and all one-level buildings. But she tolerated it. She tolerated living on the beach, which she liked. She was a very ambitious girl, and she wrote all the time. She was a rather-- She wasn't what you call a "typical" housewife mother with children. [laughter] She would write all night, sleep in the daytime.

SMITH: What kind of things was she writing?

WAGNER: Well, she wrote short stories, basically, some poetry. I have a few of her poems, but short stories.

SMITH: Plays?

WAGNER: Some. And she wrote some film scripts with a friend of ours. Kirk McDonald, a writer.

SMITH: Were they sold? The film scripts?

WAGNER: A couple of them, yeah. And she worked on a few stories with a writer in Santa Monica Canyon by the name of Morton Fine. Because Willard Hougland was always promoting us, getting her writing through, and getting me some paintings over here, and he'd do this for his artists. And he was the real pope of Manhattan Beach's artists. He was like [André] Breton. She was a very temperamental Irish. We were married in Carmel Mission. She wanted a Catholic marriage, but she didn't follow the Catholic church too well. She had questions about some of the--being a Berkeley girl. When the time came for us to be married, we had to go see Father O'Connell. He says, "Patty Lou, are you still going to that pagan school in Berkeley?" "Well, of course I'm going." So they got in a big argument about infallibility and everything else. In the meantime, I had to go to the bathroom, and they told me where it was. In those days it wasn't like the Carmel Mission now. It didn't have a museum in it; it didn't have any of those things, just a little office there, and a few rooms, none of the additions put on by Harry and envisioned by Harry. Anyway, so I went into the bathroom and was sitting there, relaxing, and who should walk through the door but this woman. She walks over to me and she says, "Good afternoon. And who are you?" I can't very well do anything. I said, "Well, who are you." She says, "I'm Father O'Connell's sister from Ireland." Really. I said, "Well, I'm Gordon Wagner, but pardon me for not getting up." [laughter] So she carries on this conversation with me and I can't get off the toilet, it's an open stall, and I'm sitting there. She's asking me if I've tried golf on the golf links in Carmel and Pebble Beach, and all these questions, you know. In the meantime. Father O'Connell and my wife were going around in circles. So when I came back, I walked in, he says, "Gordon," he says, "do you realize you're marrying a tiger?" I said, "Yes." "Patty Lou, this man will be a better Catholic than you could ever be if you ever tried." And I wasn't even a Catholic. I had to get a special dispensation from the Pope to do this. And come the time when we were married, we all went off from the church. All of Carmel and Monterey came. I think there was something like two thousand people there because all of my father-in-law's friends and Patty Lou's friends, we all went. It was an immense wedding. It was just about the time the war started; '42, I think it was, the beginning. A lot of Patty Lou's friends were there in uniform already. The whole affair was going to be in the Del Monte Hotel for the reception, which was huge. The Del Monte in those days was the most fashionable hotel on the West Coast. The funniest thing of all was that my father-in-law, who saw all these people off, was standing there without a ride. So this forest ranger from Big Sur came along and said, "Pete, what are you doing here?" He picked him up and took him to the reception. When we arrived at the reception, the forest ranger was right up in front with everybody. Somehow, at that moment, there was a big thing, a movie or something, going on. All of Errol Flynn's crowd was there, and Alan Hale, and all these actors, and they all came to the reception too. The reception lasted for all that day and until the next morning. And the best man and his friend, my friend, an elder gentleman, my friend and best man was Frank Baccone, who was a good Catholic and a tool maker with me at North American, so he took over. Frank told me later that it was quite an evening after the wedding. They all went down to the whirlpool in Carmel near the back of the mission and they sat out on the beach there. Father O'Connell, Frank Baccone, and my friend, Fred. They all sat around and killed off about two or three bottles of Wilkins Family and they all started singing. They really celebrated our wedding. Meantime, we'd gone on to San Francisco. The first night was at the Saint Francis Hotel, room 833. [laughter]

SMITH: What kind of religious training did you have?

WAGNER: I had none.

SMITH: So you were a "pagan"?

WAGNER: Yeah. I followed, later on in my life I followed-- I was interested in Buddhism and Taoism, especially.

SMITH: But at this time when you got married --?

WAGNER: None, none whatsoever. I had no conception of that subject. I didn't even know anything about religion. I never talked about it because I knew nothing about it.

SMITH: Was your wife a religious person?

WAGNER: Well, she was religious enough to have both of our daughters baptized in the Catholic church, but that didn't mean that she went much to church. She knew the philosophy and the religion. She knew them. But she was too much of an intellectual, and it was very difficult for her to accept it, because she was very rational in one way, and logical. That's very difficult, for anybody with a rational, logical mind to be able to really accept the mysteries of Jesus Christ and the tabernacle and the Catholic church. You have to have a blind faith, that's all. She was always worried about money, and she always wanted to build things and do things and add things to the house. I was always remodeling or building something. While I was doing that, she was arguing philosophy in the corner with somebody. Like I remember one time I was talking about Descartes, about his infallibility, and she really hit the fan. She said, "What do you mean by that?" And she had a fork--she was preparing salad--and she turned around and she stuck the fork right in my knee about a half-an-inch deep! "My God, what have I done?" [laughter] She was emotionally Irish.

SMITH: Was there a lot of pressure from her family that you work and that you get on the road to having a profession, that sort of thing?

WAGNER: All of that. Constantly.

SMITH: Sort of move off the shop floor into management?

WAGNER: The bourgeois. My mother-in-law was what you'd call the epitome of the bourgeois woman, while my father-in-law was the most wonderful man I've ever met in my life. He didn't care what I did. The mother was always goading. She was a snob that knew nothing. She just didn't know. She'd lived around all these bourgeois people. My father-in-law was just exactly the opposite. He was a man with a sense of humor that would walk down the street. In Santa Monica, the bus depot there in Santa Monica, [the bus] cut around an alley and it missed one day and went right through a jewelry store. I was with him and he walked back to the jeweler and he says, "How much you asking for the bus in your window?" So this was his humor. You can get it from that. In Carmel he was an embarrassment to his wife, because he was heavy and he would put on these old torn pants, shorts, and a pith helmet and a walking stick and take a walk down Carmel Beach. She says, "Is that Peter out there again doing that?" He loved us, both of us, because we were the way we were. We were both still bohemians, caught in the trap of the corporate world for a while. He really loved us because we really enjoyed life. My mother-in-law was an alcoholic, mildly so. The more she drank, the nastier she got. My father-in-law was an alcoholic, but only once every six months to a year, and then he'd really hang one on and we'd have to go down someplace and find him in flophouses. He came from a long line of people who ran a hotel in Fargo, North Dakota. And he had, I think, three sisters and five brothers; Peter, Paul, Michael, Matthew, Luke; they were all named after the apostles. And even the daughters were Maria and Veronica. So there was a whole different ambience between him, who said, "I admire you, do what you want," and the mother on the other side. There was an ambivalence all the time. Neurotic is what it was.

SMITH: And you were working what, eight or twelve hours a day?

WAGNER: Maximum--

SMITH: Six, seven days a week?

WAGNER: No, a maximum of sixteen and a minimum of ten.

SMITH: And how many days a week?

WAGNER: Six days a week, sometimes seven during the peak of the war when we had to get out the B-25's and the Mustangs. At that time, we were on about a seven-day week.

SMITH: Well, how did you feel about the war? Did you think that the United States was unjustified? That the war was wrong?

WAGNER: No, I think that they had to do it. We didn't start the war, did we?

SMITH: Well, I'm asking you what you and your friends-- How you and your friends--

WAGNER: I don't believe that we started the German war. I mean, that whole thing had to be-- Hitler was a real monster. Something had to be done. No, I felt that that was important. I was surprised that the Japanese would do what they did. That might have had something to do with us, starting that with Roosevelt-- I don't know. I have no idea, I'm not a war historian, but I know that in 1937 when I was working in the EMSCO Derrick Equipment Company on Alameda Street, that trains, like fifty- to sixty-car trains were traveling down Alameda Street down to the harbor loaded with scrap iron to send to Japan. Down to the harbor, so we could get it all back again in a different form, they manifested into ammunition. Roosevelt was still around in those days. So that's a tricky one. I'm not sure about the Vietnam War, how that started, but I'm sure that we had to do something about getting rid of those German monsters, the "superrace."

SMITH: Were you and your friends interested in politics?

WAGNER: Not particularly, no. No, I've never been interested in politics since I was born. I'm still not interested in politics that much. I had friends who were. I had a lot of friends who were very interested; that's all they'd talk about. In those days there were a lot of communists among the artists.

SMITH: Did you have friends--

WAGNER: It was very fashionable to be a communist. Oh yeah, I had lots of friends who were communists, socialists. In fact, I voted for Norman Thomas myself when he ran for president. I liked his party very much. I thought he was a stable man with wisdom.

SMITH: I guess if you were to have a political philosophy it would be more like an anarchist, right?

WAGNER: No, not really. I couldn't be an anarchist because anarchy leads to destruction, because there's too many people who don't know what they're doing and would be running around fighting all these other crazy people. We've almost got anarchy now with [Ronald] Reagan, by the way things go. Everybody's got their own thing going, killing each other, violence all over the place. What's that got to do with democracy and love and the generation that our country was built on? We help them, they come here and kill each other. I think we have pretty much anarchy right now. I personally like monarchy. I'd like to see a king and queen, if nothing more than just to have a fetish in my country, something to look up to, because kings and queens don't have that much power, really. They've got parliaments and all the ministers to do the work for them, but they're in the parades and they're the people that everybody looks forward to. Regality, this elegance of the palaces, and all of their heraldry, and all of this sort of fetish. It gives you much more to respect than some president or something that just came, it was the head of the Screen Actors Guild or governor of California. I admire him for his age and what he's doing, I mean at his age. But sometimes I question what he's doing.

SMITH: Getting back to your wife and her writing: You said she wrote short stories, film scripts. Was she an avant-garde writer? Was she--

WAGNER: My wife?

SMITH: Yeah, your wife.

WAGNER: I would say so. Yeah, she was. Most of the things she wrote were pretty avant-garde for what was going on in the slick magazines. She used to receive rejection slips every week from them. They were not interested in what she was writing at all, nothing. She never got anything out of a slick magazine. There were underground magazines and books like that, that the more she became-- She published things.

SMITH: Were you doing any painting at all during the Second World War period? Were you able to paint, say, on Sundays?

WAGNER: Very little. I was really quiet-- I was too tired. My energy was drained. It was very difficult to do much for about three years, '42 to '47, '46--four years. It was hard. But I was reading a lot and I was thinking a lot, and things of that nature.

SMITH: Let's talk a little bit about your work as a designer. You moved off the floor of the--

WAGNER: Tool and die--

SMITH: --tool and die shop into design.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: How did that happen?

WAGNER: Well, they asked me if I would like to do that because they needed tool designers. I had not had too much experience in drafting and drawing and things. They said, "You can do it. If you can build these tools, you can certainly create them." Because I was making drawings and sketches of the tools I was building in the tool and die. So what had to happen was that they had to speed up the progress of tools, so they needed tool designers to get these things designed by somebody that could just throw them the blueprints, and the tool makers could just make the parts.

SMITH: So you had already had all this training, hadn't you, at UCLA and --?

WAGNER: I made these things, oh yeah. So visualization was what was important, to be able to visualize three-dimensional [objects], and know something about mathematics and how to draw, then you would be able to do this. So they knew I could do that very well, so they picked me up and asked me if I would do that, transfer into tool design.

SMITH: This was in North American?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: What kind of tools were you designing? Were they airplane parts that you were designing?

WAGNER: No, no. No parts. Tools.

SMITH: For the manufacture of parts.

WAGNER: For the manufacture of, like, drill jigs. When you make the part you want to put twenty holes in it. You don't want to have to lay out all those holes every part, so you put the part into the jig, and you take the drill and just drill all the holes at once, and they're all exactly matched to the next jig that's built. You have another mating part and that will have that hole pattern in it so that the bolts go right in together. Things of that nature. And then they got more complicated, assembling jigs to put wings together, and a whole section of an airplane, a center section or something, build the whole framework, and the points, the hole locating it and locate all the ribs, and put all the skins on; it was all in the jigs. Then they opened up the clamps and the whole section fit on. We also did a lot of milling fixtures, for milling machines, where they wanted to have slots and things or different cuts so they could put it up on the milling machine to cut through the slot and move over. It would stop and you'd cut the next one to a certain depth and everything was set so that the parts came out exact on the fixtures. So I was drawing those. Like, somebody would throw me a key or something like this, or a complicated part, a key for instance. It had to have notches in here and notches here, and it had to be made with this here--well, that would take a die. We'd make a die. We'd knock out the rough and we'd machine the slot on a mill through the slot and then the key cutter, who was set up with a hole here, would drill a hole. The key cutter would set up and make the mark where you wanted it. It was all built.

SMITH: So you would do a drawing of--

WAGNER: Of the whole--

SMITH: --the whole thing and then a die would be made?

WAGNER: Details of the parts. Then they would actually order the materials, the tool maker would order the materials to the sizes that were on the drawing, and they would put the holes in the places where they were on the drawing to that part, and the clamps, and the holding fixtures, and everything that had to be. They'd build the whole piece from detail. We'd make a whole drawing showing the whole thing and then show details of the different parts off of that, and then they'd build that, put it all together as an assemblage.

SMITH: Did you have to approve the dies or the tests of the dies?

WAGNER: Yeah, you had to test those to be sure they were working correctly. I would have to grind here and take away there a little bit. A die is a very difficult thing. On jigs and fixtures that's a lot easier because you're not stamping it.

SMITH: You worked on the FJ-1 project? What were you doing there?

WAGNER: Well, that was the beginning of-- That's when tool design wasn't needed anymore. They didn't have any reason-- Tool makers were being laid off and the tool designers were being laid off, but they needed people in engineering for designing products. So I was asked, along with about eight other designers, if [I] would like to go to work in the engineering department. And I said, "Well, I don't know much about that sort of thing. I'm a machine designer, a jig and fixture designer." "Oh, that's easy," they said. I talked to this chief engineer of the group, and they put us in wing design. I was so bored with that. I said, "Gee, there must be something more interesting to do around here than design a lot of ribs and wings and skins and rivets and things."

SMITH: Did you know anything about aviation? Aeronautics? How wings worked?

WAGNER: Oh yeah, sure. I'd already studied that.

SMITH: Oh, you'd already studied that.

WAGNER: Aerodynamics.

SMITH: At school?

WAGNER: Yeah, but that wasn't necessary to even know about those things. So I said, "I'm not interested in this. I'm going to have to find another job someplace." "Oh no, we'll just transfer you." I said, "Look, I've designed machines and all kinds of moving things, and--" "Oh, Eric Martin over here, go see him. He'd love to have you." So I said, "What does he do?" "Oh, he's a landing gear designer." So I got into that. That was something else. I mean, I worked there for about a month before I knew what I was doing. It was so complex because all these compound angles, there's nothing that's true.

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO, MAY 17, 1986

WAGNER: So I had to go back and study descriptive geometry and really understand how these landing gears moved in the different positions. We call it kinematics, different parts of the movement that the landing gear would pass through. We would lay it out in those stations where we could find out it would travel, and something that was going to be drawn, in that state it would be maybe five inches too short than when it was in the flat state. So we had to use the two angles and then take the resultant of the two angles, and that made the true length. So I had no conception of what I was doing in the beginning. It took me a while. And also, I had to really brush up on my stress analysis and strength of materials because we were working with a safety factor of 1.5 on all the parts.

SMITH: Which means?

WAGNER: Well, 1.5 over the tensile strength, the psi. Otherwise, a piece of aluminum was good for bending and whatnot, and it's good for about 20,000 psi. You had to have 1.5 of that, which was about nothing, you know; it's right on the border. Where with steel they used to take a safety factor of 4. Because they wanted to keep the load down, lightness, and right to just above where it would wham, you know. All this analysis. So I started. I came up with an idea, because they threw me this thing of turning the nose wheel over and going up through the doors of the airplane, like this, the nose wheel. When it reached this point, I had a cam like this, and on the shimmy dampener I had a roller that was keyed into this cam like that and pulled the shimmy dampener, and the wheel would lay over flat when it went up inside the wheel well so the doors could shut and close. So I invented that thing while I was there; I developed it. Unfortunately, it was a pretty straight thing because it was just coming up and the cam had to curve, because going through a radius like this, it had to move over enough to take that and also move it up, so the cam sort of came up like that. I put that together and invented that idea for them, or developed it. Eric Martin, who was the boss, he says, "Gordon," he says, "that's beautiful. You're a damn genius. I love it." They had all the brass up there from the air force and all these people seeing how I was turning the wheel over. So he gave me a $100 a month raise right on the spot for that. Then he threw me all kinds of things with hydraulics where I used to make monkey motions. I loved to make monkey motions. They were cardboard cutouts. A certain lever would come this way, and it would push another lever with a spring that would hit this lever and operate a hydraulic valve that would open the doors. Then go over and hit this valve which would drop the landing gear. When the landing gear had locked it would pull down another cable that operated the hydraulic belt and shut the doors under it so that there wouldn't be all that air in there. Then the gear would be down. Then the reversal of the thing. I used to make these cardboard cutouts all the way across my drawing board using thumb tacks and string and letters. I used to get all the brass. They couldn't stand-- They'd come around to look at my monkey motions. I advanced very quickly in that department. Really fast! [laughter] It was incredible. Because nobody did monkey motions; it was all theoretical. But I was a man of the building of things and the workbench, and I knew how to do these things physically, so I said, "Well, why should I intellectualize all these things and try to figure these things out? I'm just going to build one on the drawing board like I would a piece of sculpture or something." This really made a big impression on that group. After that, several of them were building monkey motions. But it was moving parts, you see. That's where I had to be. I didn't want to be in the static departments. So much stuff is static: frames and fuselage, you know, fuselages and the rudders and the tails and the wings. But the landing gear was a special place. That's one of the reasons I remember all the controls. We had to chase all these cables around through the airplane, all the aircraft controls, all these things, with pulleys and cables. We always wondered how were we going to get through there. We'd have a cable coming down right there, and I'd go see a man over there that was designing the cabinetry or something and find out that my cable was going right through his radio cabinet, so we had to move to another place. This was all on the drawing board stage. So finally I told my boss one time, I said, "I don't know if this is proper or not, but you ought to build this whole damned airplane and then get a big mouse and a piece of cheese and stick the cheese in one end of the airplane and the mouse on a string at the other end and let him travel through, and how he gets through is where we run our cable." But he never bought the idea. [tape recorder off]

SMITH: You also worked on engine coolers?

WAGNER: Yeah, that was in a different place. Air Research.

SMITH: This was after the war.

WAGNER: Yeah. Then I went over to Air Research-- I left North American [Aviation Company] right afterwards. I didn't stay there very long.

SMITH: So what kind of-- You were developing jet engine coolers?

WAGNER: Yeah. Aircraft engine coolers, all coolers for aircraft.

SMITH: Were you successful in developing them?

WAGNER: Well, I wasn't developing coolers. I was working there on a machine to solder coolers quickly. All in one lump; it was like a big metal cylinder that had all these beehives, tubes, in it. The idea was for it to come up to this machine and all at once--whew! --it would solder the whole thing in one shot [snaps fingers] just like that. Quick, get them off the line. So I was developing this machine.

SMITH: Now, you told me that you also worked with Robert Oppenheimer for a while.

WAGNER: Yeah, that was in another company. That was at Hufford Machine Works in Redondo Beach. And Harry Wood, and both of us worked on this project for an atomic load testing machine for atomic piles. It was to be installed in Pajarito Plateau in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was our first experience with remote control operation. The whole machine actually weighed about four and a half tons. What it tested was something like six or seven ounces, something like that. We were running all sorts of tests with platinum and gold and all kinds of rods and iron. We had strange names like Alka Seltzer ejector. That pushed a dead mouse out of a hole that was inside the piece of load. We took a mouse and he went through the thing and they pushed him out. There were divining rods and also control rods, but these were all done from five or six miles away in a block house.

SMITH: What was your roll in designing this, the remote control or the actual --?

WAGNER: We had to design the-- Our role was to design the machine, which was a real project, believe me, because there were so many safety factors that had to be considered in case it didn't work. We had a thing called a scram mechanism, which practically dismantled the whole machine.

SMITH: So there wouldn't be an atomic explosion?

WAGNER: Right. All that sort of thing. Things that we were completely unrelated to but found out a lot about. It was wonderful, very interesting. New technology, finding out about computers and things like that.

SMITH: How well did you get to know Oppenheimer?

WAGNER: Well, I used to talk with him a lot. He'd come about once a month to see how we were doing. I remember one morning we were expecting him, and he didn't show up and didn't show up. He was supposed to be there at nine so the whole time there was a pounding on the wall and we couldn't figure it so we went back and Oppenheimer was locked in the bathroom, one of these old bathrooms had lock hooks. It slipped down when he went in and he was locked in on the inside, and he couldn't get out. He was on time! We laughed about that. We just had a ball that morning. [laughter]

SMITH: Did you have a chance to talk to him about non-work-related things at all?

WAGNER: Not much. You're supposed to be very serious, what we were talking about. We never had any real rapport. He did have a sense of humor. You had to have a sense of humor to be locked in a bathroom for an hour. He was a very mild-mannered man. He knew exactly what he wanted and how to get there.

SMITH: There's a big question behind all of this, your ten years as a professional engineer. Has any of that affected your artistic work, your conception of pieces that you do?

WAGNER: No, I don't believe so. I think what it basically has done is it makes it easy for me to manifest that concept. It makes it very easy for me, the physical building, because I understand the materials and how to get there fast and properly without wasting a lot of time on false measurements and mistakes. It's much easier for me to see three dimensions.

SMITH: Have you ever made any pieces that are a comment on science or engineering or the war industry, aerospace? Did you do anything that had the bite that the Dave [David] Quick pieces have?

WAGNER: Yeah, I made a few pieces in my life that were a satire of technology. I remember I had one piece that Rich Dehr, the owner of the Discovery Inn in Topanga Canyon, a good restaurant-- He was actually a songwriter and he bought a piece from me.

SMITH: What sort of a piece was it?

WAGNER: Well, it wasn't like Dave Quick; it was a stabile piece. It wasn't kinetic, but it had all these very complex pieces of things and objects and people running all over the place and in and out of things with hammers and tools and very busy not doing much of anything. I called the piece The Bright Young Men. I made others about peace, war: I've done things like that through my life. Back in the sixties I got into a lot of that, protest and anger.

SMITH: But generally your work seems to be--the universe that it relates back to is pre-World War II, pre-twentieth century; the kinds of characters and boats and trains and the houses, the clothing. Is there a reason for that, other than it just appeals to you? Is there a statement you're making?

WAGNER: Yeah, I think basically I appreciate nostalgia more than I do the advancement of technology. I appreciate the old and the beautiful more than I do plastic. I appreciate classical music more than common popular junk. As for poetry, I think I appreciate the contemporary poets and especially the kind of people in the renaissance of poetry. But I like Shakespeare, I like the master. He said it all. But I never really put myself into the Shakespearean times. In fact, I don't think I put my work into any time whatsoever. I like to keep my work timeless.

SMITH: But it does strike me that there is a time of the Victorian era, or, you know, the era of the Crystal Palace and the Grand Palais, of Napoleon III.

WAGNER: Well, these have always been more my feelings of a place where I must have been when I was someplace else in time. In my childhood, I was raised around such architecture on the beach, with these buildings, the palaces of gaiety, and really good workmanship. It wasn't just flat, plastic building, or glass. The elegance and detail. Sometimes I incorporate that into my work. I try to do it with a timelessness, [incorporating] skies, clouds, things of that nature.

SMITH: The card imagery, the playing card imagery, has a feel of late nineteenth-century French cards and theatrical--

WAGNER: Well, I think that's all symbols for me: chance with the playing card, and the imagery of foolery, of gestures, the irrational.

SMITH: But there's an aspect, there's a way that you take one aspect of the imagery, one--

WAGNER: Fragment.

SMITH: --fragment of it, but the fool on the playing cards could be represented in different ways, and you seem to have a predilection for the late nineteenth-century representation. Not that you do it slavishly, that it's a slavish copy, but there is a piece that seems to relate to the way you see things, that relates back to that period.

WAGNER: Well, playing cards fascinate me only from the point of the aesthetic value. I don't even care about playing cards at all. They're symbols of-- They come from royalty and they go back, you know, back in the early days when they invented playing cards in France. Any commoners who played cards would be imprisoned because they were only for the royalty, for the aristocracy. Before that the playing cards came out of the Cabalists. And there are so many different kinds of playing cards, so many beautiful faces of playing cards that have been selected, even through the American Indians: playing cards made out of skins, like the Mexican playing cards which were from the Spanish, and the Spanish from the Cabala. So the cards themselves are what interested me, the beauty of them. When I can find an old card on the street that is weathered and beaten and worn out, it's a wonderful find. And if I found a brand-new ace, I wouldn't see anything so exciting about that.

SMITH: When did you start painting again?

WAGNER: Right, right immediately, when I got time. Probably even '44.

SMITH: When you really started doing artwork again intensively, had your ideas changed, your subjects, your approaches changed?

WAGNER: Well, my way of painting changed. I was working more or less with the same imagery, but I was using the scraffiti technique at that time.

SMITH: That's when you developed it?

WAGNER: Yeah. And that went through-- I must have done about a hundred paintings, at least a hundred paintings with the scraffiti technique.

SMITH: Could you discuss the Barrington series?

WAGNER: Well, for a while I was working in a company in West L.A. right on Stoner [Avenue], near Montana [Avenue], Transco Products. I was designing a machine to package dried food, lima beans and beans and lentils.

SMITH: You had quit the aerospace industry?

WAGNER: Oh yeah, this is way after the war. I was designing this machine for a small company. I was the only engineer in the place. Finally another gentleman, Frank Wylie--his wife [Edith Wylie] ran the [Craft and] Folk Art Museum--Frank was working there. He was developing cams and I was developing this machine that would bag up one bean bag every second for the Washburn Wilson Seed Company in Moscow, Idaho: Bud Wilson was the client. And while I was working there, I would take off my lunch hour, and right up the street about two blocks was wonderful Barrington Avenue, with all of those old houses and broken-down places. A lot of Mexicans lived there, just north of Wilshire [Boulevard]. I loved it and I used to make drawings there every day. I would take long lunch hours [laughter] and make drawings and paintings. Well, you know, mostly pastel drawings and some paintings I developed from that. And then I had my Barrington series of paintings.

SMITH: So what were you trying to do in this series? What kinds of effects were you after?

WAGNER: I was trying to-- I just loved the feeling of the architecture of these old structures and textures and weathered buildings and the way they disconnected themselves and the chicken coops ran down through the outhouses and the houses into the-- This is a very fashionable neighborhood now. But in those days it was a gully. The houses were all along the gully. It was a nice pile up of structures. I always was fascinated by buildings and architecture like that.

SMITH: What kind of colors were you using?

WAGNER: Primary. In the paintings. Strictly primaries. I mean, as bright as possible, red, yellow, blue, green.

WAGNER: Oh yeah, real strong. They were powerful paintings.

SMITH: Then you also began to do work involving myths and legends of Mexico. How did that interest develop?

WAGNER: The actual--

SMITH: You were starting to paint Mexican myths and legends.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: I guess Indian myths.

WAGNER: When I first went to Mexico, I wasn't really worried about much of anything except going and living there and getting away from engineering and to get out of the country. And you're saying 1940?

SMITH: Forties, after the war, late forties.

WAGNER: Well, after the war, well, then I took my family and we went to visit Mexico. I went there with an open mind, that anything might happen, anything. That's why I like to go on trips for a year or two, I go with an open mind.

SMITH: So you went down to-- You quit your job and you went down there for six months?

WAGNER: Yeah, about six months to Patzcuaro.

SMITH: As much money as you had, or--

WAGNER: I had $500. I figured that that might be enough to keep me.

SMITH: How did your wife feel?

WAGNER: Well, she wanted to go; she wanted to write. [laughter] When I got in Mexico, I found all sorts of ceremonies and things and fiestas and things we don't have in this part of the world here, the fireworks and the castlllos and the energy of these people and the objects and the paper goods that I found and the junk and the collage materials that I could use maybe someday. I had no conception of what I was going to do with them, but I kept it all, collecting objects there just like anyplace else, just collect them up on the street, you know. My first series of paintings I did in Mexico were sort of-- I loved to look at places like old funeral parlors with the coffins on the doors and things like that that you wouldn't ever see in America. I was fascinated by all these things you'd never find in America: Old cars with things in the back seats and lights that went on and off. Then there's the curtains that were in cars and trucks, they called them cortinas, with tassels. So many things, different things. The whole place was like an assemblage, Mexico. It was like walking through a giant assemblage. And the people I found to be incredibly friendly and beautiful. So I just fell into making a lot of drawings, basically. Started with walls and textures, graveyards and whatever came to me.

SMITH: Were there particular ceremonies, legends, that had stronger appeal to you?

WAGNER: Yeah, there were several, like their dances, at different times of the year. The Day of the Dead was a great ceremony. I did a lot on the Day of the Dead. I did quite a bit on the patron saints days. Patzcuaro's patron saint was [Felipe] de [Peru] Virgin de Salud, virgin of health, for the fishermen at lake Patzcuaro. The butterfly fishermen and the Isle of Janizio, where they have the ceremony of the Day of the Dead. The Tarascan Indians were something else that were there. Their ceremonies were all sorts of wonderful dances with boar masks and all sorts of masks and wonderful things. Boy, their ceremonies around Christmas and on saints' days, they arrived, they were doing fertility dances and horn dances and all these things. It was an endless fiesta, Mexico. In fact, I was told one time there were three hundred and eighty-five fiestas a year in Mexico. [laughter]

SMITH: Yeah, but you described your artwork as being more in touch with the visual kinds, rather than the mythical kinds of things.

WAGNER: In the beginning, because I wasn't too aware at that time of the mythical side. That came later.

SMITH: You were impressed by the spectacle of the--

WAGNER: I was just impressed by the whole thing. There was a magnitude that was indescribable almost. Mexico in those days was a whole different Mexico than it is today.

SMITH: What about the mobiles that you did?

WAGNER: Well, I did those in Hermosa [Beach] in 1947. I built quite a few of those. One I really tried to develop was this Ballet Mobile.

SMITH: What was that?

WAGNER: Well, that was a piece that was in a box with mirrors, converging mirrors into a box, and it turned in the center. I was trying to use that box to create a stage for ballet performers, for the dancers to go-- I have the whole storyboard somewhere about this, and how the lovers-- the dancer who was the artist who was building this beautiful mobile. Then there was the antagonist over here who was trying to take the ballerina away from the artist, who tried to smash the mobile. It all winds up with the artist and the ballerina actually in the mobile, level with the movements. It would be a huge piece. In the theater.

SMITH: Did you construct it?

WAGNER: I never constructed it any farther than the [maquette] because nobody would listen to me. Then I took it to Frank Perls because he was kind of advanced in those days.

SMITH: Did you know Lester Horton?

WAGNER: Well, I met him, yes.

SMITH: Would he have been the sort of person you would have taken this to?

WAGNER: No, I sent the whole concept to Mama Malano at the New York City Ballet. I never got an answer because they thought I was some kind of a nut.

SMITH: It sounds more like a modern dance concept than a ballet concept.

WAGNER: It was. Well, I called it the Ballet Mobile, and it never got off the ground. But I tell you, I sent it as an art piece built as a concept and took it to Frank Perls. He looked at it and said it was very interesting and then he said, "Excuse me," and never came back. I was sitting here with this old guy in the room. There were two of us sitting there and waiting for him, and he said, "What an incredible piece. Why don't you put it on a film? It would be beautiful on a film." And I said, "Well that's possible." And that was Fischinger. [laughter]

SMITH: Oh, Oskar Fischinger?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Nothing came of that? Did anything come of it?

WAGNER: No, because the reason I took it to Frank Perls in the first place was because he was a dealer for [Alexander] Calder in Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive. He was one of the top galleries in Beverly Hills.

SMITH: Oh. Is this also the light machine?

WAGNER: No, no, the light machine came later. That's another piece.

SMITH: What is the light machine?

WAGNER: Well, the light machine was in a box about three feet by two feet high, three feet wide, and about two feet deep, with sandblasted glass on the front. In the back I had all these wheels of gelatin paper, and mobile parts turning, and gelatin paper of different light, and the lights in different corners. This thing would move very slowly, and it would keep changing its imagery like a moving abstract painting in front of the glass. That's what you saw, these colors changing like a moving screen of color.

SMITH: Did you make it?

WAGNER: Oh yeah, I made it, oh yeah. I made about three of those.

SMITH: Where are they?

WAGNER: Well, I built one once for the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach for old [Howard] Rumsey when he had it. He had it up over the bar for awhile. He took it somewhere. I don't know whatever happened to that one. Then another one--

SMITH: Were these perpetual motion--?

WAGNER: No, it was run by a motor. But I had a fan also inside, very slow turning, so it would get a little air. So it would get these other mobile forms moving against the rotating wheels of gelatin paper so you had these other parts moving in front. What happened was that, after that, I scrapped the other one when I moved from Topanga. I threw it away because it was in a mess, and nothing really ever-- I tried to put that in a-- I presented it to a few architects. Then when the hippie movement came along and the psychedelic revolution hit, everybody was building these things. Hundreds of people [were] making them. You could see them every place, light boxes. They had them, you could buy one in a head shop for-- And everybody got onto it.

SMITH: I wanted to ask you about your painting, Mexican Interior, that got written up quite a bit at the time, 1948, '49.

WAGNER: That was an interesting painting. I still have it, I think. It's still out there somewhere. It was painted about-- I can't hardly remember when it was right at the moment. It was a pretty strong painting about sort of the sadness of Mexico and yet there was a feeling in there of this woman who was very happy doing what she had to do within this, against the wall of this building. I was using the interior of the buildings and the light passing through the roof. Because half the houses in Mexico didn't have roofs; a roofless house, you know. So you were in and out in this painting. It was a nice painting.

SMITH: Did you sell most of your paintings?

WAGNER: Yeah, most of them.

SMITH: Where were they sold?

WAGNER: Oh, to different people: private people and collectors and galleries.

SMITH: Did you have galleries that showed your work, or was it at shows?

WAGNER: In exhibitions at galleries, yeah. The show you're referring to here, where the Mexican material was, I think I sold a half a dozen paintings.

SMITH: But what I'm trying to get at is really just the economics of being a painter. You're working all the time doing these things

WAGNER: But it wasn't very--

SMITH: Southern California, late forties: where did you go with these?

WAGNER: No, it wasn't economically-- It wasn't that good in the forties. There were people who were buying things as long as you were selling them cheap.

SMITH: Cheap meaning how much?

WAGNER: Oh, $100.

SMITH: Which was equivalent to what, $500, $750 now?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: So $100 would be considered a reasonable buy for--

WAGNER: Back in those days, yes.

SMITH: But that was still considered a sizable amount of money in those days, too.

WAGNER: Oh yeah. Well, it kept me going for awhile.

SMITH: Did you have a particular gallery? How did the galleries work?

WAGNER: Well, you mean in the forties?

SMITH: Yeah, in the forties.

WAGNER: I had Willard Hougland--

SMITH: Who was in Hermosa Beach.

WAGNER: --my friend, who had a gallery called the Willard Hougland Gallery, right down in a place called Greenwich Village. That's the name of the street going--

SMITH: The Greenwich Village Art Colony?

WAGNER: Yeah, that was sort of-- It was all part of the same neighborhood, and Willard sold a lot of works for me.

SMITH: Now, who were the people who would be buying them? What did they look for?

WAGNER: Well, there were all kinds of people at that time that were just excited at the art because there wasn't much art going on. People that you didn't even have any idea would buy your art would come and buy your art. Like I remember Willard sold a piece to Mark C. Bloom. I had another gallery that Willard sent me to, next to Perino's on Wilshire Boulevard. They sold quite a bit for me at the same time. People off the street would come in and buy art. When I was working in these places, they knew I was a painter and we'd get to talking about painting, and talking about that and about this, and they were very interested. They would buy my works for their houses. They had no idea of art. They just liked the paintings.

SMITH: When you were painting, did you consider what potential buyers might want?

WAGNER: No, never. No, I wasn't interested at all, ever. Not to this day do I care what they want. I haven't changed.

SMITH: Say the Willard Hougland Gallery, how did that compare in terms of standing and prestige to, say, the galleries in Beverly Hills?

WAGNER: Well, at that time, there weren't that many galleries in Beverly Hills. Willard Hougland would be-- At that time there was Bill [William] Copley's gallery, a surrealist gallery: he handled only surrealists, [Joseph] Cornell and people like this. All of the French and European, strictly. He probably had the best gallery. Then there was Frank Perls who was a top gallery. You wouldn't rate Willard Hougland with that league, no. Willard Hougland would be comparable to lots of galleries that are now operating. He showed the best he could. He showed people like James Jarvaise and Henry Miller and myself, quite a few other [South] Bay area artists down there. [Francis] de Erdely, people like that. And Ruth Bernhard, the sculptor, I mean she's a photographer, one of the best, he showed her. He showed a lot of good people. And Betty Binkley, who was an excellent painter. Those were the-- He showed good quality art, and he wasn't interested in the picture framing or picture gallery at all. The other thing he had adjacent to the gallery, which was a beautiful thing that had nothing to do with the gallery, he kept it separate, but he had this rare-book store where you could-- So that brought in all sorts of intellectuals who were-- He had the first edition, hand signed by [W.] Somerset Maugham, you know, and lots of Henry Miller.

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE, AUGUST 22, 1986

SMITH: I thought we'd start talking today about-- In 1949 you started doing wood assemblages. How did that come about?

WAGNER: It seemed that I'd been working a lot in linear forms in my painting, a lot of nature, of rocks and walls and things like that, and textures, painting them, and I was getting a little bit bored with painting. One day I decided to take some of this old wood that I'd found, all these old textures that I'd had in a box for years-- I couldn't throw them away--and I started tinkering around with them. My first piece was a standing piece. It was a group of balls on a post from a stair balustrade, and an old piece of wood with a wire hooked on the top of it that was beautifully shaped, and another piece from an old house somewhere, all polychromed. There were seven pieces, and I called the piece The Seven Actors. And at that point, I got thinking, you know, these things, all this old weathered stuff and all these polychromed pieces, they're so beautiful and they are just thrown away. If they were presented again in a new form, in sculpture, they'd take on a different aspect. Also, all of these old actors would be reemployed into a thing of beauty and harmony. So that was the title of my very first piece. The Seven Actors. Actually, the ball piece out of the balustrade is something I grabbed onto one time when I went running down the stairs of this building. It was a very fancy fretwork, and when I got outside I still had it in my hand. I couldn't go back and tell them, "Look what I've done," so I just took it with me. From then on I started looking at more old woods, and when I'd go to the beach-- At first everything looked good, all kinds of wood. But after looking for awhile, your selectivity gets a lot better. Like if you've never been to the beach before, you'll pick up the first stone you find. As you go to the beach, you'll start editing these beautiful stones you find, and most of them will remain where they belong, right on the beach. This old wood has the same sort of feeling to me. When I see it, it just hits me. Or any object. Not much I can do about it but pick it up because I have sort of like a desire to collect old wood and the lust for old wood and polychromed pieces. So that's how I really got into this. Instead of painting, I started using my imagery in the painting and the linear and making linear found woods, not changing anything--

SMITH: Did you paint--

WAGNER: --not altering anything, not painting it; using it as just a pure piece that was found on the beach, or on the desert, or wherever. On the street. And it was never altered at all in size, shape, or color. It was just pure. That's the way it is. That's how I really got started into making these first assemblages, a three-dimensional painting.

SMITH: But The Seven Actors sounds as if it were a sculpture in a sense, or a standing piece.

WAGNER: Right. It was a standing piece; it was a small piece, it wasn't big or anything. It wasn't any major thing, but it was something that excited me because it was my first piece like that that was made of found objects.

SMITH: Then you also did framed pieces, hanging pieces, right?

WAGNER: Well, this is when the hanging pieces started, but as I say, they were three-dimensional paintings without paint.

SMITH: Would the sort of thing you were doing be considered funk art?

WAGNER: At that time?

SMITH: At that time.

WAGNER: Well, not exactly, because it was more found-object art and not funk, because [Kurt] Schwitters-- It was more related to what Schwitters was doing. I don't think that Schwitters would have ever been classified as a funk artist. He actually made a statement once when he wanted to become a dadaist, he told them that he nailed these paintings together. And that's exactly what I was doing, nailing my paintings together, because they were nonobjective, and they had no particular message one way or the other at that time.

SMITH: Were there other people in California who were doing similar kinds of things? Taking found objects and creating art?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. Quite a few. Ed [Edward] Kienholz, for one, was working that way at that time.

SMITH: Did you know him already at that time?

WAGNER: Yeah, I knew Ed very well.

SMITH: Okay, let's backtrack a little bit.

WAGNER: I met him first in Topanga Canyon, when I lived in Topanga.

SMITH: But that was later, in the fifties, right? In the mid-fifties?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: You had already started doing--?

WAGNER: Well, yeah, but the-- We paralleled each other, you see.

SMITH: Okay. Simultaneously, you were also doing--in the late forties you were doing your Big Sur paintings. What were you trying to accomplish with those?

WAGNER: Well, I always had a sort of a-- I've always had a romance with the sea and the movement of water. And being a skin diver and affiliated with the sea, when I got a feeling like that it was like listening to [Jean] Sibelius or La Mer of [Claude] Debussy. That kind of imagery was in the painting, you know, to get that movement of water it's almost like the land is crawling out to the horizon. In Big Sur it's not like the beaches of Hermosa [Beach] and Manhattan [Beach], where there's just little waves. The northern coasts are dramatic: big rocks and lots of movement and heavy seas and turquoise waters, the sand is so clear underneath that it reflects the water into a turquoise. I wanted to get all the spindrifts and the waves coming back and-- It's the elements. I was trying to project that into the work in a sort of a, I would call it an impressionistic way. I wasn't trying to do it in a pretty seascape, you know, but in the feeling of all this movement.

SMITH: So were you influenced at this time by any of the abstract expressionist kind of-- The abstract expressionist paintings that were coming out of New York, were you aware of them?

WAGNER: Oh yeah, I was aware of them and I-- But I didn't want to be like them; I wasn't interested in painting like them or any other painter. I was trying to be myself. But I always appreciated them. I liked the ones even before the abstract expressionists. There was a whole school in there, the ashcan school, and that group.

SMITH: What about the magic realists? Had you been aware they were--?

WAGNER: I liked them, oh yes, and the futurists. But basically, I was more interested in the surreal aspect of things. They classified abstract expressionism in the surrealist movement. I guess it's only because they worked from the inside, the interior, the dream state. And through the subconscious: automatic painting, automatic writing, and all these things of the early poets, [Robert] Desnos and [André] Breton, but I don't-- I never was that much influenced by [Jackson] Pollock, or by [Robert] Motherwell or any of that. [Franz] Kline or whatnot. Although later on I did have a feeling to get into that. You know what I mean?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: But it was just a slow evolvement.

SMITH: Well, you went to high school with Jackson Pollock, right?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Were you friendly with him at that time?

WAGNER: Yeah, I knew him. Yeah.

SMITH: Did you keep in contact with him after he left L.A.?

WAGNER: No.

SMITH: No?

WAGNER: Well, I think from there he went up to Wyoming or someplace. Then he started drip painting, you know, in an old barn, I believe. I'm not sure if it's history at that point. Then he met Peggy Guggenheim, I believe, and that took him back to New York. But he was a very-- If I think back now, he was really working with Thomas Hart Benton, right? He did a lot of work with, and painted sort of like, Thomas Hart Benton. Where was he, in the Middle West someplace?

SMITH: Missouri, right?

WAGNER: I think so; I think that's where he went to study. But I'd never really followed him that much because he was going his way. Philip Guston was another one, he was going his way. They went to New York. Like, H. C. Westermann, he was from California. And he said, "I never knew what art was until I moved back East." [laughter] Because he was from L.A.

SMITH: Well, you said in the first interview, you said there was no such thing as art in California at that time. What about Rico Lebrun? Did you know him? Had you ever met him?

WAGNER: I'd met him a few times. I was in the same gallery that handled his work for about thirteen years, the Silvan Simone Gallery. Rico was a different kind of a-- He was a very powerful artist and very spiritual. He was always into something that had to do with The Divine Comedy or the terraces of hell or the crucifixion. I do remember once he had an exhibition in the [Los Angeles] County Museum [of History, Science, and Art], probably, oh it must have been in the forties, sometime in the forties, where he had the exhibition of the crucifixion show. And at the very-- Just before it opened, he was hanging up the last piece on a ladder, working. All of the society arrived, and they couldn't understand what he would be doing there still, a workman still there when they'd arrived. He never bothered to tell them that, he was Rico Lebrun, the artist, that it was his show they were coming to see. [laughter] But he was a fairly good muralist and [good at the] painting of the figure. He would rotate the figure and maybe overlay it and superimpose it, and he took the inside of the figure and peeled it from the inside out like an orange. He stimulated people like Howard Bradford and [Howard] Warshaw, [Keith] Finch. He taught with Herb [Herbert] Jepson, who is in San Pedro here at the Angel's Gate Cultural Center, who had the Jepson Art Institute. He taught in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He was a very powerful painter. He died of leukemia.

SMITH: His reputation seems to have been eclipsed a little bit. Why do you think that is?

WAGNER: What?

SMITH: His reputation seems to have been eclipsed somewhat since his death. Why do you think that's --?

WAGNER: His reputation?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: Now?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: Well, how do I feel about that? I don't think he's-- I don't think anybody even hardly knows Rico Lebrun anymore. He's been almost a forgotten artist.

SMITH: But why is that? At one point he was the best known of Los Angeles painters, wasn't he?

WAGNER: I think that's one of the big problems right now in our society, and in California especially. I can't understand it, but so many of the older artists that were really doing things and experimenting and teaching and working have just been forgotten about. They dropped out of the whole art world for a handful of younger people who have come in. A lot of artists ask that question that you're asking me. What happened? Why are we not being recognized? We should be; we're old enough. You know? But yet somebody off the street can come along with very little talent and a lot of power to walk on other people, I guess. I don't know how they do it. They're taught the corporate way. They seem to be able to handle it all right and swing these exhibitions, where older artists don't seem to be interested in them at all. That's here in Los Angeles. In New York I think Rico Lebrun's work is still being shown, and in Europe and places like that, you know. He's not forgotten. He's got works in museums. I remember an awful review one time. I'm not going to say anything about who wrote this review, but it was in Artforum magazine. It was in about 1960, I believe, or '62, and an exhibition was being held in San Francisco. It was a big exhibition, major work.

SMITH: Retrospective of--

WAGNER: Yeah. And the critic made the comment, "This show is so bad that it's almost impossible to believe that we have such terrible artists. But aren't we fortunate not to have Rico Lebrun in the show." That kind of promotion doesn't help artists at all. When [Lebrun] died. Silvan Simone took most all of the-- He had a huge collection of his work; he put it in a vault someplace. I don't know where it is now; if his wife-- Silvan died--still has those Lebruns and is doing something with them or not because they still-- He bought up so much from Lebrun's wife, you know, when he was dying at that time, to help her. I think the other one was Margo Leavin or somebody, she handled Lebrun. I think so, some name like that. I'm not sure if that's it. You still see his name from time to time in art magazines. Well, after all, he can't keep having exhibitions, he's dead. [laughter] They probably will-- When an artist dies, sometimes they go into a whole lapse period. Then one day there's a renaissance, you see, and they bring these people back, and all of a sudden he's born again. It takes time. Because how many people know [William Michael] Harnett? They're just bringing him back. Revitalizing people like that they don't know. Young people know nothing about the arts. I've had them building things, and I say, "Did you ever hear of Ed Kienholz?" They say, "No." I say, "You should know him, he's been working like this for the last thirty or forty years." "Oh really? Wow. That's cool." You know? They think they've got a unique idea. Some of the dealers that are handling their works are the same. They don't know a unique idea from another, the new galleries, you know. They don't know the old artists. They never heard of them. I think that's all the reason for it. Those kinds of things, lack of information. They've been neglected over a period of the last fifteen years.

SMITH: Do you think there's been a change in tastes, artistic tastes, that made--

WAGNER: No. The media just wiped out the art world.

SMITH: The media?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: What do you mean?

WAGNER: Well, in the old days every magazine had an article on art. I don't care if it was Field and Stream, there was something to do with the arts. Television had programs on art. Everybody was interested in art, but now it doesn't exist anymore. There are no collectors anymore like there were. It's all corporate now, decorative. Or very negated art.

SMITH: There was a group that you belonged to in the late forties, early fifties, called Artists Equity?

WAGNER: Uh-huh.

SMITH: I guess that was formed to promote the interests of artists in Southern California. Were you involved in the organizing of that?

WAGNER: No. I was a member. In order to be a member, it was necessary to have been exhibiting in major exhibitions and [to have] had, I think, four or five one-man shows, and things like that. You just couldn't go in off the street. You had to prove yourself to be a practicing artist. It was basically organized to help artists socially and economically. If they had problems financially, hospital bills and things, they would help pay the hospital bills and take up donations. It was also-- They had attorneys, they had advocates for the artists to-- If somebody was cheating the artist, they'd send out a letter and tighten down the screw on the client to get the money. It was also to help publicize the artist through magazines and to establish exhibitions in museums and galleries for the artist. When I was in it, I think it was-- The president at that time was William Brice.

SMITH: Was this a regional organization only, or was it national?

WAGNER: Oh no, national. The president of the whole organization at that time was [Yasuo] Kuniyoshi, a Japanese artist in New York. The regional chapter was William Brice and [Sueo] Serisawa. All of the artists in Los Angeles were members of Equity, and they also were-- They would have meetings. I remember one meeting that was most-- One of the maddest meetings I ever attended was in Frank Perls's gallery in Beverly Hills, when he had this huge gallery where he used to show the impressionists, the French impressionists, and the ashcan school, and all these different artists, you know, from-- People who have just been erased, like [Hobson] Pittman. You don't hear of those people anymore. The meeting actually was assembled in this huge gallery, and there must have been about five hundred artists there from L.A., Southern California, Lorser Feitelson and Oscar Van Young, no names that people know. I remember one of the things that was going on that really impressed me was that one of the artists got up and he said, "Why is it that we is having to pay to the dealer when we do all the work and we're making the frame, 33.25 percent?" [laughter] That time Oscar Van Young got up and he said, "This guy here, Mr. Perls, he says, 'Oscar, I am wanting from you much thicker paint. Put it on thick. You put on a frame, a good frame, and put the paint on thick.' So I put the paint on thick; I pay for the frame; he sells the painting for about-- I make about $10.50 profit." And Frank Perls got up and he said, "My friends, you must realize that I have this very lavish gallery, and I have all these lights to pay for, and I have these very plush velvet rugs on the floor and they don't-- Your painting sales are not going to pay for them." And it went on and on. It was a wonderful meeting of all of these characters. They were mostly Europeans, you know, 90 percent of them that had lived here, moved here. Marvelous, really old-time artists. None of this messing around.

SMITH: What kind of art were they producing? All kinds?

WAGNER: They were all good painters. They were strong painters, you know. They were always in big exhibitions. Hans Burkhardt, and all of these kinds of people, you know. Strong painters. Hans Burkhardt, he was doing things with bones and skulls collaged onto his paintings from the cemeteries of San Miguel de Allende. He did the Day of the Dead with all the coffins and the funerals and things. He was Swiss.

SMITH: How did they support themselves?

WAGNER: That's the way they made their money. Well, Burkhardt worked in the studios at that time. He was a scenic designer; quite a few of them worked as scenic designers. They used to have good artists working in the studios, when they had studios, you know, before things got done out on the street with cheap budgets. The time of Cecil B. DeMille and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, everything had to be exact. There were no details that were left out, you know. It wasn't just taking some local drugstore in San Pedro and rearranging it and bringing in a few more bottles, like in today's movies. So the paintings and the scenic designs and all these things were done by these same people, like Eugene Berman and all these different people that were in Equity. Not all of them were in that. Some of them were just painting, you know. Matter of fact, they're having an exhibition right now that just opened. All I know is there's about seven or eight artists in it and it's just opening this week. And it's old Arnold Schiffrin is in it and Pat Benefield.

SMITH: How long were you in Artists Equity?

WAGNER: Well, not too long, probably two or three years. Then it kind of broke up for a while.

SMITH: Why?

WAGNER: I don't know what happened. They had some kind of problems there with-- I just didn't bother with it anymore. It just fell apart.

SMITH: Was it a political organization?

WAGNER: I'm afraid it was. It had a tendency to be that way. Most of the artists in it around the time of [Joseph] McCarthy were getting messed up in it, you know.

SMITH: So you didn't want to be involved in that or you just--

WAGNER: Well, no, I dropped out before that ever happened. I had moved someplace, or I did something and couldn't go to the meetings, and I just lost interest until-- And after that they didn't operate.

SMITH: It sounds like it didn't fulfill what you wanted it to, I guess, if your interest waned away--

WAGNER: Well, my problem was I never joined anything in my life. I was a very bad member of any clubs or organizations or societies. So that was one of my major problems. I never joined any kind of organizations, so I have no affiliations when I'm supposed to put in an application. Your affiliations with societies or clubs or-- I always leave that blank.

SMITH: Well, in 1949 you moved to Jerome, Arizona.

WAGNER: Uh-huh.

SMITH: How come?

WAGNER: Well, we were living in Hermosa Beach, and I think it was my wife that sort of spurred me to do this, my first wife, Patricia. And my daughters. We'd been to Arizona visiting a year or so before, and we found out that we could go there. About that time the-- It was a mining town and it was closing to mining so it was becoming an abandoned town. I mean a real ghost town, and that's why I guess-- I wanted a change. I was interested in American Indians, and I thought it might-- I'd read a book called The Masked Gods, by Frank Waters, and I was very much interested in learning something about them, but I didn't know how I was going to get at that exactly, so we went to Jerome. I bought a truck for $150, a Chevrolet, a ton-and-a-half truck loaded down with all of our things we would need to live there, move there. We just piled everything in and took off. Took painting material, and furniture, and a few beds and things we'd need and left. When we arrived there I thought it would be interesting, maybe we could find a place to live, you know, to rent something. So we asked around and they said a man down here takes care of all the property in Jerome and you go see him. So we walked down there and this gentleman is standing there feeding balustrades into a fireplace and burning them. I noticed he had a blue dot on the end of his nose. I thought maybe it was coal or something, but I guess it was just a mark on the end of his nose. But it was interesting, a long, pointed nose with a blue dot. We inquired about rentals and he said, "Well, I've got one over here for $200." And I said, "That's more than I can afford. That's a lot of money. Two hundred dollars? I can't afford that a month. Afford it a month!" "No, I'll sell you the whole house for $200." It was a big house and it had chandeliers and a spiral staircase. A wonderful place.

SMITH: In good condition?

WAGNER: Yeah, very good. Clean. So we moved in, and my wife started writing and my kids went to school.

SMITH: Where did they go to school?

WAGNER: In Jerome.

SMITH: Oh, the schools were still going then.

WAGNER: Oh, sure. Yeah, Mingus Mountain. It was the only one they had around there. It took care of the whole valley from Clarkdale to Cottonwood, all of the towns. They all went up to Jerome to the big school on the mountain, Mingus Mountain.

SMITH: So you took a leave of absence from your engineering work or did you stop by then?

WAGNER: No, I wasn't working. I just took off.

SMITH: So you must have had quite a bit of money saved up, then.

WAGNER: A little, but not that much. Really, I didn't. I went out there with more or less the idea that I would put maybe a thousand dollars in the bank. I had others, but at least that much in the bank of Clarkdale. When I got there I didn't have my money with me and I needed it from the bank to transfer someplace. I didn't carry it. So I told them at the bank that I needed-- I wanted to open a bank account but it was coming from Hermosa Beach. The banker there--the Bank of Arizona it was--said, "Don't worry about it," he said. "How much are you going to put in?" I said, "Well, I'd like to put a thousand in." He said, "Fine, I'll put it in for you. Don't worry about it." And he deposited it in there. [laughter] When the money came, I gave it to him. He just stuck it in there. That was really the kind of country it was, and that's the kind of people that lived there. Altogether different from where we'd come from, you know, that kind of mentality. You'd go to the store and they wouldn't even bother to ring up what you'd bought, you'd go ring it up yourself and put the money in, you know.

SMITH: Was there an artist colony in Jerome?

WAGNER: No. Nothing. There was nothing thereabouts. There was a church and a priest and a bar; an Indian ran it named Pete who'd give you a drink of frozen whiskey in ice cubes. They'd put the whiskey into the ice containers and then they'd put it in the deep freeze. When they'd bring it out, they'd drop a block of ice in your drink, and it would melt, and wham! Then there were a few stores, a grocery store that was still going, and a hardware, and a post office, all that was there. A jail that fell down the hill, it collapsed and that was over with. Then there was another church that was made out of dynamite boxes and there was a cemetery. And as all the town's people used to say, "Well, we got a lot more people living out in that cemetery than we got here in this town." That's the way they incorporated Jerome. They wanted to incorporate the city and they didn't have enough people to do it. So somebody said, "Use the folks out in the cemetery, get the names off the graves." So they got about five hundred more people out there and it was enough to do that. Dead or alive, they didn't care as long as they were in the town. There were a lot of empty buildings, just big, beautiful buildings. There were a lot of artists that lived around Jerome down in Camp Verde. They had ranches, like Phil Dike and Max Ernst lived there. But he lived out in Sedona.

SMITH: Did you meet Ernst?

WAGNER: Yeah. And his wife, Dorothea Tanning, who was probably, to me, one of the great woman surrealists in Paris. Her father and mother owned the--what was it called--the Kachina Lodge, I believe, in Cottonwood. Manley was their name, Ray Manley. Ray Manley, son, is a photographer for Arizona Highways. Some of the best photography in the old days was Ray Manley's photography. Well, that was Max Ernst's mother-in-law and father-in-law. Ray Manley was a painter who was really an old crank who wore a hat all the time, because he had some kind of neuralgia or something and he had to wear it all the time. He hated modern art. He set up the Cottonwood Verde Valley Art Association. He wanted me to come to the meeting. I was about as far removed from their kind of art as you could imagine.

SMITH: What kind of art were they doing?

WAGNER: Oh, pictures of Sedona, you know, red rocks and all of the landscapes. There was another woman who was a very interesting woman, her name was Lilie Umbracht-Brandt. She was from Germany, and she was a very good painter. She did things with the sort of impressionist way. Anyway, finally what happened was that we got enough artists together and we had a meeting with all of the artists of the valley, the old ones and the cranks and all of them. We all decided to make peace with each other, and we opened up a big gallery in Jerome right next to the post office. It was something like ten thousand square feet.

SMITH: Was it a cooperative venture? Or did somebody put up the money?

WAGNER: No, we didn't have to pay anything for it, it was free. It was in a building that was owned by nobody. [laughter] So we moved in there and tourists would come through there; every once in a while somebody would come up that road and they'd stop. They sold quite a bit of art there, as a matter of fact. It's amazing how much they did sell. The man who finally ran the place-- I'd left that organization--was a-- [He] had a patch over his eye, and he was always drunk and falling into all the paintings. I don't know how he ever lasted as long as he did. He was there for three years. The only good thing he ever did for me was he found my Paul Klee for me.

SMITH: Tell me that story.

WAGNER: Well, Willard Hougland, my friend, lived in Cornville and also hung out in Jerome. Willard Hougland-- Have I ever mentioned Willard Hougland?

SMITH: Yes.

WAGNER: Okay, Willard Hougland gave me a Paul Klee about [gestures] this big one time from his collection because he owed me some money, and he gave me this. I still have it. as a matter of fact. When I moved back to-- When I left Jerome, I left the Paul Klee with the Reardon family, who owned the Northern Arizona Gas and Electric. I left it with the Reardons in their safekeeping until I could pick it up sometime. In the meantime, they got a divorce and all of their property was liquidated and everything was split up. This guy with the patch over his eye was in Flagstaff one day at a rummage sale and he saw this painting. It was underneath a piano on the floor being pressed down, just kind of sticking out. He took it out, and he saw that it was a Paul Klee, he said, "My God, who's this from?" On the back it said, "Property of Gordon Wagner, present from Willard Hougland." And he said, "Where's Wagner? I better take this back to Jerome, he might come through here someday." I was visiting there several years later and there it was. "Look what I got!" And he brought it out.

SMITH: What was this guy's name, the guy with the patch?

WAGNER: Pardon?

SMITH: What was his name?

WAGNER: You mean the guy with the patch?

SMITH: Yeah, the patch.

WAGNER: I don't remember. Shan was his wife, and his name was Roger. I remember that. Roger and Shan. I can't remember the last name. But he found my Paul Klee for me, so that was beautiful. But in the meantime, I'd left about three works there and he'd walked through two of them, punched holes through them, you know, tripping over them, and they were ruined canvases.

SMITH: Well, what kind of works were you doing in Jerome?

WAGNER: When I first went to Jerome I was kind of doing scraffiti, the scratch work.

SMITH: Let's discuss that a little bit.

WAGNER: I was doing everything around Jerome. I was working buildings and making drawings and sketches of cemeteries. I don't know if you remember the one of the cemetery in Jerome with the figure in the crosses. Then I was fascinated by the old woods again, you see. I was collecting old woods, naturally, and a lot of old stuff like that. I was making scraffiti paintings, but I didn't know exactly what I was going to-- Something had to happen.

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO, AUGUST 22, 1986

SMITH: Something had to happen, you were saying.

WAGNER: Yeah, something had to happen. I was reading a lot of Frank Waters, you know, and I was getting more interested in the American Indians, Navahos and the Hopis and the Pueblos. I was in the wrong district in Arizona to really become involved with them. There were Apaches living right down below us there, and I made friends with the Apaches, a couple of women, Daisy Russell and another one. They were beautiful women; tattoos down their noses like this, you know. They'd walked all the way from Payson, Arizona, when they were little children with their grandfather and their mother and father to work in the smelters in Clarkdale. They'd walked this whole district; it would be close to two hundred miles. They were beautiful people, the Apache women. But that wasn't-- They didn't have what I was looking for. I was looking for imagery, for myths and legends, and all of that sort of thing that I wanted to get into, you see. Frank Waters was talking about it because an extra-- Frank Waters was to me about the same as Henry Miller was to me: Justification for my living. He was a hero, Frank Waters.

SMITH: So you were looking for the Navaho-Hopi-Pueblo Indian connection. You then left Jerome to find that?

WAGNER: Well, I knew that Jerome wouldn't be the answer so I drove up one time, my wife and I drove out to the Navaho reservation and to the Hopis'. I was very impressed with the feeling of the place. At that time the Indians were still pretty much out there on dirt roads, two ditches and high-centered roads and no pavement, just wagons and beautiful people in their velveteen and the families in their hogans. It hadn't been taken over by industry at that time. There was a lot of illness there at that time, a lot of eye diseases and--what was the disease--tuberculosis, they used to get that all the time. They lost a lot of Indians to that. The mortality rate-- Children died because they wouldn't go to the hospital for the births, a lot of the women, you know. It was a whole different place then. They had two hospitals and some would go. They had one in Tuba City and another one in Reams Canyon. It wasn't until much later that things started to develop for them. Of course, it's for a better life for them, but it took away part of the romance of what I was looking for. But not when I was there. It was still beautiful, you know, pure.

SMITH: So then you decided to move up there?

WAGNER: Well, yeah, that's what happened. The house in Jerome had a little accident and fell down the cliff.

SMITH: What?

WAGNER: Yeah. [laughter] So the decision was set.

SMITH: It fell down the cliff?

WAGNER: Well, a lot of houses fell down the cliff in Jerome. Whole buildings would just go over in the night. After all, the city had eighty-eight tunnels, miles of tunnels, underneath it, and they'd just drop out; a whole street would disappear, you know.

SMITH: So that happened while you were there?

WAGNER: Yeah. Well, I wasn't there at that moment. While I was there, but I wasn't there. I sort of made the decision. Oh, let's go to the Navaho and see what we could do. So we moved to Tuba City, which was the first town on the reservation after Cameron. I stayed there in a trader's. He had like a motel in the back. It was really like an old auto camp, you know, just bungalows and wooden buildings. So I stayed there and I worked and made drawings and read and thought. Reading Frank Waters; I was still with him. He hadn't written such books yet as The Book of the Hopi, or any of those. He'd written some, like The Man Who Killed the Deer, which was really a Taos Indian, Frank Zamora, who's a friend of ours, incidentally. The Man Who Killed the Deer. But he hadn't written any of that, he was still working in-- Why I liked him, I guess, was because he had a comparative way of looking at things. He would combine the Navaho philosophy with the Pueblo philosophy and their myths and their symbols. And he would combine Carl Jung and his imagery within it, and he would combine the Mount Maru in India through the-- He'd compare all these different philosophies and teachings all related to the American Indian and all the symbology, which really intrigued me. And the Christianity. He didn't forget any aspect of belief. The way he crossed through them was a beautiful entwining of writing. He would explain the myths to a point, but then he would give you references to books that were written, short little pamphlets on myths and things from the University of New Mexico and from [Mary C.] Wheelwright and from [Ben and John] Weatherhill, and all these people, archaeologists and anthropologists and their writings, and whatnot. You could study all these things and then you could come in direct contact with some Indians. If you ask an Indian anything they will never tell you a thing. But if you don't ask them, they'll just unravel everything for you. I found that out very early in living there. Finally, I found a hogan that I could live in, and I spent my time painting. I went into all the myths, the House of the Sun Children, and the Beauty Way, and the Red Ant Way, and the Angry Inside Way, and the world turned itself upside down and the water ran through the kivas, and emergence myths, and the Water Spirit, and the Coyote. All of these made for great paintings that had to do with an abstract way of looking at things. Not from [Frederick] Remington's or [Charles Marion] Russell's or from the Indian way, but from my own experiences. All of the things that I'd already learned in my life were all becoming completely evolved into these paintings.

SMITH: You mentioned once that your paintings from this period, none of them are nonobjective. Yet if you look at them just as a visual experience they look awfully nonobjective.

WAGNER: That's right. If you look at them that way they look nonobjective, but they certainly aren't, because I didn't put anything in there that wasn't symbolic to a certain situation. Probably the atmosphere, and the light, and the dark, and the fires, and the earth, and the spirits, all of these things come out of myself from the inside as I related them, as I was reading and seeing and hearing all these things. That probably was the reason they looked that way. But it's very interesting, because I'd asked a few Indians what they got out of it and they got what I was saying. They got the myth. A few of them didn't. I mean, after all, not everybody in the world is sensitive, you know, but the sensitive ones certainly got it.

SMITH: You weren't painting in any style at all reminiscent of Navaho sandpainting.

WAGNER: Nothing like that, not a thing. But I was using some of their images.

SMITH: In what way? Would you explain that?

WAGNER: Well, like the yei's. The yei's are the long, skinny people, you know. But I certainly didn't use them like they used them. I had them maybe suspended in the sky with part atmosphere, you know.

SMITH: You were talking about the yei's?

WAGNER: Well, the yei's are the long figures that you find on blankets and things, you know, with the corn, and the pollen, and the pools, and the rainbow, and the guards, and the lightening bars, and the walking sticks, and all sorts of things. But I'd never used them in that way; I used them maybe as an atmospherical form where they would be just maybe a symbol, where there would be a piece of them, you know, coming down disconnected, but never as a hard, stylized sandpainting or blanket design. Ever. Because they weren't in design. My pieces were pure painting, you know, and very plastically moving.

SMITH: At this time you met a couple of Indian artists or priests or whatever?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: There was Otto Semptewa that you met while you were--

WAGNER: Otto Semptewa was a Hopi and a beautiful person. He always rode around on a burro. He was about five feet tall and he wore bangs and bobbed hair with a headband and was friendly to everyone. His talent was he was a kachina maker. He made some of the most beautiful kachinas for the dance and for the children of that time. He gave me a wolf kachina, and he gave me a butterfly, and he gave me a long-hair kachina one time. I really liked him a lot. And he was a friend of another woman--this was in New Oraibi where he lived--and she talked him into [having] us rent a house from him to move into the pueblo of the Hopis. We lived there for about a year with Otto. He taught me a lot about things that I would never possibly be able to tell you because they're all secrets. Indians say, "Indian tell white man, white man tell world." And I remember one time-- I'll never forget it--there was a governor of Taos Pueblo who was a close friend of Virginia [Copeland Wagner's] and mine. To tie the story together, he always brought us corn, firewood. He'd bring a truckload for us in Taos. Not Hopi, but just to get to the story. So he says, "Gordon, you see rocks over there?" Big rocks, all kinds of big face shapes. He says, "You know who they are?" I say no. "They all white men who never learned." One day I was very much interested in the Pueblo because they use a patron saint, you know, related to their own Indian secrets. And I said, "Pete, how do your patron saints fit into your Indian myth and legends and all your dances and all of your life? How do they do that?" He said, "Gordon, I tell you anything you want to know about Indian way. But saints? They are a secret." So I really disappointed him one time when I brought him a little card. I said, "Have you ever read Butler's Book of Saints?" He said, "Where's that?" I said, "You can get it in the library in Taos. It's all about saints. Anything you want to know about saints is there." "No!" he said. [laughter] But to get to Otto Semptewa, he told me secrets. He took me places and showed me things, like all of the Indians, that I don't ever want to tell anybody. It would be a terrible thing because they wouldn't want me to; I've sworn to secrecy with them, you know. I can't do that ever, to anybody. Even to Virginia, I don't tell her.

SMITH: What about David Monongi?

WAGNER: He lived in Hotevilla. David's a wonderful little man who one time tried to marry Virginia, my wife. [laughter] My second wife, my now wife, not the wife I had before. She's dead. He tried to marry Virginia, and Virginia used to go and stay with him a lot. David was a traditional Hopi. He was one of the leaders of the Traditional Indian Land and Life Committee which was-- In the Hopi they have the progressives and they have the traditionals. One wants to make everything very modern and do away with the traditional dances and all that sort of thing. Materialist values: television in the houses, and cars. While the traditionals want it to--to be the old way, with the dances and the way they have lived for two thousand years on that mesa. David is a-- At the time of the hippie movement David was a hero, because he was so friendly and he loved all the pretty girls and all of the hippie girls, and they used to invite him everyplace. David became blind by a wood chip in his eye from chopping wood when Virginia was there one time; it hit him in the eye and he practically lost his vision. But he was a-- He believed in flying saucers, and he said when the world ends the Gourd of Ash will fall. That's a Hopi prophecy. That's Chief [Dan] K'achongva who prophesied that, that the Gourd of Ash, which is the atomic bomb, would come. But in the meantime, David and his group go in parts of Arizona and New Mexico, and they communicate with the flying saucer people, they tell me. I've never gone with them, but they have this thing going. They have lots of magic, and they have lots of myths and legends and they live a life that is so far different from any life-- We couldn't possibly live like the Hopis. In the first place, you have to be a Hopi to be a Hopi. Even in school in New Oraibi, when Harold Jones was the teacher with his wife, Monday morning the students were Hopis. There was no possible way to change them; they were drawing masks, and they were drawing their colors and their kachinas. Tuesday afternoon they could talk to him about American English and arithmetic and spelling. Wednesday they were full-time Americans. Thursday they were really up there, they were really doing--Friday they were thinking about being Hopis. And Saturday and Sunday they were back home again, so they had to go through Monday again to get away from the Hopis. The Hopi culture was so strong it kept-- The school tried to pull them into thinking the way we do, and the Hopis wanted it the way they wanted it, so the kids were in between in this Indian school. David Monongi, he's one of the ones who was keeping these kids from-- He didn't want them to be like white man, you know. David Monongi and Thomas Banyakia went to the Indian school in Riverside [California]. They'd been there, they knew what it was, and they didn't see that they needed it. They wanted to go back and take it back and tell the people, "Be a Hopi." Hopi means "peace"; that word means peace. And Semptewa: tewa means "sun." Every morning they get up and the first thing they do, at four thirty, five o'clock in the morning, they all stand facing east and wait for the sun to rise, and they say their prayers. We took David Monongie and Tom Banyakia and Jack the Snake Priest down to the beach with Yogi Bhajan, who was a Sikh, and he looked down on these Indians like they were some kind of scum of the earth. He was an India Indian. He never realized that they were the leaders of the Hopi. And he could care less. Bhajan was sitting there [mumbles] and the Indians all got up and went down on the beach. They took out their corn pollen in a little pipe, and they would chant [chants], and they would blow out a corn pollen into the ocean. Every corn pollen that went out into the ocean, floated out into the ocean, it was a prayer for peace around the world. That corn pollen would follow the--and peace to the whole world through the corn. Bhajan's up there chanting a mantra, totally egomaniac, and these three men were so spiritually beautiful, just blowing out their kernels and praying for peace to the world. What a difference. We even rode in Thomas Banyakia's old car, a great, huge machine, flopping down Beverly Hills with three Indians in the front and Virginia and I and the yogi in the back. It was a picture to see. Going through Beverly Hills on Wilshire to the beach. [laughter]

SMITH: Are there Navaho artists or people that you met that you--

WAGNER: Oh yeah, I met-- One of my favorite Navaho artists is the father of R.C. [Rudolph Carol] Gorman. R.C. is the one who's getting all the credit, you know. He does the drawings and lives in Taos. He started when he was young as a Navaho, and he drives a pink Mercedes, and he has "Who is R.C. Gorman?" on the bumper sticker, you know. All kinds of-- Andy Warhol crowd he got into. Where Carl Gorman, his father, is just exactly the opposite. He lives in Window Rock, and he paints myths and legends. His name is Iniiniyanibie in Navaho. I met him in Silvan Simone's gallery. When I was showing my Navaho works with Silvan Simone years ago, Carl Gorman was showing his Navaho works with Silvan Simone, and that's where we met. Carl Gorman teaches Navaho mythology and healing and herbs at UC [University of California] Davis up north. He lives in Window Rock. He's one of the most beautiful artists. R.C. is a commercial artist and Carl is an artist's artist and a true Indian artist. It would be like comparing the difference between--one of the great Indian artists that I love is T.C. Cannon, he's an artist artist, and putting him up against Charles Loboma. When I was in the reservation, on the Hopi, Charles Loboma was a school teacher in the Terreva Day School in Pallaco. And his wife, Otellie Loboma, was there and they were beautiful. He was a thin, beautiful man, and he was doing real sensitive pottery, so thin you could see through it; completely unlike any of the Hopi pottery. Now, he became very commercial, and he started designing all this fashionable jewelry for the jet set in New York, and whatnot. He makes turquoise rings one inch wide, the inside is turquoise and the outside is gold. He reverses it. And costume jewelry, and all this slick commercial-- He lives in Hotevilla. Matter of fact, he lives about--actually, if you measured blocks--a block away from David Monongi. He tried to marry Virginia and take her out to the mesa also, when Virginia was in Santa Fe, but Otellie was a very close friend of Virginia's, and she wasn't about to hold still for that. Otellie's actually not living with Charles anymore. Charles Loboma: it means "beautiful" or "good morning," the word. So she lives in Santa Fe, and she's in the Indian school in Santa Fe teaching. But those are the kind of-- They're either real commercial or they are still artist's artists, you know?

SMITH: What were you searching for in the Hopi/Navaho ways?

WAGNER: I was looking for-- I was very romantic about the Indian and I wanted to be an Indian. I could have become an Indian out there. It would have been easy for me to become one. I felt the land. I felt the people. I felt the dust, and the dirt, and the sand, and the winds, and the elements, and the hardships, and eating over wood fires, and no water, and hauling water in wagons, and the traders, and the people, and the joy and the humor, of the people. They were so--Navahos have such a wit you just can't believe it. They'd give you their last nickel. They're like gypsies. The Hopis wouldn't give you anything and then they'd spend all afternoon telling you how great they are. But the Navahos won't say anything at all until you do something funny, and then they just absolutely collapse. And they are so witty. If they see that you want to speak their language, they laugh and make jokes and, "Oh come on, let's go over here," and they take you, you know.

SMITH: Did you learn Navaho?

WAGNER: Well, I could get along. You never know their language that well. I mean, kind of a "Me Tarzan, you Jane" Navaho, yeah.

SMITH: But if you heard storytellings, would you be able to follow the stories as they were--

WAGNER: Well, if I read it through phonology in a-- I had to get a-- There are several phonology books on Navahos. Because there are not that many actual words in Navaho. I think it's a very small vocabulary, but the alphabet has got like I think forty-two words in it. I think there are forty-two words in the alphabet--or letters. There are tl's and thl's, and there are sl's and lit's, and lis's, and z's that are zhe and z's that are zz and you have to know which are which. But I could communicate on a normal conversation, you know. They'd laugh and laugh and laugh when I'd talk to them. They'd say, "Don't try so hard. You do; you do. Don't try so hard." [laughter]

SMITH: You have a painting. The Navaho Night Chant, that got written up quite a bit. Could you describe that, what you were trying to do in that?

WAGNER: The Yeibichai?

SMITH: The Yeibichai, right.

WAGNER: Well, that painting was done when I was in a peyote ceremony. What it was, it's the actual ceremony-- The yeibichai is the healing ceremony. It's a nine-day ceremony and it starts out with first sweating the patient in the sweathouse and into all the directions, and the dance, and it goes on. It's very complex. I don't want to tell you their rituals because I'm not supposed to do that. But it's very complex, and it lasts for nine days. Everybody comes to the yeibichai from all over the reservation, because anybody who can afford a yeibichai-- They have all this meat and food, and everybody gets in on it, and everybody gets a little bit off of it healingwise, you know. The painting actually was looking down from a sector of the sky at the central sweathouse, and then the sweathouse to the east and the sweathouse to the north, and one to the west-- No, south, east, north; I don't have the one to the west. The three of them in juxtaposition with the fires down below, and the wagons with-- An aerial view is what it is, at night, and you can see the wagons coming on the road, just sections of it. On the top they have, hovering over the whole thing, the Nitch'iji people. And the Nitch'iji people are capable of flying. They come from the skunk; they have the tails of skunks, and that gives them a sort of a propelling mechanism so that they can drop down over the whole yeibichai. And there's Hastyeeltsi, and there's Hastyesini, and there's Hastyeyalti, and there's Hastyehogan. There's another four. They're at different levels in this painting. If you look at this painting very close through a reducing glass, which is reduction, you will see it layers about seven to eight levels deep, this painting. Like looking underwater. But you can't see it if you just look at it without that, because you've got to really see it right. It gives you three dimensions because--

SMITH: Now, how did you achieve that?

WAGNER: I didn't. The painting did. I was painting it through peyote, and I just painted it. I didn't have anything to do with it at all; I was just there. I don't know how it happened, but I've never been able to get that feeling again. But It actually is about six levels down, with these people and these different suspended levels. If you look close at this painting you'll see that. Some day I'll bring out my reducing glass and let you look so you can really see it.

SMITH: Now, were you able to sell most of your paintings from this period?

WAGNER: All of them. All of that series. Two hundred and twenty-five. I only kept two.

SMITH: Which were the two that you kept?

WAGNER: The Yeibichai and The Squaw Fight on the trading post floor where the two squaws are fighting.

SMITH: Was that based on something you saw?

WAGNER: Yeah, actually saw. I was in the trading post and they were fighting there, and the blankets and the velveteen are all spinning, and their turquoise conches. I was up on the top of the trading post. It was on a Saturday when all of the Navahos come to the trading post. It's their only communication. It's their newspaper. They come and talk about what happened over here, and they get all the information, you know. They also get their cigarettes for the week, because the trader has a box of tobacco and he has rolling papers. So they come in and they buy a can of corned beef and they roll a couple of cigarettes. They stack those up, and they go out and talk for a while; come back and they'll buy something else and they roll some more cigarettes. And they spend all day. By the time they're ready to go home they've got enough cigarettes for the week and they've learned the news. It's a beautiful sight to see all this velveteen and all this color and the beautiful men with their turquoises and all their jewelry sitting out there in these reddish-- it's alizarin and crimson--and the color of their faces is almost a deep purple. You see them all sitting along these trading posts with their children the same, you know. It's a really exciting color. I did one of a trading post, the Cowsprings Trading Post, one time, the whole thing with the wagons and everything. I kept the painting after I'd painted it exactly twelve minutes and it was sold right away.

SMITH: How much were you selling your paintings for?

WAGNER: Then?

SMITH: Yeah, then.

WAGNER: Not much. A couple of hundred dollars for a big one.

SMITH: Was that considered a lot of money back then?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Did you have any patrons or "angels" at that time?

WAGNER: No. Well, I had a few people who bought my paintings, but no patrons, no. When I came back I had-- Simone sold a lot of my Indian pieces, and another man in Manhattan Beach, Russ [Russell] Hickson, of the Hickson Gallery, he did quite a bit with that too. He sold a lot for me. I had some shows with them in the Phoenix Art Museum beforehand.

SMITH: At this time you met Carl Jung? While you were living in Arizona?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: How did--

WAGNER: Well, he bought two paintings from me.

SMITH: Two of your Navajo series?

WAGNER: Yeah. Well, they were sort of-- They were more what I would say, more Jungian. You know, the Mount Maru and the sides of the mountain.

SMITH: So how did you come to meet him?

WAGNER: He was studying out there, sandpaintings. He was very much into the mandalas, and he took quite a few sandpaintings. He wasn't there for very long.

SMITH: Did you have a chance to talk to him about--

WAGNER: Well, not very much because he didn't have time for that, but his daughter was around and I talked to her.

SMITH: Who was that? What's her name?

WAGNER: One of his daughters.

SMITH: Were you later influenced by-- Did you read his books? Were you influenced by him, would you say?

WAGNER: I suppose so; you might say so. I always loved Carl Jung, and all of the aspects of Carl Jung, from his alchemy, psychology and alchemy, through the mandalas and his superconscious. All of these things. I've always been interested in the higher consciousness. So I think that I was affected by him quite a bit. Even to this day I think I'm affected by him a lot. Especially when it came in those days. After all, what were they talking about, the Indians? They were talking about cosmic harmony. They were talking about duality in universe and universal harmony through the four directions or the six directions. Carl Jung was-- That's what he was all about, right? But they'd had it, you know. And everything they do, the Navahos, is in four directions. They don't tell you anything if they don't want to tell you. You have to ask them four times and then they'll tell you the truth. They'll lie to you three times, but the fourth time they can't because they're boxed in, you see, by the four directions. And you never point because that could give them some kind of bad energy. You never point, because the direction-- But all of these things Jung was paralleling and using, the Navahos and the Hopis had had for years.

SMITH: You refer to those paintings usually as the Navaho series. Did you do any paintings that are more specifically Hopi?

WAGNER: I did a few, a couple of kiva paintings and the whipping dance. I still have that. The whipping kachinas, where they go around at night and scare all the people and children and run them into their pueblo, and they get all the white--

SMITH: Was there something more-- The Navaho material stimulated you more? Was that why you did so many--

WAGNER: More of it, to a point. Because the Hopi is a really-- That system is so complex, you know. And there's a lot of dance. And their legends are not parallel at all. It's very interesting. Because Hopis have nothing to do with Navahos. Navahos come from Manchuria, you know, Athabasca up there. The Hopis are descendants of the Maya and the Incas, so it's in the other direction. And the Pueblos, too, in New Mexico. So the cultures are altogether different, their emergence myths, the end of the world, and the great floods. They were there in both, but the descriptions are entirely different. How they got here, and how the flood happened, and when the world ends, and all these things, they are not parallel at all. So I find that the Hopi is more exciting, actually, because they have all their dances and all their kachinas, superhuman beings, you know, and the dolls and their art. The Navahos don't have much of that. They just have this-- They're nomadic people; the Hopis live in pueblos like a community. The Navahos are sheep people; Hopis are corn people. There's no parallel between them at all. Completely different culture.

SMITH: How were you supporting yourself during this time?

WAGNER: At that time?

SMITH: Yeah, while you were living in Arizona.

WAGNER: Well, I became so poor that I had to borrow money from the Navahos to get back to California. When I took my show to Phoenix, to the museum-- I think I mentioned once to you about the old truck. I loaded it all up, and I'd been invited to have a one-man show in Phoenix, in the [Phoenix Art] Museum. I took an Indian with me and we loaded the whole truck up. We started down to Phoenix bouncing along over all the roads. By the time I got down to the Black Canyon, which is south of Prescott about fifty miles, I went dancing down this corduroy road like this, and the paintings all flopping, and I shifted the gear and the gearshift came out in my hand. So I had to drive almost forty-five miles in second gear into Phoenix. This was at about three in the morning, or four, I guess. Arrived in Phoenix about six thirty or seven. We were so tired that we just fell asleep on the lawn in front of the museum. Woke up to the fire department hosing us down; they thought we were some drunks out there and they wanted to get us off the lawn. The director came out, "You can't do that! This is my man for the next exhibition." [laughter] So I had to trade that old truck in and I got a pickup. The Indian I brought with me, he came to the show and people said, "What do you think of this show, you being Indian?" He says, "Wagner say, only two kind of work: good art, bad art. I like. Good art." [laughter]

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE, JANUARY 10, 1987

SMITH: Well, we're in the gallery at Angel's Gate Cultural Center. Your retrospective show is here. I wanted to start by talking first about the assemblages that you chose to put in this show. Did you have access to all the assemblages that you have made over the years?

WAGNER: I'm not quite sure where they all are. I know who owns them. I have no idea where they've moved. But most of the major pieces I can pretty much recall who has them and where they are, yeah.

SMITH: So you were able to select the pieces that were the most meaningful to you for this show?

WAGNER: Yeah. I tried to take pieces that were from the very beginning of my assemblages, like I have this one called From the Sea; it's a wall piece, a wall hanging. It's very linear in composition, using weathered woods from the sea and not touching them, not painting them, only using them as they are, the colors and the polychrome, in the composition. That would be 1950. Then I wanted to get a few that were the same kind of polychrome wood, but the three-dimensional standing pieces. Most of those pieces in the exhibition are called Piece of Pieces from the Sea, which are like two sentinels in this exhibition. And then I wanted to get the interpretation of a couple of pieces that would relate more to death, which is part of my early expression, so I have the Between Heaven and Hell, where the purgatory is on the bottom with the devil looking on, heaven on the top with the grave marker of "EP," whoever that is. I found it in a cemetery in Mexico, and the coffin handle I found in a cemetery in Guanajuato. The coffin itself has bones in it to suggest maybe a poor soul laying in rest there, and lifting the coffin lid, you read "gentleman." And the stones, the ring of stones hanging, are-- In Mexico, when a man passes a cross on the road, usually somebody's buried there or a symbol of that, of an accident. They throw stones on the cross, and each stone represents a prayer to help this man remove himself from down below to get to heaven. That piece was done in Mexico with that idea in mind. Over on the other side here we have another piece that symbolizes death almost, old shoes from the desert that are decapitated and dehydrated to the point of [being] almost changed into a different form. The lantern on the very top with the rag sticking out of it is a lantern that was in the Deauville Club in Santa Monica. When the Deauville Club burned down, the drapery and the lamp and everything melted all together. I found this piece with this ball of shoes underneath it. This very polychromed Greek Corinthian style column puts it all together about the height of a man, and I call him Sir Deauville. Man of the city, would that be? Sir Deauville.

SMITH: Of the city of Deauville.

WAGNER: He also sort of looks like a guard that might be standing outside of the Vatican or something.

SMITH: City of water, perhaps.

WAGNER: With this rag flying back off the top of his head.

SMITH: What about the one behind you, the HTG 26?

WAGNER: Well, HTG 26 is a strange piece. HTG is a tag I found someplace, probably has to do with cataloging nails, or bolts, or screws, or something. But HTG meaning I have the three different symbols in there: I have the Taoist bell down below as the base, very Chinese; and the post flaming up into the dish, the symbols of the Hebrew Pesah or Passover; and a Christian cross in there. So HTG is Hebrew, Tao, and God twenty-six times. The whole metamorphosis of this thing came together without the label. They all fit somehow. They weren't meant to be together, but they just happened to be on that piece. It all worked out that way.

SMITH: There's also the mandala effect.

WAGNER: It is sort of a mandala with the iron spikes around it, from piers and wharfs, those are. They're very bent and twisted from the water.

SMITH: Kind of a Medusa effect.

WAGNER: Yeah, almost.

SMITH: Well, most of the pieces in the show that are assemblages are from the period '60, '61, '62, '63, a couple from '58. So was that-- In that period of your life, were you really focusing on assemblages? Did that come together for you as--

WAGNER: Totally.

SMITH: Totally.

WAGNER: Except for a few paintings--

SMITH: Which we'll get into.

WAGNER: --that I was trying to fit in between. But starting in the fifties with the piece From the Sea, it's called, and several like that, I worked for a while. Then I did other pieces, standing pieces. But I realized assemblage was where I wanted to be in the sixties, so I was fully into it except that every now and then I wanted to paint again. My paintings at that time sort of took on the linearity of my assemblages in that period. Because when I went to Mexico, you know, I got into the painting.

SMITH: Well, a piece like Sir Deauville, the way you've described it, the shoes you found first-- How did the idea for regrouping the column, the ball with the shoes, and the lantern with the melted curtain come together?

WAGNER: I have no idea how that works. It just comes together.

SMITH: But did you have all the elements already and then you saw how to put them together? Or did you get a concept, a vision, and then go out and look for the things?

WAGNER: No, no vision. I had a lot of old shoes from the desert, Mojave Desert, and I made the ball to put the shoes into the cage to fit them. When the whole thing came together, I said, "I think it would be beautiful to have that lamp on the top of it all." And when I looked at it, the first thing that came to my mind for the title was Sir Deauville because of the Deauville Club. It was a sort of homage to the poor Deauville Club. I loved that place. I used to take my girl dancing there when I was young. They had a wonderful bar; it was a French bar. The whole thing was dungeons and streets and things, and it looked very underworld, you know? I still think about that old bar in the Deauville Club. It's too bad it burned down. It was a place where you could go right in off the street; you didn't have to be a member, none of that sort of fanciness. But they had nice music. It was very romantic, on the ocean, on the promenade, in Santa Monica.

SMITH: Stepping back, a little back, the impulse to assemblage and-- What kind of assemblage work was being done in California at this time? Had it already begun to take off as a style?

WAGNER: There were all sorts of assemblages being done. and it was a very exciting era. Artforum was picking it up, and Art in America was picking it up, and all of the various big national magazines were picking up West Coast assemblage, which would have been like [Edward] Kienholz and George Herms, Wallace Berman, Chuck [Charles] Frazier, Ben Talbert, Fred Mason, and Tony Berlant.

SMITH: And what about yourself? Was your work being--

WAGNER: Oh sure, I was involved with it right with them.

SMITH: Was it being picked up and noticed in the periodicals?

WAGNER: Oh yeah. It was amazing. Artforum then was on the West Coast, San Francisco, so naturally they sped right into it. [Arthur] Secunda was the editor then, and he really loved assemblage, so he was always helping the assemblage artists to get space in the magazine. It was an exciting time. And nobody recognized it, you know, the stiff collectors of formalized drawings and [those] looking for things on the investment, like the 355,000 illegal Dalís. Those sorts of things. When I had-- My first assemblage show I think was in the Silvan Simone Gallery.

SMITH: When was that?

WAGNER: Well, I had it combined with painting, my first assemblage show, probably about 1960. With painting, the two together. Everybody loved my paintings, but they wouldn't even look at my assemblages, you know. They said, "What's this doing here? Who does that belong to?" I remember George Herms came to the opening, and I remember him running around and looking at all the assemblages, and he wasn't interested in the paintings at all. They were abstract expressionist paintings I was showing at the time, big ones. But my assemblages were just written off, except that Arthur Millier, who was a critic on the [Los Angeles] Times, he was more interested in the assemblages than he was in the paintings. He gave me a wonderful review about that, telling about my work finding these objects and the poetic connotations they had.

SMITH: You were mentioning before there's protest assemblage, there's poetic assemblage. Where does your work fit in?

WAGNER: Poetic.

SMITH: Were you doing any protest assemblage?

WAGNER: No, I was into poetic. Later, I did protest assemblage, but in the beginning it was poetic, pure poetry.

SMITH: Could you define what you mean? What is a protest assemblage? What's a poetic assemblage? What's the difference?

WAGNER: Poetic assemblage is using materials and objects to feel something without it being out of random objects. Yet the composition is almost like an amulet or a fetish. Protest is just exactly the opposite of that: it's taking dolls' heads and jamming them into vicious places, floating things on bowls of wine, heads of babies, putting children into traps, toys into bear traps, and feathers, burning them and putting them through gross situations and agony and showing disaster and wrapping them all up. Like our society was trying to strangle the flower children is a perfect example of what I was protesting against. I made plenty of protest pieces against the establishment in the sixties. From bulldozers to the hunger and the big business and the money people, and the greed and the lust and the hates and the fears, all of these things we were protesting against. When we were in Watts, right after the Watts riot, we made a whole series just on what we found in Watts.

SMITH: Now who's--

WAGNER: We were sympathizing with the people of Watts for what happened, how they were being put down. We used the actual burned objects and burned pieces, melted things, all twisted. They were all in this exhibition called Sixty-six Signs in Neon, which was established by Noah Purifoy. That exhibition was at UCLA, and it was in San Francisco and Seattle, in the museum of modern art, Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian [Institution]. Then there was the other sort of assemblage, there was the humorous. Getting away from protests, and getting away from the poetic, and getting more into the juxtaposition of interesting objects that make puns and set themselves up as a humorous object. Then there was the erotic, the love objects; went through all that. Then there were the spiritual assemblages, which were more of the mandala and using spiritual symbolism like hearts and sunbursts and light and color to give you that energy.

SMITH: And you did all of these different types?

WAGNER: All different kinds. I've done that. I went through everything at that time, in the sixties, from the smallest, tiniest matchbox-- I've done assemblages inside of a matchbox--to huge pieces, walls of them. In fact, I have a set of assemblages that you've never seen that are over ten feet high and about nine feet wide in Echo Park. I could never move them from where I moved from, so I moved them across the street, and set them up in my friend's garden. They had to be rebuilt when my friend's tree fell on them in a big wind storm maybe four years ago and it collapsed right on top of them. So I rebuilt them, and they're still standing. I call them The Five Sentinels.

SMITH: Now, where are they located? At a friend's house in Echo Park?

WAGNER: Echo Park. In a friend's, Yelka Perachitch's house at the end of Effie Street.

SMITH: What was the aesthetic appeal of junk for you, what people in general would consider junk: abandoned shoes, and so forth?

WAGNER: What?

SMITH: What was the aesthetic appeal of junk for you and other artists at the time?

WAGNER: I don't think it will ever change. It's really the only place where you really understand about civilization is in a dump. You can go there and you can find things. It tells you whole histories of towns and people that lived there before you. Some people like to play golf, and other people like to play bridge, and other people like to do these things, but there are people who like to go to dumps and discover wonderful things. Not new dumps. These dumps today where they bulldoze everything under immediately, full of garbage and food and trash, that's not what I mean by a dump. I mean, if you go to the desert, where things have been lying there for a hundred years, you'll find an old toy or an old box or a piece of metal with flowers in it and designs. In those days they were very elaborate, machines and things of that nature, they etched things and they took time. They made things with flowers in them and ornaments. It's an experience. It's like going fishing. Why does a person sit there all day and wait for a fish? It's the same thing. You go to the dump, you almost visualize the piece you're going to find. But you always find so much, boxes full. You bring them back in your car and get them home, and they don't look the same. They don't look the same as they looked in the dump. They've lost something, because the light of the desert, the purples and the violets and the greens, the light there gives that metal a whole different color than when you get it back into a civilized situation. So you can eliminate about 40 percent of your findings and you put them over in another box, FS: For Students, and you can give them away to people who are doing the same sort of thing; or FT: For Trade. You keep a box for trading; you keep one for your students. You never throw anything away because you can make something new out of it every time. So that's the intrigue of going to a dump. If you've never been to a dump you've missed something.

SMITH: Now, what do you mean by a dump? What's--

WAGNER: I mean a dump dump. I mean a place like--

SMITH: Where did you go?

WAGNER: Red Mountain Dump was the best dump that I've ever been to.

SMITH: Where's that?

WAGNER: Now, that's on the 395 highway between Adelanto and-- What's that town there? Well, it goes over to Red Rock Canyon, the back road. That town was Red Mountain. It was an abandoned town. It used to be called "Inn City" because it used to be little tin houses and buildings with all prostitutes for the miners that were in the mines there, because it was a gold-mining town.

SMITH: Now, what part of California is this?

WAGNER: It's in the Mojave Desert.

SMITH: Mojave Desert. Along the San Bernardino Mountains side or the Sierra side?

WAGNER: If you went over the Cajon Pass, instead of going to Victorville, you would go off toward Valyermo, toward Palmdale. The town is called Adelanto. You pass that and way over on the east of that is Calico. Keep going. Randsburg is the town the other side of Red Mountain. All these old buildings are still there from the mining days, all the structure. And a dump I would say approximately four miles long and maybe half a mile wide and about-- In a canyon, deep. No more; they bulldozed the whole thing over. In 1971 I went out there to the dump and it was gone. Not one single thing left. They just erased it right off--

SMITH: Was the mining town still active when you were going up there?

WAGNER: No.

SMITH: How long had it been--

WAGNER: Oh, probably 1920.

SMITH: And you went to the dump that was where the-- A little town where the prostitutes were?

WAGNER: Yeah, Inn City, Red Mountain, the dump for that city. You could find-- You can't Imagine what you could find there.

SMITH: What did you find there?

WAGNER: Everything! Half of the things that I use. The shoes all come from Red Mountain. Those nails came from Red Mountain. Probably the wood. A lot of these things came from Red Mountain.

SMITH: And what piece is that?

WAGNER: This is The Gameless Game.

SMITH: And what are those? Those look--

WAGNER: Everything. They're spindles from furniture, and they're different kinds of--

SMITH: Doorknobs?

WAGNER: --shapes. So they're all sitting on this sort of a framework as a chess game. But nothing moves. It's a game you can't play. That's why I call it The Gameless Game. There's no way to play it. Because it's for people who don't play games.

SMITH: Was it important for you in an assemblage that people be able to recognize what the object was in its previous life?

WAGNER: When?

SMITH: In an assemblage?

WAGNER: You mean, will they recognize the parts?

SMITH: Yeah. Is it important to you that they be able to recognize the parts?

WAGNER: No, no, not at all. That's not it, not it at all. I'm not interested in the object from an independent standpoint, I'm interested from the total concept of how the objects work together. Not one object, no.

SMITH: But in Sir Deauville, the fact that that's a lantern is not an important part of the design?

WAGNER: It's a head.

SMITH: Well, it is a head, but it was once a lantern.

WAGNER: But that's not important. It's a wonderful lantern, but it's still a head and it works as a whole. Otherwise by itself it's just a lantern with a rag, something to throw away in the dump, right?

SMITH: Or in HTG 26, the nails: It's not important that those are nails?

WAGNER: Yeah, but they're rays, rays! But now, if you throw them back in the Red Mountain Dump, probably spikes for mine buildings.

SMITH: But in Between Heaven and Hell, it is important that you see the coffin as a coffin.

WAGNER: Yes.

SMITH: The cross as a cross.

WAGNER: Yeah, but to give it to them independently, who cares? If you look at EP, so that's a sign, right? If you look at that awful, funky, terrible, saccharine organ cherub up there, by itself you'd throw it away. Anybody would throw that one away, wouldn't they? But when it's integrated into the whole, it works.

SMITH: At the same time, in the show there are three collages which come from the same period, and to me they seem to be playing with the same kind of ideas: to take scrap pieces of paper and put them together to form a poetic statement.

WAGNER: Those are very poetic, both of these.

SMITH: And then of course, your Romantic Figure is explicitly--

WAGNER: That's a little more literal, where these pieces are pure poetry. They're sign board, I mean, you know, from a billboard.

SMITH: Billboard. Where did you get-- You just--

WAGNER: Billboards. Out in the rain, when they peeled off in the wind and they ripped down. If you notice, that's a mirror image, right?

SMITH: Yes. On Double S?

WAGNER: Yeah. But one is brighter than the other. On the right it's red and black, but over there it's grey. But it's the same image, right? That's done by nature. That has wet that paper and released the glue, then I could just fold it back like this. This had printed on the other side, so it transferred through the glue to give it a different tone on the right than on the left. But it's just a folded piece of billboard paper.

SMITH: In constructing those collages did you change the colors at all?

WAGNER: Nothing.

SMITH: Did you alter anything?

WAGNER: Pure, that's just the way I found it.

SMITH: You cut out the shapes, though, the way you--

WAGNER: No, not really. They were torn like that. I might have torn a piece off some place that was sticking out, rip it off. But no, that's the way it was. I don't like to alter anything.

SMITH: Well, in Romantic Figure, which is much more literal--

WAGNER: Well, that's a billboard too, the top part of the whole-- But then I ripped up a lot of rice paper, put glue in it and washed it over with ink. Then I stretched it and put white glue on it and pulled it apart and stuck it there and hoped it would work. It's purely--

SMITH: And the horse?

WAGNER: The horse just happened to be something I found and I stuck it on there. There was no reason for it to even be there, but I thought it was nice and ties it all together, you know.

SMITH: The image it creates, a kind of samurai kind of feeling.

WAGNER: It has that feeling, doesn't it? Like a samurai or some kind of an oriental figure.

SMITH: Was that already there in the scraps of paper and you--

WAGNER: No, that's all on the billboard.

SMITH: You just saw it suddenly and added on to it?

WAGNER: That's all.

SMITH: Your assemblages, like Sir Deauville, HTG, the Railroad Man, a lot of them for me create personalities. They seem to be portraits.

WAGNER: They become a personality. Like the Railroad Man certainly becomes a personality because that's exactly what he is, he's a railroad man. And he comes from another town. [interruption; tape recorder off]

SMITH: Okay, you were saying Railroad Man--

WAGNER: Railroad Man is a very, very beautiful concept of how I felt about a town with another dump almost as marvelous as Inn City, or Red Mountain, and that's Keeler. Keeler is about five miles east of Olancha, which is about ten miles north of Little Lake. Keeler is a delightful town of about two hundred houses, and ten people live in the town, the postmaster and a few other characters. There's a railroad station in this town.

SMITH: Again, in the California desert? The Mojave Desert?

WAGNER: Yeah, it's on the potash lake; it's on the same shore bed as the American Potash & Chemical. It would be south of Lone Pine, if you were going to know the exact location, on the way to Panamint Junction and Darwin. Now, in this town it has a railroad station and it has a train, but it doesn't have any tracks. That's where I found the conductor's hat on the top, and the brakeman's lanterns, and the railroad spikes, and the watch, and the number two, and the two gloves, old work gloves, one with two mules saying "Maude and Claude," and the other saying "Big Bud Warlong." The only thing that's not from Keeler in there is the train with the locomotive with two cars. That I found in Mexico. And the locomotive inside of the brakeman's lantern is also from the Red Mountain Dump in Inn City. But it's a very, very important piece to me because it depicts almost a human being, like Sir Deauville.

SMITH: Almost, or even completely maybe. Do the personalities emerge as you put the pieces together, or are they concepts that are part of the initial concept as you start working that you're trying to liberate, like Michelangelo liberating the figure from the piece of marble?

WAGNER: I know that if you have enough pieces and you find just one new piece there's a possibility that you have ten more to relate to it somewhere that make a whole. The excitement of the whole thing when you go to dumps in the desert, and strange places, you come back and you're still on that trip. You're still, well, I found this here, and you get thinking about that environment of where that came from, and it takes you through a whole association with the past, although you're working in the present. So the now and building something for the future, you kind of go through the past, present and future all at once. A nice transition takes place in there for you.

SMITH: What is the association of the past that you--

WAGNER: The nostalgia of the actual being there and the old civilization, the way it must have been and [how] the people were. You get to imagining these things while you're building, and you're feeling this piece. There's a feeling that I can never get from people, but I can get it from objects.

SMITH: Could you explain that a little bit more? You can never get that feeling of the past from people?

WAGNER: Only in dreams and old people, like old girlfriends and things like that, your first love, things of that nature. And you miss people, you know, that you knew and you had fun with. You wonder where they've gone and what happened to them. But when you take objects like this, those objects all lived a full life, right? They were thrown out there as discards. Nobody wants them anymore. Dumped, and rained on, and rusted, and everything happens to them. Bent and twisted. Yet an assemblage artist comes along, he sees these things as actors, you know, and he brings them back, puts them back into play again, gives them a new life, a new way so they can be appreciated by people, and they're not just forgotten by laying out there forever to be weathered or buried. Once they're buried, the rust sets in so bad that dampness--they're finished. As long as they're up on the surface where they're dry, beautiful. So when they paved over the Red Mountain Dump, they were making a film about me called Gordon Wagner Loves You.

SMITH: Who was?

WAGNER: FilmFair. And I talked to them about how could they do such things as this? How could they take this beautiful dump and pave it over with a bulldozer, just cover it up for no reason, just to cover it up? It was the most disgusting act I've seen in years. So we had to drive all the way over to Inyokern and Ridgecrest, and on the way back up there we found another dump which was twice as big as the Red Mountain Dump. It had stuff in it that had been there ever since the desert had been there. It was an incredible dump. It was at least two and a half miles long and a mile wide, down in a hole. And on the top it was filled, and the sides were filled; it was spewing all over the place. Gorgeous stuff there. I dug stuff out of there for years.

SMITH: So do you feel that in these pieces there's still some of the spiritual aura of the people who used to live--

WAGNER: You mean who leave them for me?

SMITH: Yeah, that leave them for you, that left them for you?

WAGNER: You mean I pick up on their energies?

SMITH: Yeah, do you feel that?

WAGNER: I have. On some pieces I feel that, yeah. I don't know if it was waiting for me, you know? I believe most of those things are waiting for you to come along and get it.

SMITH: Waiting for you personally?

WAGNER: Exactly.

SMITH: Not waiting for somebody, but for you, Gordon Wagner.

WAGNER: That's right. Because most people would just pass it by. They wouldn't have any more use for it than I would have for a Rolls-Royce car, you know?

SMITH: Now, Two Loves is another very poetic piece. How did that come to be? What is that--

WAGNER: That all started over my birthday in 1962, or '61, I forgot.

SMITH: 'Sixty-one is what's on the--

WAGNER: 'Sixty-one, yeah. That year in April it was built, in '61. Don Preston, who is a musician with the-- I hope I have the date right. Don Preston is a musician, he was with the Mothers of Invention for eight years with [Frank] Zappa. A great jazz pianist, one of the best. He came to my house one evening, on my birthday, and he brought a piece of birthday cake to me wrapped up in a jazz score called Persian. He had it all-- He'd just written that piece. He made another note I guess, but-- I unraveled it, and I loved the jazz score so much. I had these old-- I always collected broken piano mechanisms, all of the hammers. I never cared about the outside, but the mechanisms were interesting. I had all these broken piano parts, and I'd built a music machine about the same time out of gongs and bells and piano hammers.

SMITH: An instrument?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Or a piece of art.

WAGNER: You could play it. But a tree fell on that one, too, just completely totaled that one. So anyway, I'd always loved jazz, from the time I can remember, from the forties when I was in Hermosa Beach, until-- And I always loved the classical also. So what happens with the Two Loves is that my love of the classical in the old violin case, and my love of jazz with the "Persian", the jazz score, and the piano parts and the piece of the pedal -- It's all related to music and my two loves, jazz and the classical. That's how it got its title.

SMITH: Another piece that's not in the show is the Night Clerk.

WAGNER: It's not in this show.

SMITH: No, it's not in this show, but you did that in Mexico, right?

WAGNER: Yeah. That piece was related to-- I found a typewriter, that's how it all started, and a door. And I decided-- I bought the typewriter for two pesos, which was sixteen cents in those days, and I found this owl on the skull, and put the big hands typing on the typewriter. And then I found the numbers for hotel rooms that went up one to nine, the levels, and a big S for Savoy, and a big Spanish doorknocker, and a Western Union telegram sign that was all cut in half, and a picture of the night clerk's girlfriend hanging on the one part and some coat hooks. The piece is a pretty big piece; it's seven feet high and three feet wide and a good piece. An old one but a good one.

SMITH: There must be big differences between the assemblages that you did here in California and then those that you did in Mexico, If only because the junk that you would find Is different.

WAGNER: Well, when I was in Mexico I was basically interested in making assemblages about the Day of the Dead, and death, and some religious shrines and things of that nature, and humor, and funkiness. Because to me, actually, Mexico is an assemblage. The whole country is like walking through a big assemblage. The funny things and the humor they have there, the taxicabs with the pushing on the brakes and the animals' heads light up in the back, and all of the-- It's really campy stuff, most of it, the dice-cube gearshifts, and skulls, and all of these things, and the hanging cortinas in the trucks, the diesel trucks, and the cortinas above the driver with the Virgin of Guadalupe up above him on the ceiling overlooking him to see that he doesn't get into any accidents, and all this symbology and object and assemblage. Mexico is an assemblage. When you use these elements that Mexico gives you in markets and junk places, naturally you're going to fall into that sort of energy, which to me was a confrontation with my fear of death and getting through it. So the Mexican pieces are definitely different from the American pieces because you can't walk in a cemetery in America and find these kind of things.

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO, JANUARY 10, 1987

SMITH: You were saying you can't find these sorts of things--

WAGNER: No, because Mexican cemeteries, and New Mexican cemeteries, and the Arizona cemeteries are, so many of them, up on a hill with the wind blowing and the handmade monuments. Many of the monuments look like assemblages, the old weathered woods. They're so beautiful. Then the paper flowers all hanging in the wind. The goats eat all that up in a cemetery, you know, and chew all the flowers off of the graves. So everything is sort of askew. It's not like Forest Lawn, all ordered and not even a marker of where you're buried. You have to look for that with a number, I guess. So one time, I remember, speaking of that, a couple of us decided it would be very nice if Forest Lawn did have cemetery crosses and monuments. It was an early morning, I think in about 1960, that I took all my standing pieces to Forest Lawn and set them up on the lawns, and we took pictures of the whole thing in Forest Lawn with my assemblages to make it feel like it was a human place like you find in Mexico. That cross and-- The top of that piece is just out of a cemetery in Mexico. I didn't alter that at all, but the poor fellow's name in it hammered out of metal.

SMITH: But you didn't desecrate the grave to take that.

WAGNER: No, just thrown away. I mean, I've gone to the-- I've got some Russian cemetery pieces, but I didn't desecrate the grave. They were broken off and thrown away. I saw them and I was so happy to see these. They were shaped like a Russian-- I don't know. They have a certain point that comes down, and they round around, and they're brown and thick redwood. They engrave the letters and stamp them in the wood. Says, "Here lies the body of Timofey Zekun waiting for the call of the Archangel Gabriel. Born such-and-such a date and died one year later."

SMITH: Where did you get those?

WAGNER: I got that out of the Russian cemetery, next to the Serbian cemetery, in East L.A., where the Long Beach Freeway goes alongside the Chinese cemetery. Next to that there's a Russian church, and in there it was a whole graveyard of Russian monuments and they're all handmade wood.

SMITH: That had been thrown out?

WAGNER: Yeah. They were in a pile to be burned up. I saw them one afternoon so I arranged with a friend of mine--matter of fact, the lady who owns this painting right here--to go there at night.

SMITH: Now, who's that?

WAGNER: Her name is Kay [Katherine] Boggs. To go there at night, but she chickened out. I was going to wait until the full of the moon when nobody would be around, and it would be dark, you know, but we could still see all right. So I got two more friends of mine, a painter named Bob Fremont and his wife Henriette. At that time I was living with Hedy Mergenthaler, my Swiss mistress. So we all took off in our old car to get these pieces, about six of them. We got over there and thought it wouldn't be used, but the place was lighted up like a nighttime freeway, you know, just daylight all over the place. You could see right through the trees, it was so bright. It looked like a fairground. So we pulled up alongside. I said, "Okay, I'll keep an eye. You're the thin one, Henriette, you can get through that fence"--about that much-- "and you throw them over to us. We'll stick them in the backseat, and if anybody questions us, we're musicians and these are our instrument cases." So we had all this stacked up on the backseat. Oh no! A policeman showed up. And he says, "Can I help you? Do you have a problem?" And I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I'm trying to find out how they can possibly run the Long Beach Freeway through the consecrated land of the Chinese cemetery." "They can't do that." I said, "It certainly looks like they're going to take off the whole corner of the cemetery." "I'll go down to the office and check it out; I'll be right back." By that time, we had everything loaded in. He came back. We waited for him. He came back, he says, "No, it's going to miss it by about fifty yards." "Boy," I said, "that's a close one." "Yeah," he said, "I can see what you'd be worried about." I said, "We just came over to check this out. Thank you very much." And we drove away sitting on these grave markers. [laughter] I still have them. I have one out in the garage; it's a beautiful one.

SMITH: Now, the Forest Lawn caper, that was-- You and who else was involved in that?

WAGNER: What?

SMITH: Were you the only artist? It was just your work that you brought out? Or who else was involved with that? Forest Lawn. You were telling me about--

WAGNER: Oh, just me. And a friend. We just did it for kicks. I never got the photographs of it either, but I wanted to.

SMITH: Was there any publicity?

WAGNER: No, no, no. We just wanted to see what it would look like. We were going to mail them some photographs. I think he did. I can't remember who it was that was with me.

SMITH: You mentioned several times that this period was a period when you were concerned about death. And of course, most of these pieces were done shortly after your first wife [Patricia Elliot Wagner] died. That must have been-- And then you went through a major--it seems like a major--turnaround in your life, or crisis in your life.

WAGNER: Yeah. These pieces were done in the sixties, the paintings. Well, plus the fact that I took off for Mexico, you see, at that time, right after my first wife died.

SMITH: She died very young?

WAGNER: I could really immerse myself in it, you see?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: Then get into my own fear, and probably a-- Well, I couldn't face dying or death, you know, I was afraid of it. I didn't want to hear about it in America because it seems so cold and commercialized, you know. So I couldn't face it. So when I got to Mexico, I decided, "Well, let's laugh about it and enjoy it. Death is where you begin." I got that out. It's the beginning of life, not the end.

SMITH: After your first wife died, you stopped and dropped out of engineering completely, right?

WAGNER: Yeah, right.

SMITH: You were working at Rocketdyne?

WAGNER: Yes.

SMITH: Was there a connection between your wife's death and your deciding that you could no longer be an engineer?

SMITH: Well, yeah. Actually, I didn't want to stay at Rocketdyne anyway. I only went there with the idea of getting enough money to go to Mexico. I was only going to stay for a year, but then by the time they appointed me to supervisor of the design group, they wouldn't let me go. Then it kept dragging on. I think I was there for about two years, two or three, something like that. The only reason I really left was because I wanted to go back to Mexico, and I wanted to paint. I lived up in Topanga Canyon, and I wasn't too interested in the corporate structure and the boring bourgeois at that time. I was into a different kind of society in Topanga Canyon, where I belonged. We always said, "Keep them out if they don't live here, and don't let them out if they do." That was kind of a rule we had in Topanga. I fit more into that environment. Going to Rocketdyne was such a bore; although the work was interesting, the surroundings and what I had to go through-- The thing that really triggered me is when they told me that I would have to actually keep track of my men when they came back from lunch. If they were three minutes late I was supposed to talk to them. I went up on a mountain in Topanga for lunch-- They told me that one morning, and I went up on the mountain, to Saddle Peak, way up high. I got out my I Ching and tossed the coin, and it said, "Don't worry about the lightning and the thunder. The storm will be passing and you won't have to hear it anymore or think about it, and everything will be calm and beautiful after the storm. Don't fear anything, just let it be, what's going to happen. Look for a positive life and a good way." So I went back and walked in at the end of my lunch hour and gave them twenty-seven minutes' notice. I walked out of the place and that was it. I never came back.

SMITH: Now, was this after your first wife died? Did this happen after she died?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. Yeah, about maybe a year, six months.

SMITH: And then you've never worked--

WAGNER: No.

SMITH: --since then. How were you supporting yourself after that?

WAGNER: Well, I wasn't really supporting myself too well. It doesn't cost much to live in Mexico. I could manage it for about five hundred dollars a year with a big house and a servant and everything.

SMITH: Were your daughters [Sandy Wagner Hinze and Tima Wagner Duffield] with you at that time?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. Well, one of them was married and living back East, just married somebody that was going to become a submarine captain. He's now retired.

SMITH: Your eldest daughter?

WAGNER: Yes.

SMITH: She must have been very young when she got married, then.

WAGNER: She was nineteen. Like my wife was nineteen when she married me. All I know is that I was selling a lot of art, much more than I am now because the art movement was on. I couldn't lose. I was winning awards in museums, and everything was like [James] Strombotny says, "I had it made". The "syndicate" had not really gotten going, you know. It hadn't moved into that point yet; they were still in the birth.

SMITH: Let's move back a couple of points before I forget it. Would you define what you mean by the "syndicate"?

WAGNER: No, I won't. Because I don't want to damage myself or them. I'd rather keep that-- I'll tell you, but I won't tell you on this thing.

SMITH: Well, Okay. We'll get back to what the "syndicate" is in a little bit. You were mentioning that at the time you were in Mexico you were selling well in general, and you were living very comfortably then. You had a big house and a servant. Was your younger daughter living with you at the time?

WAGNER: Rented, yes. I rented that house.

SMITH: Where was this? In Oaxaca or--

WAGNER: Yeah. Eight dollars and thirty-four cents a month.

SMITH: Was this the house on the town square?

WAGNER: Yeah. Across from the post office in Oaxaca, right off the square.

SMITH: So one sale could go a long way for--

WAGNER: Yeah. Well, of course. That's why. So I took my funds and I went for a while. I came back to Topanga again, and I was really happy in Topanga. That was my-- I still miss Topanga a lot. Of course, it's changed so much now; it's not the same Topanga.

SMITH: Where were you--

WAGNER: Forty-five dollars a month rent; I had a wonderful studio in Topanga.

SMITH: Where was your work being shown at this time, in the fifties, '55 to '60? Where was your work being shown?

WAGNER: Oh, in the fifties?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: Well, I was represented in all the major museums.

SMITH: Such as?

WAGNER: In the Whitney [Museum of American Art], in the Corcoran [Gallery Biennial]; all of them across the country. I mean, huge amounts in museums in the Middle West, like [Art Institute of] Chicago and Toledo Museum [of Art] and Texas and Kansas City [Nelson Art Gallery]. I was winning a lot of awards and making money. It was very good.

SMITH: Now, when you won an award, how much money would you make? These are museum awards?

WAGNER: Yeah, well, cash awards, a lot of cash awards, and a few purchase awards from the Denver [Art] Museum.

SMITH: And how much money are we talking about, a thousand dollars, ten thousand? What are we--

WAGNER: No, in those days maybe a thousand to five thousand, you know? But it was enough. It went a lot farther at that time than it does now. And galleries, I had shows in different galleries. In the fifties I had my first exhibition in Los Angeles in the Now Gallery, which was Ed [Edward] Kienholz's gallery in the old Turnabout Theatre building. He had a wonderful gallery there. That was before he became incorporated with Walter Hopps and the Ferus Gallery. So people were coming to my studio all the time. I was getting lots from articles about winning an award here; they'd read the paper and they'd come. I was selling paintings out of my studio.

SMITH: To whom? What kind of people?

WAGNER: Just to anybody that would come. It was a different kind of world then. People bought art.

SMITH: How much would one of your paintings sell for?

WAGNER: Well, I'd do a real good deal if I sold one for $500, $750, in those days.

SMITH: I assume that we're talking about your paintings that were selling. Your assemblages--

WAGNER: Assemblages weren't selling yet. No. [laughter] I had all these paintings. A lot of them were Navaho paintings. I painted 250 of those, with two left. They're in this exhibition. I did pretty well from that, just selling those paintings. So that's how I made a living.

SMITH: Silvan Simone was your regular-- Was he your agent? Was he your exclusive gallery?

WAGNER: Yeah, he sold a lot of art for me. He must have sold three or four hundred pieces for me over a period of those years.

SMITH: Did you have an arrangement with him? Was he buying a certain percentage of your work?

WAGNER: No, he didn't buy anything, it was all on commission. But he was a salesman who could sell art. If somebody expressed even as much as a little interest he'd go on for an hour about the life of the artist and, [imitating Simone] "Oh, it's a beautiful painting." He was a real showman. He could do it. He knew his business, and he knew how to handle people. I liked Silvan. He was a real person, he wasn't-- He was anti "syndicate" art. He was a real rebel against the whole system, you know. A man came in one day, he wanted to buy a painting from me. He's going on, he's telling this man all about this painting. The man stands there and looks at it for a while, wonders about it. Simone never even asked his name, you know, never bothered to bother, anything about him. And I said, "Do you know who this man is?" And he says, "No." I said, "That's Nelson Eddy." [laughter] He didn't know anything about Nelson Eddy. He knew none of the celebrities that came into his gallery at all, like Audrey Hepburn and people like that, and Natalie Wood, who were big customers. He never even knew what they did. He was totally a man of pasta, fishing, hunting, and selling art.

SMITH: Did you ever exhibit in Vincent Price and George McReady's gallery?

WAGNER: Vincent Price?

SMITH: And George McReady had a gallery in Beverly Hills.

WAGNER: Vincent Price?

SMITH: Price, yeah.

WAGNER: Well, I met Vincent Price, that's all.

SMITH: You never showed in his gallery?

WAGNER: No. I showed once in a gallery that was up on Wilshire next to-- I can't even remember the name of the gallery anymore. I just remember it was next to--what's that fancy restaurant called? It's near Western [Avenue].

SMITH: Oh, Perino's?

WAGNER: Perino's. It was next door to Perino's. They sold three or four paintings. They sold one to Hal Roach, I remember.

SMITH: What kind of paintings were these at this time? These are the Navaho paintings largely that you're talking about?

WAGNER: They were--

SMITH: Are they like your Nebraska Speedway paintings?

WAGNER: No, this is way before. This is back in the forties. These paintings were related to amusement parks, mostly.

SMITH: Did you have a gallery in San Francisco?

WAGNER: No. Not at that time.

SMITH: In the fifties? No?

WAGNER: No. When was it? I'd shown in San Francisco at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, but I didn't have any gallery there.

SMITH: What about in New York? Did you have a New York representative? Did you try to get one?

WAGNER: No.

SMITH: Why not?

WAGNER: I don't know. I was too busy with Mexico and the beach and California. Everybody said I should go to New York, and I said, "What for?" Because I hadn't been to New York since I was eighteen years old. I drove across the United States in my old Model A Ford from L.A. to New York state to visit my relatives, who all lived in upstate New York. One of them decided that she was-- One of my aunts decided that we were going to go to New York on the Hudson River night line from Albany. We were going to stay with another aunt of mine that lived in a fancy hotel there. I don't remember the name of it. I can't remember the name of that hotel, but it's one of the most important hotels in New York. She took me around. All I saw of New York was a lot of people all dressed up in black suits and white shirts and black ties looking very depressed in Manhattan. Here I was, right from the beach, I wanted to go bodysurfing and go home. I'd had enough of that place. [laughter] I loved upstate New York, but that city gave me no energy whatsoever at that time. She took me dinner dancing, and all of these sort of things, and that was the last thing I was interested in doing. And Greenwich Village, she said, "Well, we won't go down there, a lot of strange people live down there." If she'd have shown me the Village, I might have been happy. But she took me to the Stork Club and a few places like this. Forty-second Street. When I finally did go to New York to visit one time--that was in the sixties, I guess--after I married Virginia [Copeland Wagner], she was from New York, and I was staying with a friend of hers, we stayed at Seventy-second [Street] and Central Park West, right near the Dakota, you know? And I said, "Oh, this is quite a city." And then I got into New York and a gallery in New York bought some of my work, the Lee Nordness Gallery.

SMITH: This is in the sixties, though.

WAGNER: Yeah, in the sixties. Out of the Long Beach Museum [of Art]. He bought some assemblages. And that's when I-- So I went to see him. He was on Ninety-second [Street] and Third Avenue. And I got more into New York, and then I fell in love with New York, and now I think that New York is one of the greatest cities ever. But to live there, for me it would be an impossibility because it's just too expensive at the moment.

SMITH: Getting back to the fifties. Let's take your best year: How many paintings would you have sold and how much money would you have made from that?

WAGNER: I have no idea.

SMITH: No idea?

WAGNER: No. I used to sell roughly about three paintings a week. That was in the late fifties and the early sixties.

SMITH: You were selling them for $500 each painting?

WAGNER: Yeah. Well, sometimes $750, sometimes $350, you know.

SMITH: So you were making fifty thousand dollars a year from your painting? Which at that time was--

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: --a lot of money.

WAGNER: Yeah. Well, I had a wonderful life. Things were-- All artists were selling art. You know in those days there was action, the galleries on La Cienega [Boulevard] and the-- Everybody went out every Monday night to look at the exhibitions on the street, the new shows, see what was going on. The galleries, the museums were booming, and the programs on TV were good, and the interviews. They had open annuals for the artists, you know, in the museum. Everybody was active. Most of these artists who had participated in those days are dead. I don't mean physically dead, I mean nobody hears from them anymore. Some really fantastic artists, but they can't get exhibitions, nobody wants them. They are bitter, disappointed, because they've been overlooked and just written off. Fortunately, being an assemblage artist, I went beyond the painting so I'm still popular today. Because assemblage is just finding its own now. I can't remember in the last ten years when I haven't been in an exhibition someplace. Maybe the last twenty years. Let's see, this is '86; '76, yeah. I've always been in invitation, always invited to some exhibition. It never stops for me. But I feel sorry for these painters that are-- Painting isn't what they want anymore. The painters have been wiped out through the commercialism of painting. And the collectors, they're not interested in painters, the old painter. In the old days everybody was guilty, they had to have art. They had to have a painting over their television set or over their couch to make them look like they were culturally aware. Nowadays, they're not told that anymore; they're not told anything; they're far removed. And the younger generation, I don't think they're interested in abstract expressionism. They want space and science and that kind of fantasy art. So it's real difficult for just an artist.

SMITH: Well, you've mentioned the "syndicate" as being a cause of what happened, a "decline" of California art. Though I think if you read the art history, what's written about art, it's the period of the sixties that's viewed as the boom, and the period of the forties and fifties as a kind of mishmash of too many different things and not very much quality. So your opinion is not shared by a lot of the critics, I guess. But let's go-- Were you involved with the Ferus Gallery when it-- I mean, you were involved with Kienholz when it was the Now Gallery.

WAGNER: Yeah, I was there a very short time with Ed. What really happened is that the West Coast artists were doing just fine until the new museum came along with Tuchman, right, Maurice Tuchman. He decided who was going to be an artist and who wasn't going to be. As Arnold Schiffrin told me one time, "Well, we'll cut the whole thing off with Gordon Wagner." Arnold told me. I don't know if it's true or not, but that's what-- Tuchman told the whole system. Well, there was John Coplans, and there was Walter [Hopps], and there was--what was his name?-- John, from the Dwan Gallery in Westwood, who was a-- They just opened up to lose money. Ed Kienholz was getting paid two hundred dollars a month to be a janitor in the place. But they were giving him all of the possible publicity in every magazine, back pages, front, to spend money, to lose it, because they were the richest stockbrokers in New York and their gallery was a tax write-off. So they didn't want artists sold, but they wanted to give them lots of publicity, like [Claes] Oldenburg and like Andy Warhol.

SMITH: They sell, and they sell for quite--

WAGNER: Every single one of them. They pushed up. Not to give them money, just fame.

SMITH: Yeah, but their pieces sell for thousands and thousands of dollars, right?

WAGNER: But Dwan didn't get that.

SMITH: Oh.

WAGNER: They got hooked in with [Leo] Castelli [Gallery] and Corcoran [Gallery] and-- What's the other one? Oh, there's about three major ones.

SMITH: Are you thinking of [Felix] Landau [Gallery]?

WAGNER: Well, New York.

SMITH: Oh, the New York--

WAGNER: Castelli, and then there's the Corcoran, and there's the Feigen-Palmer [Gallery]. A few of the snob galleries appointed people in the museum for the arts councils to see that the museum got to the right people to give them the money and get the right collectors to come to their gallery and educate them to buy only their art. Well, Walter was a great manipulator at this. He even taught people like Betty Asher and Fred Grunwald and Betty Freeman, all the big collectors, what to buy. He had a class called "Looking at Modern Art." And every week he'd say, "Well, I'd like you to get some Ad Reinhardts this week." So they'd go out and buy Ad Reinhardts. Then he would criticize each painting for them, and they'd take it home for their collection. And the next week it would be Oldenburg, and the next week it would be Jim Dine or somebody else, or Craig Kauffman, or Billy Al Bengston, or [Edward] Ruscha, right? And Arthur Secunda, he was asked by Walter, he said, "I've had a nervous breakdown, Arthur, and I want you to take over my class at UCLA." And he walked in and said, "What's this, 'Be Kind to Ad Reinhardt Night'?" "Oh, yes, Mr. Hopps tells us to buy a different piece each week for our collection." While Walter was the director of the Pasadena [Art] Museum, he was spending more time in New York with Castelli than he was in the Pasadena museum. So they fired him. In the interim, John Coplans took over Walter's job. He was the most obnoxious man that ever walked the face of the earth. No man can be a reviewer to an exhibition and say, "Well, this is a great show we have here in the San Francisco museum, and aren't we lucky that we don't have Rico Lebrun in it," and things like that. So John Coplans finally got his end cut off when-- June Wayne gave him a set of prints from the Tamarind [Lithography] Workshop to show in the Pasadena Museum. June Wayne got a call about three weeks later from some man who said, "What does this mark mean on the bottom of these prints?" And she said, "I don't understand what you're talking about. What prints?" He says, "Well, I bought all these prints and I don't know what the mark means." She went out there and said, "Well, those are Tamarind, our trademark stamp, just a little stamp. Where did you get these?" "Oh, John Coplans sold them to us." So that's when June Wayne hit the fan and went to bat against John, had him fired. The thing that really got him fired even farther was some little old lady in Pasadena who was so mad at John Coplans because he wouldn't show her china [laughter] in the collection when she'd put all this money into the museum. So John and Walter and the Castellis and the Feigen-Palmers and the Corcorans and Tuchman and a lot of other ones set this whole thing up to present just a few artists in America as the greats. They'd been built up all this time through all this PR until they actually believed the publicity themselves. So they're the ones you always find on the top of the pile. You look in the new museum [Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)] down there, it's either New York or those guys, right?

SMITH: Now, Irving Blum in his interview--in his oral history interview--says that when he came into Ferus, the problem was that it represented too many people, so he cut it down to twelve, which were the people that he thought he could represent the best.

WAGNER: Walter?

SMITH: No, Irving Blum.

WAGNER: Irving Blum. Well, that was much later. Irving Blum came along miles later.

SMITH: No, this was '58.

WAGNER: Yeah. Well, Ferus started in about '54 I think, '53. But I remember most of them, Artie Richer, and John Reed, and Dane Dixon, and Harry Cohen, and Sonia Gechtoff, and Wally [Wallace] Berman, Ed Kienholz, Peter Voulkos, Billy Al Bengston, Hassel Smith and-- What's the other one? Well, I'd say about half of them are dead now. Oh, Gil Henderson. Go talk to him sometime, the most bitter man in the United States.

SMITH: Did you ever try to interest Blum in your work? Did you have any business--

WAGNER: With Blum?

SMITH: Irving Blum.

WAGNER: No. Nodded at him, nicely. Nothing to do with him.

SMITH: But you knew Hopps fairly well, right?

WAGNER: Yeah. But I never-- Hopps was a-- I liked Hopps. He was a nice guy. I still like him. I think he's funny. He's clever. He's got a lot of sophistication and a cosmopolitan attitude. The last time I saw Walter was in George Herms's house in Topanga Canyon. He and [Henry] Geldzahler are about the same type of guys. Immediately every guy in the place all said the same thing, "Bolt things down, here comes Walter." Because he had a habit of stealing art from artists, you know. Sticking it under his coat, assemblages and objects. Like Geldzahler was going to walk out of a gallery in Taos with one of my pieces, and Tally Richards said, "Where are you going with that, Henry?" "Oh, I'm sorry," and he put it back. He was going to steal it. They take advantage of artists, and they manipulate them like they were some kind of race horses, you see? They've made thoroughbreds out of this one group that they've built up. They've got a lot of money built up in these people, like they've got money built up with [Jackson] Pollock and [Willem] de Kooning, and they're not about to let other people come in, just anybody, you see. They've been building them for years, see? It takes money to build up an artist and it all started, basically, with Walter. Walter's not a poor man. I think he comes from a very rich family, you know. And as far as the Dwan Gallery, they opened their gallery for exactly-- What is it, five years that you can write it off? And then they closed it in Westwood. Then they moved to New York, and they opened it for five years there. And then they moved to Chicago, and they opened it for five years in a different town. Just for the tax write-off. Because an art gallery, the way they were spending money, they can lose millions of dollars with all of this wonderful publicity. Every artist was back page and color, front page, inside. On every one of their artists, you know.

SMITH: Well, what about Silvan Simone, what kind of publicity would he do for you?

WAGNER: He hated them all. He was anti-"syndicate"; he wouldn't even let them in the door. He wouldn't even let a-- I remember one time, it was a Sunday morning and I had just stopped by there to drop something off, and he said, "You know who was here this morning to look at your show?" And I said, "Who?" "Bill [William] Seitz, and Walter Hopps, and--" The guy who's in New York. Oh, what's his name? A critic and writer. Anyway, three of them. "I wouldn't let them in. I told them to come back some other day." [laughter] He wouldn't even let them in the door to see my-- He said, "If they want to come back, they can come at the right hours." That's the way he was. He hated [Henry] Seldis with a passion. I remember one time Seldis wanted [Jose Luis] Cuevas to go on a trip with him to Santa Barbara. So Silvan arranges for it. Henry picks him up, and they went up to Santa Barbara for the day. Cuevas was always mimicking Seldis. He'd say, "Oh, we're going to go in this gallery and nobody's going to like me in here; they don't like me up here." This is the way Cuevas would talk. "So all day I'm with this guy Seldis, and coming back home he tells me what he wants: He wants to write the introduction for my suite called Charenton. And I said, 'Is that going to cost me money?'" "He says, 'Yeah. It will cost you money.'" "'Well, I don't have any money.'" "'Well,'" he says, "'Silvan will take care of it. There's a reason I want to write it, because it's such a beautiful suite.'" When Silvan heard about all this he really hit the fan. He called Henry up, he said, "Don't you ever come back into my gallery again as long as you live. It isn't that you cannot write the introduction, it is the fact that you're writing an introduction on something you've never seen, and I call that hypocrisy."

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE, JANUARY 10, 1987

WAGNER: Well, after he said he was going to have him thrown out in the street in the middle of Olympic Boulevard, he went to the [Los Angeles] Times, and he went to the Chandlers and told them what had happened. He got up a petition of about thirty-five galleries on La Cienega [Boulevard] against [Henry] Seldis because Seldis was not writing reviews to some of the galleries, and the ones he was writing to, he was being paid lots of money to write reviews for. So the whole thing hit the fan. Everybody was with [Silvan] Simone, most of the galleries. Except the top galleries, the "syndicate" galleries, were quiet. They wouldn't sign anything.

SMITH: Do you remember--

WAGNER: Because they knew better.

SMITH: Do you remember, are we talking 1960, '65? Or in the fifties?

WAGNER: When this happened?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: This happened probably '65, '67, around in there.

SMITH: So you were saying the top galleries knew better.

WAGNER: They wouldn't have anything to do with it. They were scared that something might happen to them. But no, people like Ankrum [Gallery], and all those people, and [Esther] Robles and [Felix] Landau, they all went along with it. But there were quite a few that were out of it because they were paying big money to Seldis. They stayed out of it. Like the "syndicate." Silvan was a fighter, so from that day on, Seldis never came to Silvan's gallery. He always sent either Bill [William] Wilson or somebody else; usually Bill Wilson. What year was it that I had my exhibition where he called me the "Spanish mystic"?

SMITH: Bill Wilson or Seldis?

WAGNER: Wilson.

SMITH: I'm not sure, but I think that was the early seventies. But I'm not positive on that.

WAGNER: That's when Bill Wilson took over. You see, before that there was Arthur Millier, and he died. Then they had Constance Perkins for a long time. She was good. Connie Perkins, she was a good-- She was on the Times.

SMITH: Now, what do you mean when-- What are your criteria for evaluating a critic? Aside from what they say about your own work.

WAGNER: To give people a knowledge of what's going on, of what's going on, expressing it from the point of [view of] the viewer without being deliberately destructive and throwing their own ego into the article and being a smart, wise-cracking type of person. Like there are so many critics today that are not interested in-- They don't have a right to be critics. They can destroy an artist just by what they write. The written word is a very strong form of expression, and they are very, very hard on a lot of people. Destructive wit is the worst kind.

SMITH: Were the critics at the Times sympathetic to funk art? to assemblage?

WAGNER: Some.

SMITH: Such as? Were there people that you could talk to about it?

WAGNER: You mean critics?

SMITH: Critics, yes.

WAGNER: Yeah, well, I think that Wilson was sympathetic to assemblage. And I think [Alfred] Frankenstein was certainly--in San Francisco--was certainly sympathetic to it. And what's his name? Back East. Is it Hess? Thomas B. Hess, certainly him; he was a lover of it. And Bill [William] Seitz. I don't know about John Canaday and people like that. They kind of thought it was still dada, you know?

SMITH: You are sometimes associated with the funk movement. Do you identify yourself with that, the funk movement?

WAGNER: Yeah, I would. I've made quite a few funky pieces in my life.

SMITH: Well, what's funk art? Define funk art.

WAGNER: Basically, funk art usually has a theme in mind and the relation of things or the juxtaposition that makes it almost surreal. It's not poetic; just funky. It can be very ugly and be so funky and dirty and full of cobwebs and-- Or it can be very slick and polished, almost kitsch.

SMITH: Which pieces in this show are funk art?

WAGNER: The funkiest piece I have in this exhibition is that piece.

SMITH: Between Heaven and Hell?

WAGNER: Yes. That's pretty funky.

SMITH: I guess many people would consider Sir Deauville--

WAGNER: No, this is funky too. This can be funky.

SMITH: That assemblage-- The kind of assemblage you do is--

WAGNER: Yeah, kind of dirty. The ones around the corner, they're not very funky. There's still some kind of order there, a cleanliness to them.

SMITH: Talking about, you know, assemblage art again and that, how would-- The other artists that were doing assemblage were [Edward] Kienholz and [Wallace] Berman and [George] Herms. Who else was doing work that you considered to be important assemblage?

WAGNER: Well, as I said, I liked Ben Talbert. He was a very good man. And I liked Tony Berlant's work. He used to hammer out-- He'd take like a metal globe earth, you know, toy globes made of metal with a map, you know, like a world ball. He'd flatten it all out, and then he'd overlay it on things and nail it all down with little nails. The whole thing would be flattened and cut around. He used it as sort of overlay on boxes and constructions and things. And he'd put funny things inside of houses. He liked to build houses and buildings with things, maybe a finger or nose, sticking up through it. I liked Tony Berlant's work. Of course, a master of a lot of this was [Joseph] Cornell, wasn't he?

SMITH: Right, but he's not-- But he's a very different kind of artist. He's neither assemblage nor--

WAGNER: Still objects.

SMITH: Objects, but--

WAGNER: He's still an assemblage artist.

SMITH: Okay, right, he is assemblage, but of a very different nature.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: He's not in the California scene, either.

WAGNER: New York.

SMITH: New York. And barely in the scene there. I want to get into Cornell, but not right now.

WAGNER: But there's so many different--

SMITH: Because assemblage and funk art was something that was very particular to California in the fifties and sixties.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Something that-- It was done other places, but it really became something very much typical of the California-- Many California artists were interested.

WAGNER: Yeah, a lot of funk art was done in ceramics, too, remember. Like many good pieces were very real; it's the way they were related to each other that made them unreal. But Emeryville was going full blast in the--

SMITH: The Emeryville Flats, right.

WAGNER: Mud flats. As a matter of fact, it's still going at full blast, because they just had the Inter-Dada Festival there last year. It was called the Midnight Scream, and it was in the mud flats.

SMITH: So you take somebody, Kienholz, who's done--whose assemblages are very, very well known. How would you compare-- What's the difference between your work and his work from your point of view? I'm not talking in terms of quality, but just in terms of what your perspectives are, what you were exploring.

WAGNER: Well, I don't see any relationship between our work at all. No relation whatsoever. Ed has always been a man of tableaux; of protest; of shock, either in psych wards or in Barney's Beanery; of violence; of beds and bedpans and whorehouses; and of the erotic; and very shock-- For the shock value, you know. I don't think I ever really was that much interested in doing anything for the shock value. It was always more humorous or poetic in its connotation, not shock. I wasn't rebelling against-- Ed loves hunting and fishing and all the outdoors things, and he's a-- I've known him ever since he came down here from Oregon. I remember the first time I ever met him.

SMITH: When was that?

WAGNER: In 1953, I think, in Topanga Canyon. He came to visit me with another friend of mine named Arnold Wagman, who-- He said, "You've got to meet this guy." (Arnold's from New York.) "You've got to meet this guy. I've got a friend I think you ought to meet." I said, "Yeah? Where does he live?" "He doesn't live. He lives in a house without a roof. He puts these big canvases on the floor, and he has a party and spills wine all over them and stuffs cigarettes on them and does all these kind of things. But no roof, so it rains and the whole thing gets wet." So one day I meet this guy; it's Ed Kienholz. And we took a liking to each other immediately. "You've got to come down and see my show that I'm going to have," he tells me. So I said, "Fine. I'd like to see what you're doing." It was at Von's Cafe Galleria [Coffeehouse] in Laurel Canyon. It was right there in the little square. He's got an espresso bar, old Von. Von was a man who liked artists. Ed had his show there, his first show. He had pieces about, oh, five by five feet, wood, plywood, just smeared all over with paint in every direction. Then a two-by-four and maybe another block of wood nailed onto that, and that was all painted and smeared and dripping. He had about eight of those in reds and browns and greens. He used a lot of house paint; just threw it on there, dripped it, built up. Sometimes there was half varnish and half enamel, and it would explode and bubble and give eruptions like volcanoes. He used all kinds of-- some kind of real sick red paint like-- I don't know where he got it from. Like a dye. Probably was a dye. That would be on it. Real messy work. But there was something interesting about them, and I liked them.

SMITH: Shocking or graphic?

WAGNER: To Von he said, "This guy's going to have the next show with you, you know that?" That's what he told Von. And he said, "Oh, that would be fine." So I followed Ed with the next exhibition, and then Keith Finch after me, and then Hans Burkhardt and a few people like that. Von was nice to all of us. So that's how I first met Ed. He was always wonderful. His wife's name was Mary. Mary was great. I loved Mary. She was always walking around looking for junk with him. They were always out in the trash barrels and the streets. He'd trade anything. If he had something-- If he had a piece, I'll trade you for a typewriter. I'll trade you for a lawnmower, a drill press, a motorcycle or-- He'd trade anything. Incredible guy.

SMITH: What about the-- How would you--

WAGNER: I just want to say one more thing.

SMITH: Sure, go ahead.

WAGNER: When he first started assemblage, he wasn't doing any protest. He was doing just wood.

SMITH: Graphic--

WAGNER: Just blocks of wood in two-dimensional wall reliefs. He even continued doing that even more when he went with the Ferus [Gallery]. He was still doing it; making woods together and painting them white and black. That went on even when he was with the Syndell [Studios] gallery, which was Walter [Hopps]'s gallery in Brentwood on Gorham Avenue. He was doing them there. And it wasn't-- And then I lost track of him for a while. He had a huge show where he did all kinds of clocks, and boxes, and machines, and people and things. That show was at the Dwan Gallery. He was doing something kind of clean and nice. And then he had the show in the Ferus with The Madam, Hopps Hopps Hopps, and The Meat Market, and a few other pieces. Barney's [Beanery] was very late. He was also in tune with-- I saw him with Niki de Saint-Phalle when she had her shooting gallery painting. She used to take things like chairs, and dishes, and plates, and furniture legs, and dolls' heads and arms and nail them on a piece about the size of this wall with spray bombs and cans of enamel and all these things. Then she'd get back and take her shotgun and she'd break that can, and all that paint would run down all over the furniture and over the whole thing. She'd go around, she'd shoot these things until the whole painting was moving with color over the objects and through them. I saw her one time, she was shooting at raw eggs and one of them popped back and hit her right in the mouth. [laughter] I don't know if you ever knew Michael Murphy. He's a filmmaker in Malibu on--what's it called?--some road that goes back in there from the beach. Mike Murphy. A good filmmaker. It was up at his place that she did all this. I remember Ed coming, bringing in a load of junk in his car. His truck was--was an old '37, I think, and all it said on the door was "Ed Kienholz, Expert." [laughter]

SMITH: Have you kept in touch with him over the years?

WAGNER: No, I haven't seen him for a long time. He lives up in Idaho. He lived in Germany; lived there eight years. in Kassel. Paid by the German government to live there and work there. Then he comes back to Hope, Idaho, which he calls "New Hope." I see his second or third wife, I don't know, Lynn, from time to time. Now he has Nancy Reddin, Chief [Tom] Reddin's daughter, of the LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department].

SMITH: How would you define the differences between your work and Wally Berman's work?

WAGNER: Wally Berman?

SMITH: Yeah. Particularly in terms of assemblage.

WAGNER: How would I relate him to me or to Kienholz?

SMITH: No, to you.

WAGNER: Oh, nothing to do with me.

SMITH: Yeah, but you're both involved in funk art, you're both involved in assemblage.

WAGNER: Yeah, but nothing to do with--

SMITH: So what are the distinctions between your concerns and his concerns?

WAGNER: Wallace Berman was always basically a very religious man. He was into the Cabala, and most everything he does is Cabalistic. All of his Hebrew writing and characters, whether they're on rocks and boxes or if they're in tableaux, they're always related to the Cabala. And his motto, as I remember-- I remember when his show was closed down in the Ferus Gallery. He had a big cross in the gallery with a picture of he and Shirley in bed and a sign that read, "Art is Love is God." That was his motto. He had a power, Wallace Berman had a power that never, never-- He never tried to have anything happen. He never asked for anything. He just lived by the way he was. He had all these miracles, always, you know, that were going on. He was probably one of the best recognized artists, like [Marcel] Duchamp: Never did anything, but he's, well, he's the second best artist in the world, Duchamp, right? Picasso and Duchamp. They both went one way and the other. So Wally was like a Duchamp type, quiet and to himself; lived in the hills. A true bohemian. But very, very serious about his-- It was either that or he was putting on a big front, because everybody loved Wally. He had a lot of light within him that came forth. He gave out that energy.

SMITH: There's nothing in common except you're also a religious artist-- In this period you're exploring non-Christian types of religious symbology?

WAGNER: Well, now, you can't say that exactly, because how about the "Love" of George Herms? Who's in between? George Herms was influenced deeply by Wally; he was like-- They were just inseparable. But George Herms never did anything that had to do with the Cabala. He did something with love and the poetic and the objects. That's what I call poetic assemblage: George Herms.

SMITH: Right. Well, what about you and George Herms? How would you define the distinctions between your approach to assemblage and his approach?

WAGNER: Well, actually, George Herms never collects objects at all. He only makes an assemblage of what he picks up that day or of what's around. He is very much interested in jazz. That's his life, jazz. And poetry related to jazz. So he's in a different place. But love, he always has love, right? L-O-V and the E backwards. Every piece of his is signed "Love," L-O-V and the E backwards. George is a love person. He was. I don't know how he's doing now. I love him. He's had so many hardships in his life, and he's lived as the bohemian to the point where-- Now he's getting a little better recognition. He always had good recognition. I never remember when he didn't; Walter was pushing him, and everybody was pushing George. He's had dealers that he wrote manifestos to that they were ruining his life and starving his family. Rolph Nelson, for instance. But George is still, to me, somebody I can love. Like Wally, I can love. I can give love and they can give love back. I think it projects in their assemblages. George is very random. He doesn't care about aesthetics at all. He'll throw a table and chair over here against the wall, stick a paint can on it and a feather off of that and that's it.

SMITH: Doesn't that just mean he's playing with a different sense of aesthetics?

WAGNER: That's right. But I say, he doesn't have the feeling I have for aesthetics. This is a different set.

SMITH: Were you ever interested in Zen Buddhism?

WAGNER: Yeah, very much.

SMITH: Very much. Is it reflected in any of your work?

WAGNER: Well, I think so.

SMITH: How? Where?

WAGNER: Well, the inner calmness of the pieces, to keep them down to a minimum. The gateless gate, to let things happen and not tangle them up with a lot of busy stuff, and less is more. I think it's all within that. And no dark or light, you know, just one. Yeah, I was involved in Zen Buddhism and Taoism.

SMITH: Those are two different things, very different.

WAGNER: Altogether different, but the same.

SMITH: Maybe, maybe.

WAGNER: Remember the tai chi, that's the balance between the positive and the negative.

SMITH: Upstairs you have your untitled piece that you did in 1985. The devotional piece? Well, I would call it the devotional piece. The untitled assemblage, the wall hanging.

WAGNER: Yeah, the Whiskey Marine series.

SMITH: Yeah, it's part of the Whiskey Marine series. Is that a religious piece?

WAGNER: It didn't start out that way exactly. It is an icon, isn't it? Icons are sort of termed maybe religious.

SMITH: Well, what do you mean by "icon"?

WAGNER: Icons are usually things that are religious paintings and things that are framed within, or that are painted on, like the heads and saints and old Russian icons. Something symbolic of religion. Didn't start out that way, but it wound up that way, didn't it? Because I had no intention of that religious figure ever appearing in there until I made a mistake--or an accident. I was cleaning my brush out and that image appeared. It looks like a Rembrandt or a Raphael. But it is, it's symmetrical, and it has a power of going up.

SMITH: And there are different levels.

WAGNER: Yeah, going upward, ascending.

SMITH: Interior castle kind of concept.

WAGNER: Almost the same configuration of this way, right? Without me knowing it, subconsciously.

SMITH: And the bottom layer has the, what I would call the fetish.

WAGNER: Two feathers.

SMITH: And then the next level has the image that seems like it's the Madonna.

WAGNER: Yeah, that's the one. That's the accident.

SMITH: Then you have the circle, the abstraction.

WAGNER: There's a belt buckle.

SMITH: We'll talk about the Whiskey Marine series next Sunday in more detail. Peter Plagens, in his book The Sunshine Muse, talks about the sixties as a period of contention in Los Angeles art between funk art and what he calls the "L.A. Look," which is [Edward] Ruscha, [Jim] Dine, [Larry] Bell, [Craig] Kauffman--the plastic technogloss, technofetish kind of thing. Were you aware of there being at that time, in the sixties, of there being struggle for market, or a struggle for audience, between assemblage work, funk art work, and the polish-plastic kind of work that the--and the neo-Pop Art?

WAGNER: Yeah, well, I never paid much interest to it because I wasn't that much interested in Bob [Robert] Irwin, or Kauffman, or Larry Bell. But I liked Larry Bell's early works, and I liked Bob Irwin's early works. I liked all those guys' early work. But they're all in the "syndicate," you know. They're part of the "syndicate," again. There you go, you see. And they were pushing a movement; they were pushing the "Cool School," it was called.

SMITH: Or the L.A. Look is how Plagens refers to it.

WAGNER: They called it the "Fairfax Finish" and the "Fetish Finish" and the "Cool School." It had a lot of different nicknames to it, but it was basically all those guys with the Ferus Gallery; it was the same group.

SMITH: All right.

WAGNER: It was the shock value, basically. Like minimalist: People were so bored with looking at art that they thought it would be a good idea to shock them by doing minimal stuff, like laying boards on the floor or making glass icebergs or things of plastic.

SMITH: But is it a shock? Isn't that stuff less controversial than the stuff that you were doing or--

WAGNER: I didn't even look, it bored me so much. I didn't even realize the fact that it was there, you know. Because I don't come from that kind of a place. It's all right.

SMITH: But something like, say, the L.A. [Los Angeles] Free Press would be promoting more artists like you, the assemblage artists, while the L.A. Times would be more interested in Irwin, Kauffman, and Ruscha. Is that correct?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Is that how you saw it?

WAGNER: Right.

SMITH: So, in a sense, it's the establishment versus the counterculture.

WAGNER: Yeah. Well, you know, at that particular time when all this came into being, that was just before the pop art school, they had to go through some kind of a system. They still think it's alive, these guys; they still believe that there still is a minimalist-- Larry Bell knows better. I think he's gotten out of it. He shows his stuff, but he's not doing that kind of work anymore. He's doing vapor prints from what he used for his dichroic filter glass through the vacuum chamber. I was there the day in Taos in his studio when he developed his first print in the vacuum chamber by taking in the molecular structure of the paper and it turns into a prism. He walked by the print, he had it masked off, so he looked this way and it changes colors like a dichroic filter print. He was so excited, I don't think he ever made another iceberg the rest of his life, because he's got enough of them stored away. Who's going to buy those icebergs? Only museums. Nobody else needs them. Big glass pieces and heavy, beveled-- And architects, they've got enough glass now, I don't think they need those. Architecture today, they're doing some nice buildings, I think, like a few with glass and mirrors. But after all, when did this all start anyway, with Bauhaus or something? Or [Piet] Mondrian? Way back, I think. When the plastic world came in, I think there were different things to do with plastic, I suppose. There's no soul in it for me. I mean, to me it's soulless art. And mechanical. Might as well-- Cold. We were doing our funk and our assemblage over on this side, which would be the dead opposite of what they were doing with all their slick, polished surfaces.

SMITH: Why isn't there room for--

WAGNER: And yet there was a combination between them that worked out. We had the "cool and funk" school, and we had "cool and funk" exhibitions where we used both.

SMITH: Where were those exhibitions?

WAGNER: Oh, I was in a lot of them in different places.

SMITH: In museums?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Which museums?

WAGNER: Well, I remember we had one in Long Beach [Museum of Art]. [Arthur] Secunda put it together. Tony Delap and a lot of people in like it that. Where else was there one? Oh, there was one in Laguna [Beach] in that museum.

SMITH: The way Plagens writes about it, it's as if there was not room for both schools.

WAGNER: Plagens says that? Well, I don't believe much of what he says, anyway. I'm not a great lover of his writing. He's quite destructive. As a matter of fact, he made it a point one time to say that-- Somebody asked him about assemblage and he said, "Well, there isn't any more to say about it. Just close the door."

SMITH: Yeah. Well--

WAGNER: I'm not with him at all on that. I'm a person to perpetuate assemblage; I'm not here to close the door on it. He had a handful of friends and he tried to promote them through the Sunshine Muse. That was basically the whole thing; write a book.

SMITH: Let's discuss a little bit of the paintings. Funeraria, Death of Angel's Flight, Devil's Workshop, To an Unknown Angel, Metamorphoses: they seem--that group of paintings seems very different from the paintings of yours I've seen before. It's like a sudden--

WAGNER: The Metamorphoses and this one--

SMITH: And Devil's Workshop; a sudden change from what you were doing previously, either the Ahora or the Nebraska Speedway [Windmill].

WAGNER: 'Sixty-two?

SMITH: 'Sixty is when-- Devil's Workshop is 1960; Funeraria is 1960.

WAGNER: Yeah. And the other one? What was the Metamorphoses?

SMITH: Metamorphoses is '66, and Unknown Angel is '67.

WAGNER: There was a change there because what I was doing was taking-- Devil's Workshop and some of these are very related to death. Death of Angel's Flight, and Funeraria being a funeral parlor. What happened in the Metamorphoses and these paintings, there's a transition going on that took place with-- That symmetrical painting, like my fetishes that I do now, the Whiskey Marine, are sort of symmetrical icons and not rambling. I did symmetrical assemblage at that time, too. Like Death's Diameter, which is a piece that we don't have here but was in Santa Barbara, about Artaud, the one I did about Antonin Artaud. Same format and shapes as in the Metamorphoses, only it's a piece of assemblage. It was actually the same-- Where here, these were a carryover from my vertical assemblage From the Sea, you know, where I was working more linear shapes.

SMITH: In this case, it seems like your early wall hangings, you're taking the ideas you were working with in painting and transposing them into assemblage.

WAGNER: That's what was happening.

SMITH: But now and around 1960, it's working the other way: The assemblages are the primary inspiration and then you're reinterpreting those ideas into paintings.

WAGNER: Sort of like that.

SMITH: Sort of like that. None of these paintings are nonobjective. They all have a--

WAGNER: They're not nonobjective, no. They all have a narrative of something.

SMITH: But do you expect the person that looks at the painting to be able to intuit that narrative?

WAGNER: Well, like that painting down there, I've even got the tracks of Angel's Flight in it. If they study it a little bit they'll see the old Angel's Flight downtown. The tracks coming down where the cars passed with the white paper flowers on the cross, like in Mexico decorating this cross with tracks. I figured that they'd never put it back when they took it down there. You know. Angel's Flight, it was on Third Street. And I knew they'd never--they said they would. But I painted it at that time when they tore it down. That's why I call it Death of Angel's Flight, because--

SMITH: But what if we took away the name tag, if we just ripped away all the name tags, the titles, and just looked at it?

WAGNER: Well, that's something else again. But I don't have that in mind with my work, basically. I do have a narrative.

SMITH: The Devil's Workshop: what's the narrative in that one?

WAGNER: Well, you can see he's very busy spinning his whole trap and web in here. He's sitting in the middle, almost center, with his tail, and his workshop is all the labyrinths and the tower. It's almost like the Tower of Babel. See, all the arches and doors, and the mesas and cliffs and stairs. It's like a city hanging in the sky practically.

SMITH: In these paintings your palette has changed considerably too, it seems.

WAGNER: Oh, you mean the colors?

SMITH: Yeah, the colors.

WAGNER: Yeah. Sometimes these two are related. In the Mexico period they're dark.

SMITH: Your previous paintings have been much brighter.

WAGNER: The big one. [Ahora]

SMITH: Yeah, the big one.

WAGNER: They were earlier.

SMITH: Much, much brighter and suddenly your paintings become earth colors.

WAGNER: Well, this is the third death-- I'm trying to get through, going through the cycles of being an artist and then being reborn with new work. I'm painting about death in the Nebraska Speedway [series], or something else. I wanted to get that mood of death fixture almost, within the work.

SMITH: Now, is this-- You had been experimenting with abstract expressionism for a while or abstract expressionist forms?

WAGNER: Yeah. These are after those upstairs. Those upstairs are '58. I would call those abstract expressionism. Nebraska Speedway Windmill.

SMITH: What was significant to you about abstract expressionism? What was it that you took out of your study--

WAGNER: Well, when I was into Zen, I guess. It was just don't think; don't have any mind; just do it, you know, action without any reason.

SMITH: That's surrealism as well, of course.

WAGNER: I know. They put [Arshile] Gorky and they put [Jackson] Pollock and they put all these guys as surrealists in books. They're no more surrealists than I am. They put them in there as that.

SMITH: The automatic painting aspect.

WAGNER: The surrealist movement-- They put Pollock in the-- Well, actually what it amounts to is you're just letting it go. Abstract expressionism: letting go and making a huge amount of chaos, walking away from it and coming back and organizing your chaos into a moving thing. So it moves and everything relates.

SMITH: Are you concerned with perception as a subject in your art?

WAGNER: Well, the Nebraska Speedway was definitely a concept of a poor guy that lived in Topanga Canyon near a windmill, named Rod Elger. I think he was one of the first beats that ever was. Somebody gave him five thousand magazines going back to 1897, old Harper's Bazaars, and all these magazines stacked up. He didn't know where to put them; he had them all stacked around his windmill out in the yard. Way up high on the road that went up to his place--it was a dirt road--when they took the magazines up in a truck, the truck wouldn't make it to the top of the hill. So the sheriffs came to remove the blockage, and he released the brakes and the truck ran right over the sheriff and mashed him almost into the ground. [laughter] All this weight.

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO, JANUARY 10, 1987

SMITH: And the sheriff was almost--

WAGNER: Yeah, the other sheriff came up and was going to arrest Rod for having this truck full of magazines running over the sheriff's truck. Well, it wasn't his fault. They didn't know how they were ever going to get the magazines up the hill because they were like this in the truck. Can you imagine that? That's a lot of magazines.

SMITH: So they were all tilted-- They were all in the back of a--

WAGNER: Well, it was a high--it was a ton-and-a-half truck, you know? So Bob [Robert] DeWitt came up the hill; we finally got the whole thing worked out so we could carry all the magazines up, pass them up the hill to each other and stack them up in his yard in front of his windmill. That's when I got thinking, what would happen if we had a north wind in Topanga Canyon and all these magazines were flying all over Topanga Canyon coming down off the Nebraska Speedway Windmill? So all those whites in there are magazines in the wind, you see, and paper flying. And the windmill's in there. You can see the shape if you look, the red windmill. He killed himself up there, incidentally. He jumped off the cliff. He was so depressed one day he jumped off the cliff and died. Rod Elger. And he had a little wagon, a toy red wagon, and he used to drag it down the canyon full of magazines trying to sell magazines to people from his pile. He was an intellectual, completely. And I liked him a lot. He built me-- He left me with a ball of steel like this, scrap iron like this, just tangled scrap iron. And he said, "I'm leaving this with you. This is a self-portrait." That's the way he felt. Like he was tied up like a bunch of iron and steel, tense. That's how the Nebraska Speedway [Windmill] was created, from around that.

SMITH: Now, your Mexican drawings, which are from the same period, are--

WAGNER: Mexican.

SMITH: Mexican. They're very different. There's nothing-- They're very objective; they're very graphic; they're very easy to--

WAGNER: If I'm going to record something like a fiesta, I want it to be a fiesta, and I want to be able to see what I'm recording for future reference. So these drawings are sort of things to work around as a point of departure for using imagery and symbols and remembering all of the-- And the feeling of that fiesta, that I was there. I didn't take a photograph of it because you never would get what you want with a photo. I was inside of the fiesta at night. I drew those when I came back, not there, from what I saw and felt.

SMITH: And you wanted a visual representation of--

WAGNER: Well, I want to be able to recognize the fact that this is a cemetery and not a bakery, and that this one's a fiesta with the dolls of fire, the black forms that they have fireworks on and get under and run all around and they blow up. That's the fiesta of the Virgin of Soledad, with the patron saint, and the procession, and the castillo with the bamboo wheels. And that's the Soledad church with all the Zapotec Indians at night. The same fiesta. The twenty-third of December.

SMITH: How important is draftsmanship to your painting?

WAGNER: To my painting?

SMITH: Yeah, in your paintings.

WAGNER: Well, I don't paint that much anymore, but I never worried about it too much, you know?

SMITH: Back then, in the period of your--

WAGNER: Abstract expression, you don't worry too much about draftsmanship, do you?

SMITH: Not usually, no.

WAGNER: And when they come out of your inner consciousness, it's very hard to sit down and methodically draw out something out of your inner consciousness right off the bat. It evolves on the painting as it comes from the subconscious. The thought and what's inside of you is recorded and passes through your subconscious right out into your hands into the work. It's not restricted by technicalities of drawing on a painting like that. Not this way. It's a different thing if you're making still lifes or landscapes. Then you want them to look real, you have to paint them real. Then you have to worry about the perspective, and the drawings, and the trees, and the flowers and the whatnot for a landscape that you don't need in abstract or impressionist painting.

SMITH: Now, you have a box assemblage called Mexico that you did in '68.

WAGNER: That's also related to these fireworks. Castillos there, the tower. In the drawing-- A wheel is in that assemblage. And that's also a very contemplative piece. A sort of a meditation box. It was done in a series I was working on about-- What's the--what date?

SMITH: 'Sixty-eight.

WAGNER: 'Sixty-eight, right after I got married to Virginia [Copeland Wagner]. I was very much into meditation, with mandalas and whatnot. Sort of a mandala.

SMITH: And a kind of peyote-altar shape to it.

WAGNER: Well, that's at home, the peyote altar. But in the same series. There's a lot of those about-- The film company, the producer, up in Hollywood--

SMITH: FilmFair? You mean FilmFair?

WAGNER: No. I have it [Peyote Altar] in my collection. They have about six or seven pieces in New York. Metromedia [Inc.], in their collection they have these in Hollywood and New York, related pieces to this. They have an incredible collection at Metromedia, one of the best. If you can ever get in to see it.

SMITH: Here [in Mexico] it seems like you're combining Christian and non-Christian motifs.

WAGNER: Well, it's a spiritual piece, but yet it has some humor added in it with that truck flattened out on the bottom. It's like maybe-- In Mexico there are truck drivers and bus drivers and whatnot, they always--first thing they do is they pray before they take off, because usually they go down the mountain at night with no lights, and they coast. And they hope to make it to the bottom, because with the lights off, they save electricity. When the engine's off and they have the lights on, then they're going to wear down the battery, so they shut everything down and coast all the way down the mountain. They start at the top with a prayer to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and when they reach the bottom they stop and they pray for helping them. That truck is sort of a symbol of travel, and it's so flat, you know. It's a wonderful truck. I found it in Quilquilpan in front of a library. It must have been run over a hundred times in Michoacan.

SMITH: Did you ever feel uncomfortable using images and objects and symbols of other cultures of which you were not really a part, you're just an observer?

WAGNER: No. Well, I don't use any symbols to amount to anything like that. I don't use other people's art.

SMITH: But you're using elements of other people's art.

WAGNER: Such as?

SMITH: Well, the fireworks, the folk art.

WAGNER: The fireworks wheel?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: Well, that's off of a total thing. It's nothing different than using a cross from a cemetery or a lamp from there or--

SMITH: But that lamp is part of your culture, and the cross from the cemetery and the fireworks wheel are not part of your culture.

WAGNER: That fireworks wheel is a Castillo, right?

SMITH: Yeah. It's Mexican culture, not North American.

WAGNER: Well, I was in Mexico when I did it. These are found objects from Mexico, not from America, right?

SMITH: But you were exploring non-European--

WAGNER: I wouldn't possibly be able to use any art-- I can't stand to use art, like sculpture made by the Mayans or sculpture-- Any form of anything like that, I couldn't use it; it's too corny, you know.

SMITH: But isn't there an aspect of American artists who are in conflict with their own culture, their own society, they go to a place like Mexico to find a culture which has deeper roots, is more closely connected to the earth and the life cycle, and then in a sense, as some people would argue, rip off elements of that culture--

WAGNER: True.

SMITH: --without returning anything and without--

WAGNER: Well, I'm not interested in that aspect. I could find that wheel in the middle of the dump here, you know. But I just happened to find it in Mexico, and I found all the objects there in Mexico. That's why I call it Mexico, because it is Mexico. Even the lottery tickets on the side are Mexico. There's nothing in there that's not from Mexico. But it has nothing to do with any culture of Mexico. It hasn't got anything to do with Aztecs, Mayans. And I wouldn't use it anyway, because I don't like their images. I don't use other people's sculpture or carved animals or-- That gets pretty kitschy, you know. I'm very careful about what kind of objects I use, that I don't ever come up with a whole good object of some kind of art.

SMITH: But again, in the Topanga area, the beat culture, isn't there a romanticization of non-Western cultures that's in a way kind of exploitative?

WAGNER: Yeah, yeah.

SMITH: Escaping your own society.

WAGNER: But I couldn't possibly use somebody else's culture like that. Because I see so much-- I see boxes and assemblages where they put a figure of a jade owl, for example, or a carved soapstone figure next to something else. I couldn't do that, ever.

SMITH: But in Fetish, aren't you dealing with American Indian religious ideas, artistic ideas?

WAGNER: There's nothing American Indian in there, is there?

SMITH: What about the use of the feathers?

WAGNER: It's piano parts. The feathers have to do with birds, not to do with Indians, do they? And the piano parts, there's nothing in there that-- I don't have any Indian turquoise symbols in there, any of their jewelry, or any of the things that they do.

SMITH: What about the ideas within it? Aren't they relating to-- There's nothing?

WAGNER: I have no idea. It's a fetish.

SMITH: What is a fetish, then?

WAGNER: A fetish is something that is looked upon as-- either held, cherished, loved, worshiped or--what else?-- felt. You can have an obsession with a fetish, can't you?

SMITH: Yeah. Well--

WAGNER: People have shoe fetishes and foot fetishes and silk underwear fetishes. All kinds of fetishes. A fetish is something that you kind of pray to, right?

SMITH: Yeah. In the pre-Christian, pre-monotheistic religions.

WAGNER: But a fetish can also be a rabbit's foot for good luck.

SMITH: It was a place where a spirit dwelled.

WAGNER: Right. It can be something that stuck on the side of an airplane that you pat before you take off to give you a safe trip. There's all kinds of talismans and fetishes.

SMITH: So what are you trying to do in that box Fetish, in the assemblage box Fetish?

WAGNER: That is a fetish.

SMITH: Well, what makes it a fetish?

WAGNER: Because it's not a-- Because of the relationship of the way it is. It's just a fetish. It's got a lot of power objects in it, right?

SMITH: Well, what are power objects?

WAGNER: Well, my power objects are probably different from yours. Bones and feathers and things like [that] are power objects.

SMITH: Okay.

WAGNER: Where to you maybe power objects are something else. More fetishes I've done in this show, or in my other how, where I have lots of fetishes.

SMITH: What makes an object a power object for you?

WAGNER: Something about the way you pick up the object. In the bones and the feathers, there's something that gives you a certain energy through them.

SMITH: Are the shoes in Sir Deauville power objects?

WAGNER: They can be.

SMITH: But are they?

WAGNER: Not to me. They're aesthetically visual.

SMITH: Are the nails in HTG [26], are those power--

WAGNER: Nails are always protective symbols to me.

SMITH: So they are power objects in that.

WAGNER: They're power objects. Like that wheel; it's a very powerful thing.

SMITH: So it's not an aesthetic-- Its physical form makes it a power object, not its aesthetic use.

WAGNER: No, you can't do that. It's an unconscious-- You know, some people can pick up something and they can feel the vibrations within it in their hand, right? Just take them apart, you know. They've got to throw it away.

SMITH: Are the piano parts power objects for you in Two Loves?

WAGNER: Well, it's the fact that I love pianos. I mean, broken pianos, not new ones. I wouldn't want a new one. I used to smash up the new ones: [Octaves's] Piano Brokerage. [laughter]

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: The key to the whole thing, piano keys.

SMITH: But, say in the period in your trip to Mexico, the period when you went to Arizona, I mean, it's a long period of your life, the manufactured boxes such as Mexico and the Fetish, the assemblages, are you looking for roots, roots to replace the ones that you had?

WAGNER: The ones I had here?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: That's all I have left of certain things. For periods.

SMITH: Yeah. At those periods of time, was it part of a search for a replacement?

WAGNER: Well, there are, but-- Oh, yeah, someplace. But I could-- That painting there [Squaw Fight], that could never be replaced, could it?

SMITH: No.

WAGNER: That was done a long time ago. Even the boards on it are nice, the frame. That's the original boards I put on it. That one down there, it's a very powerful painting, the Funeraria. I remember the funeral parlors in Mexico where the coffins are all like stairs inside of the building. You just go in and buy one and take it home. You don't have to take it to the mortician.

SMITH: But in terms of your art, in terms of your lifestyle, in terms of the kind of culture that was being created in places like Topanga, were you so disgruntled, disgusted with the culture of the United States that you were looking to import from other places such as Mexico, elements to build a new culture?

WAGNER: Where? Here?

SMITH: No, in the United States, here.

WAGNER: You mean the comparison? Or I don't understand. I'm not hearing you very well.

SMITH: Oh. When you went to Mexico, were you looking at the elements of that culture and of Indian cultures and of Asian cultures with the view of finding things that were more human to you, more powerful to you, that you would then bring back to the United States and use as elements to build a new culture here? Are you following me?

WAGNER: Yeah I do, but--

SMITH: Is there a critique of American culture, you know, a turning away from American culture as you saw it? Not becoming Mexican, but looking for things that then could be understood and fit in here.

WAGNER: Well, that's a difficult one. Because when I-- When you go to Mexico, you don't expect anything to be like the United States at all; it just doesn't exist. Nothing's the same. In Mexico you feel a lot freer about things. You can walk where you want to, and-- Free as nature's child. The people are friendly, everybody helps you, and there's so much beauty. The towns and the villages are old, and there's an integration. You never find anything in Mexico like you find here in L.A. I don't think you find anything in the whole world like you find in L.A. It's the worst-looking city in the whole world, I think. But there's no reason to bring anything from Mexico back to here except your own mind. When you come back-- When I go to Mexico, I live. Every minute. Because there's so much to see and so much to feel and do, and walk. The architecture and everything about it is European. I come back here, this is just a place to sit down and do your work and not become related to much of anything, because there's not much here to be related to. There's no roots left in this town; they've all been pulled out. The only thing that will probably put the roots back in this city is that half of Mexico's come to L.A. Right now they're bound down by the immigration and whatnot, but if they could ever get loose from all their hangups, I think that L.A. would be a pretty good place if they could bring some of their culture over here. They try, slowly, to set up restaurants and things, but there's too much in the way, too much garbage here. And too much mix--races, and all these things that are going on. When you're in Mexico, there's only Mexicans. When you're here, there's everybody. That's the difference. So you have all the cultures here. You only have one to worry about in Mexico, it's Mexican. There's no other culture. A few Chinese and a handful of Germans, but they don't get into anything except to run maybe Chinese laundries. But you know you're in a different place immediately; all you have to do is cross the border and you know you're out of the United States. It's a show, Mexico. Somebody wrote a book once called Don't Stop the Show, just about Mexico. And it's true, it is a show. The whole thing is a big performance, a big happening, a wonderful assemblage. You never find that here. It's done. This place is finished, industrialized to the point where it's dirty and corrupt and a war zone-- no love. Mexico has love. But when the Mexicans come here that have been so pure by the forests and by the nature and by all of the things they've lived with, they come here and they get contaminated. In order to make more money, the next thing you know, they fall right into the rest of the system. But when you go there as an artist, and you look at it from that aspect and from what you can do with it as an artist, how you feel about it-- I know guys that go to Mexico and all they do is paint abstract paintings. They don't do anything else. They don't even know what's going on in Mexico. It's just a place to go to work. And there's other guys who come back feeling something. Well, I'm not going to come back feeling--myself, personally-- I'm not going to come back painting men under cacti with big hats, and deserts, and that typical American idea of what a Mexican is, the land of manana. I'm not about to do those things. What I went down there for was to work and to feel. And whatever came out down there was-- I didn't go down there with a prearranged idea of what was going to happen. It just happens. Let it happen. Same way in Europe. No matter where you go. I go empty-handed and start like I've never-- I have nothing. No prearranged ideas. Then you can grow. Otherwise you're going to be stuck in the same pattern forever, you'll never get out of it. You'll be doing the same thing in twenty years that you're doing now, you know. That's not very interesting.

SMITH: Did you study Jungian psychology much? Were you interested in that? We discussed [Carl] Jung a little bit before, but were you interested in universal symbols?

WAGNER: Jungian psychology? Yeah, I liked it, because it was very much related to Navaho myth and to Indian-- I mean India India--and Taoism, Buddhism, and alchemy and all of those kind of symbols that make art, you know. As far as looking at it from the aspect of psychological diagnosis, I could care less. I like the dream state, but what the dream was telling me I have no idea. I was only working from the dream like I was using the symbols and the Images. I wasn't psychoanalyzing anything, and I wouldn't know how to psychoanalyze anything. But the dream state was important because it really helps to-- It gives you a lot of things in dreams that you would never possibly get otherwise. But Jung had all the symbols. He was a man of the cosmic consciousness, and of cosmic duality, and universal harmony and all of the four directions, and these things that are comparative to all the other groups of the primitives. So everything ties together with that. They're in here, all of them: [pointing to individual pieces in the exhibit] the quaternity, the quaternity, the quaternity, the quaternity, the quaternity, the quaternity, the quaternity. In every piece almost, there's that universal harmony. Or the movement of the circle on that one, and that went along with the quaternity. Oh, and there's the circle. [pointing to another piece] Circle. They all relate.

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE, JANUARY 18, 1987

SMITH: Gordon, we're at the Edge Gallery today and this-- What is the name of the series of works that's here at the Edge?

WAGNER: The Whiskey Marine.

SMITH: Where did that name come from?

WAGNER: Well, basically, I got the name by using-- A lot of this work comes from along the coast at the sea, and marine types of pieces found in the ocean. There are two ways to look at that title: One is whiskey marine, which is whisk it up off the beach, or wiskey marine, either way. What it actually amounts to is I was very fond of these objects that I kept finding on the beach, and they projected a whole new set of imagery into my head about these pieces.

SMITH: How many pieces are in the show?

WAGNER: I believe there are forty-one.

SMITH: In what period of time did you make these?

WAGNER: Over a period of the last two years.

SMITH: Only in the last two years.

WAGNER: [At] Angel's Gate [Cultural Center] in San Pedro, in my studio.

SMITH: Where did the materials come from, again?

WAGNER: Well, 90 percent came from along the beaches along San Pedro, from Cabrillo Beach and White Point, and some from a few other beaches. And a few around the streets of San Pedro. Along the sea and out of the-- They get very well polished, and they turn so many different wonderful, polychrome textures being in the water, then thrown up on the reefs to dry, and then they go out again, and they get spun around some more until the wood really takes on beautiful textures. That is, for the objects themselves, they're among the seaweed on the dry beach. Some pieces have probably been lying there for years, and I wasn't-- It's hard to say because they were so weathered.

SMITH: Did you alter the pieces at all?

WAGNER: No, I haven't altered anything. They're pure, from the found object.

SMITH: The colors are the same?

WAGNER: The colors are exactly the same. I haven't altered anything. I didn't paint any of them, they're just-- That's why I like them, because they're unaltered and because they are just the way I found them. The juxtaposition of a few of these objects relates to the whole, not with any preconceived idea.

SMITH: The series as a whole or the whole each--

WAGNER: The series as a whole as well as each piece.

SMITH: So did you sand any of the objects?

WAGNER: Nothing.

SMITH: Nothing? Absolutely nothing?

WAGNER: Nothing. Nothing is sanded; nothing is painted or touched up.

SMITH: What about pieces like the Polaroid; that's in--

WAGNER: No, that Polaroid was--

SMITH: You didn't rip that or--

WAGNER: That's the way I found the Polaroid.

SMITH: Shot at Twenty Fathoms.

WAGNER: And I didn't cut the Polaroid; it was just like that. I just fastened it into the back of this wonderful contraption. The camera mechanism was right from the sea there, the Polaroid was on the sea.

SMITH: So in a sense these are like assemblage drawings in a way. They came together--bits and pieces came together very quickly, very sketchlike.

WAGNER: They don't exactly go together quickly, because sometimes each piece that I bring back often relates to four or five pieces that I've found. It's the exact-- I know when it happens. I think that a good way to explain these pieces, like with any piece of creativity, it's like you're thrown out on an island, right, and there's nothing on the island that's bare, and that's what the piece is. You have to do the best you can with what's on the island in order to create something from it. Each one of these pieces is sort of an island in the beginning, with nothing on it, and all of a sudden one piece relates to another in some sort of an alchemical or magical way until it is a proper composition.

SMITH: How do these pieces relate-- You had a piece in the other show at San Pedro, Fetish. How do these pieces relate to the kind of work you were doing at the time you did Fetish, which was in the late sixties, early seventies?

WAGNER: The piece Fetish. I'm trying to remember which piece that was. Was that the--in a box?

SMITH: It was in a box. It had feathers.

WAGNER: With a black circle?

SMITH: Yes.

WAGNER: These would relate very well to that piece, a little bit different time, 1972 to '84, '85. But there is a similarity with the objects and their juxtaposition at that time, yeah.

SMITH: Well, even the choice of the word "fetish," which reappears in some of the pieces here, implies something. We discussed that a little bit last time, but--

WAGNER: What is a fetish?

SMITH: Well, no. What makes you decide to call one piece a fetish over another?

WAGNER: Well, because a fetish is actually an object of power, right? Or an icon. It is beyond-- It has a certain spiritual, mystical quality to it, and some of my pieces acquire that, unknowing to my--the beginning. [tape recorder off]

SMITH: Well, since you did the work, that earlier work, you converted to Catholicism. How has that changed the kind of imagery that you're working with in these kinds of pieces and in your relationship with, quote unquote, "power objects"?

WAGNER: Actually, I don't think it's changed my imagery at all from the very beginning until right now. No, I don't believe so.

SMITH: Don't you look-- If you look at the object and you say that it has power, don't you think about that in a different way, then?

WAGNER: As a power object?

SMITH: Yes. In the sixties you were involved in a paganistic, animistic kind of approach to--

WAGNER: Well, I think that the icons of the Christian church are power images, just a different sort of power image. But I have symbology in here related to Christian symbology, but I had it in my early works before I ever converted to Catholicism, when I was into Buddhism and Taoism. So I don't think-- I have crosses; I had crosses in my works that were back in the fifties, and earlier even. I can't really see that that would be a-- They're not good-luck pieces, if that's what you mean, superstitious pieces; I don't believe in superstition anymore. I used to carry rocks and stones in my pockets and rely on those kinds of energies, fetishes, that kind of fetish. I don't do that anymore. I used to; if I had a cup of coffee with some bubbles on the top, I'd get out my rubbing stone and I would pray for money coming. But now I don't do that; if I get bubbles on my cup, that's fine. I don't have that image for it anymore, and I don't think about it from that aspect. I've kind of grown out of the aid of those kinds of images to control my life. I have much more freedom now than I had then.

SMITH: In the pieces you juxtapose, and in some ways create equivalencies between, the cross, the mandala, the arrow, the dangling feathers, and that's something that you've been working with for a long time. But is there a difference between it in this series--

WAGNER: A long time; way, way back. Yeah.

SMITH: --in terms of those juxtapositions and how they worked?

WAGNER: Yeah, exactly. I've never tied it together with anything to do with it, any more than the universal harmony of the quaternity or bringing all of the energies of the earth together in harmony and beauty and love.

SMITH: Would you consider these pieces religious art?

WAGNER: No, I wouldn't call them that at all. I would call them poetic. They're using objects instead of words for poetry for a certain essence of a moment. It's like writing a small poem with maybe a few lines; the objects would be the lines of the poem.

SMITH: Well, let's explore that a little bit with some of the particular pieces. What about Hook and Eye?

WAGNER: The Hook and Eye. Well, it's obvious that there's a wonderful hook in that piece. That's a pun; I use a lot of humor in my work. This happens to be an eye with a hook on a very, very beautifully organized fetish background with the feathers and the square nails. No, that has leather, but the patina. I couldn't resist it because the two integrate so well together, a hook and an eye. Actually, literally an eye. It's a pun, but it's a little piece of poetry.

SMITH: And The Undersea Log?

WAGNER: The Undersea Log is probably one of the most magical pieces that I've done, due to the fact that the color, the shape-- And the little book that's defaced by being under the water, it could be a log to anything. And the almost decapitated magnifying glass would be very difficult to read through on the top. The textures of that piece-- It's one of my favorite pieces in the whole exhibition. Undersea Log. It's so simple, and it says so much.

SMITH: What about Icon to Great Railroads?

WAGNER: That piece was done with the idea of using some of the old things that I'd found along the railroad tracks, like the dynamite--the caps that they used to use on the rails to stop the train. They'd run over it so that it told the engineer where the end was. Those old cap boxes and my car bands coming down that they'd put around the boxcar doors to seal it. A lot of images from freight trains and railroads, which I've always loved anyway. To build this as an icon to great railways, because there's different ones in there that are marked in there on the car bands, plus a few hanging blocks with numbers-- All that gave me a feeling, I'd say, of railroads when I did it. I could project where I'd picked these up on the tracks and the way it was when they used those old caps. These boxes are probably a hundred years old, eighty years old.

SMITH: But there you've superimposed the star, the mandala--

WAGNER: Yes.

SMITH: --the dangling fetish.

WAGNER: Yeah, right.

SMITH: Not exactly a cruciform.

WAGNER: No. It's back to the fetish and images of that again, back to icons. These things are very powerful objects, you know. Very powerful. They live one at a time or in a group as a family.

SMITH: Then you have something which seems like it's social commentary, which is unusual for you: Shot at Twenty Fathoms.

WAGNER: That piece is really a powerful piece, with the Polaroid photograph that has nothing to do with twenty fathoms; I think it's a bicycle leaning against somebody's porch. It was out of-- Whoever took the photo must have been taking it standing on their head or on their side some way, because it doesn't relate at all to the total picture. Then by the time the sea got ahold of it and ate off part of the emulsion-- It was framed within a wonderful camera mechanism that I found right there below Angel's Gate. It's all mounted on an old postcard album of leather, with a keyhole and a few pencils and things jammed into it, and other random things, bits of things, and a hypodermic needle sticking out of it. It is not really a social comment, but it is a very dynamic piece of work. It's really a-- It's almost an icon to chaos, because under the sea, if you were twenty fathoms down, it's quite chaotic.

SMITH: When you use the term chaos and you include a hypodermic needle, aren't you in effect making a social comment?

WAGNER: I hadn't intended it to be; the thing actually just worked in there beautifully. It happened to be needed. It was a good object for it, but it has nothing to do with a statement as a whole.

SMITH: But it's part of the statement as a whole, central to it.

WAGNER: Yes, it has some relation, but it could be very much diametrically opposed to the whole situation too.

SMITH: Maybe. And Cabrillo Beach Memories?

WAGNER: Now, that is another jewel that I picked up all in one day on Cabrillo Beach, right after the Fourth of July. I don't know how I found all those objects and the board and everything at once, but they all fit. The only thing I didn't find down there was the belt clamp, old engine belt clamp, the rusty teeth--the only thing I didn't find off the beach there. But that piece is another powerful piece. Cabrillo Beach is in San Pedro, right below Angel's Gate.

SMITH: To what degree do you re-form, not re-form physically, but re-form spiritually, the objects that you use, their meaning, the imminent meaning within them. Do they retain the feeling that they had when you find them, or is that something that comes out of the composition for you?

WAGNER: Re-form?

SMITH: Change the significance of the objects.

WAGNER: I don't really change the significance of the objects. The objects are still there, they just are in a different juxtaposition. As I mentioned one time before, they're all old actors and I've given them a new theater. You know, they've been rejected.

SMITH: At the same time you're doing these, you're also working on boxes.

WAGNER: Well, it's very funny about these pieces, because I had given up this sort of work. I was just into boxes, and I hadn't been doing any assemblage of this sort of thing at all.

SMITH: When did you give it up?

WAGNER: Oh, about 1972, '71, around in there. I stopped making found object assemblages like these wall pieces. When I took my studio at Angel's Gate to work in, I had no intention of doing anything like this at all. I used to go down to the beach and go swimming, and I'd walk along the beach, and I'd see these old weathered things. And I'd say, "Oh, I don't need those anymore, I don't do that sort of stuff." And I'd leave them. But one day I found three or four beautiful pieces of wood, and I said, "I can't throw this stuff away, this is incredible. It's so beautiful." So I brought them back up to my studio and I just left them there; I didn't think much about it. I looked at them, and all of a sudden I had this energy come to me: why don't you make some small assemblages? After all, it will interfere with my boxes, but I can build the assemblages in my studio in San Pedro and build my boxes in my studio in Pasadena, then there'd be no conflict between the two. So every day for two years, well, not every day, whenever I went to San Pedro, I started finding these things. Then I found myself walking in the streets of wherever I was, like walking down the railroad tracks in Pasadena, walking someplace, and I'd find things that related to the things that I was using there. So I got more excited as I went on, and all of a sudden I'd constructed about-- I've done about fifty-five, I think. There are forty-one in this exhibition. Fifty-five or sixty. The others were sold.

SMITH: Each piece then-- You were producing a tremendous amount.

WAGNER: I couldn't stop. I was really going. I had a whole run on these things. I was filling up the walls of my studio; I had to make a second level to hang them on, there were so many. [laughter] I was excited with what was happening because they took on a culmination of my earlier works and where I had been. By the time I had been through all the earlier works and left it for a long time, I was-- I already knew what to do. So by getting away from it for awhile, they became much stronger. That series is really a culmination of a whole lot of years of working in assemblage to get this far. And each composition is-- Artists, they say, "Your composition worked so good. You can take this sort of stuff and nail it to a board, and it doesn't look good, you know." I have no power over how it's there; it comes through me, through the channel; it lays it there for me. I do not judge, it just is. I try to get the thing, the essence, as pure as possible with the least amount of objects.

SMITH: Do these objects remind you of events and places in your past, in your personal history?

WAGNER: Actually, no. They remind me of places I haven't ever been yet, maybe will someday go to. Because I visualize objects that I would like to find, out someplace. I go out with the idea that I'm going to find that object sometime. I'll be walking down a beach or out in the desert, and I'm so tired of walking. I have to go another half-mile and maybe I'll find that object that I'm looking for. Ninety percent of the time I won't, but every now and then if I go another twenty feet, there's the object that I want. It's always been that way. Even when I was a kid, I used to have that feeling, that I had to go a little farther to find it. Because I always looked; I always had one eye on the ground and one eye straight up.

SMITH: "Places that you would like to go to," could you explain that a little bit more?

WAGNER: Well, I don't know where they are, because I've never been there. I can't explain them, but they must be.

SMITH: The playing cards-- In a sense, the playing cards are a relatively new addition to your vocabulary, your visual vocabulary. When did you start getting interested in playing cards?

WAGNER: Using them in my works, about 1971 or '72.

SMITH: Was it here that that interest developed, or was it in Europe?

WAGNER: I think basically it was in Europe that I found that I enjoyed playing cards as an art form.

SMITH: As an art form, not as-- Do they also speak to you as a form of fortune-telling?

WAGNER: No. I'm not the slightest bit interested in playing cards as a game. And Tarot never-- I had the Tarot given to me just once, and that was in 1968. He told me that I would never have to worry about things. I'd work all my life. I'd never have a lot of money, but I would get along and things would be fine. So I left it at that; I never wanted to be canceled out into a new Tarot fortune. [laughter] I left it that way. It was on the good side. The symbols of the Tarot I like. I mean, I like the art of the Tarot cards, and I like the art of the old cards. The Belgian cards are beautiful cards, and the Flemish. I like the French cards. I've got whole collections of cards, a box full of different kinds of decks of cards, from Russia, from France, from Mexico and the Spanish. I've got crooked cards and round cards, every shape of cards. I like old cards that have been-- The most exciting thing that ever happened to me was one night I was coming out of a program in Gent, Belgium, where Virginia was the star of the performance. All of us came outside and laying in the street, the wet street, somebody had lost a whole deck of cards, and they were all stretched out there getting wet across the street. They were all these wonderful old face cards. And my friends, about three or four of us, we went out there and started picking the cards up out of the street. I said, "I don't need the numbers, I just want the face cards." They were all wet and soaked, but they were great cards. They symbolize chance to me, cards. That's what-- That's part of what this is all about, the chance. You're actually, when you're putting one of these together, it's like you're playing cards. You're laying down this object, and you're laying this one down, and the chance of it working, the spontaneity of the movement, and the chance. The cards are that way, an aleatory situation. Like the way these old ones-- Wonderful cards. There's not one in there you can relate to as a certain kind of card because they're defaced. These over here, they have a certain-- That joker back there, the way it's all bent and twisted and three dimensional.

SMITH: Which piece is that?

WAGNER: The Joker.

SMITH: The Joker, right.

WAGNER: And these over here.

SMITH: Icon to a Queen?

WAGNER: Yes. The card, like-- I like jokers because they're the fool. And the fool can either be the spiritual person, the highest energy, or it can be the bottom. Like clowns and like kosharies in Indian dances, where they mess everybody up and play tricks and clown. But they are also the spiritual leaders of the Hopi, and all of these different groups, the Santo Domingo Indians. They're the joker, or the fool; the fool is the name. The fool was always the man who kept the kings and queens happy, the jesters in the courts.

SMITH: Now, you've said before, in fact frequently, that you could have made your work at any time, your work is timeless. What do you mean by that?

WAGNER: Well, what I mean by timelessness is that it doesn't identify to any period or era or epic. My work comes from inside. I'm not protesting against blacks; I'm not protesting against Mexicans; I'm not interested in wars, protesting against wars. That's time-full. A lot of artists are protesting, making social statements. My work is not social statements. My work is beyond that in context. This piece could have been made a hundred years ago, or it could be made a hundred years from now.

SMITH: But it couldn't have been made a hundred years ago, no artist would have made it a hundred years ago.

WAGNER: But it could have been.

SMITH: But it couldn't have been.

WAGNER: Why not?

SMITH: Because it wasn't in the artists' vocabulary. They didn't even think in those terms.

WAGNER: How do you know that it wasn't? How do you know it wasn't? We don't know that vocabulary, we only know about-- If I say, "Who are the artists in the United States today?" Well, there's Claes Oldenburg, there's Jasper Johns, there's [Robert] Rauschenberg, there's Jackson Pollock, there's [Willem] de Kooning. But what about all the other artists that are back in the hills someplace making things that nobody has ever heard of, never recognized? They're not in national magazines; they're not in the syndicated art world. They could have been making these things. I'm making them; nobody knows about the fact that I'm making them even, in the syndicated art world. They don't know about it. They'll discover these things someday. They can discover another person that could be doing these sort of things. There were people like [William Michael] Harnett and those type of people who painted these sorts of things, even before the turn of the century, they painted them. And there were people who were making objects, I'm sure, because 1882, that isn't too far back: that was just before, during, the time of the Decadents, right? Yet there were people buried in cellars in Holland and Belgium and these places, they could be building things like this, very simply, but nobody ever discovered them. And the family [might have] said, "Oh, that bunch of junk; nobody wants that," so they burned it up for firewood. They lost it.

SMITH: But, in those pieces like Cruciform and Skyrocket, don't you think that besides the shapes in there, you're dealing with forms that were developed in the twentieth century, a kind of approach to visual style, to shape and color.

WAGNER: That's possible, yeah, sure. But I'm not making any social statements with them, and if they're shown in a hundred years, I'm not making any social statement. It's the same then as it is now, right? I'm not making a statement, or--oh, well, that's old hat, that's an era. Right? Any abstract form of art does not tie itself down to a social statement.

SMITH: But don't you think--

WAGNER: The dadaist and the cubist: The dadaist made social statements, many, but a lot of them didn't. Certainly not [Marcel] Duchamp, certainly not [Francis] Picabia. They didn't make social statements. They made inside-- Their only social statement was to protest, because it was so ridiculous at that time that people thought they were crazy, and that's what they wanted them to think. But we've outgrown that. We've accepted neo-dada. It comes out of the same genre.

SMITH: Doesn't that indicate, then, that what makes something part of time is not simply the social comment but the artistic language that is used too?

WAGNER: Yeah, and the imagery that you use.

SMITH: We look at El Greco differently than his contemporaries looked at him. We see things in his paintings that--

WAGNER: That's right, but El Greco is timeless. That's why he is still here. Things that are dated and put away and brought out for a certain period, like deco art [Art Deco], and that sort of-- And minimalist, that'll all die out; that'll all be gone.

SMITH: That doesn't have any social comment, so it's timeless as well.

WAGNER: I think it has very much of a social content. It ties in with all the architecture of our day, which is just like deco art. The deco art furniture and the deco art sculpture of that time, deco art buildings, they all are in a certain period, so they are tied into the forties, right? But surrealism and dada, they're beyond that because it's from the inside. We're not protesting about something. I'm not protesting at all about anything I ever do. I could care less about what the people are doing out there as far as protesting. If I want to protest, I'll do it, go and physically do it, not get my art involved in it, right. Because then you tie yourself down and limit yourself. Classical music certainly is not social protest. Like Beethoven was not a social protestor in his music, or Mozart. They're timeless; they're classical. But if I get into some of the other--rock singers today, they're doing nothing but protesting. That's time-full. Only now, and then it's gone. Some of the best ones will withstand the loss. There will always be a Bob Dylan and there will always be the Beatles, the ones who were the originators and gave it the poetry of that time. Dylan did a lot of time-full things, but he was good in that era, before everybody came along. Now we're into the punk, that's protest for certain, right? A lot of other new sounds are not protests. Some of the sounds are pure. I certainly wouldn't call [Iannis] Xenakis or [Krzysztof] Penderecki, or any of those contemporary composers-- They are timeless. You can listen to them in fifty years, a hundred years, they'll sound like they do today. There won't be an era. It's the same with artists. My art is not making social statements, and it's not interested in today. These things are for people who aren't even born yet. We just wait and let the world go by.

SMITH: You don't think that even things that reflect the inner-self are time-centered or time-full, that the self is part of time?

WAGNER: Indirectly, I'm sure. But not enough to bring out that sort of energy and use it and transfer it from your inner consciousness to something that's time-full. It has to remain timeless, to me. Not to everybody. There's lots of artists who do time-full things, great hordes of them. People love those artists because it reminds them of when they were young, and they get these landscapes, "Oh, I used to live near a place like that." And the pretty barns and the oceans and the pretty farms and the countrysides.

SMITH: Who are you talking about?

WAGNER: Andrew Wyeth and people like this. He's got a universal appeal because he ties it down to the way it is, and the way those people remember it. So it's tied to time. His pieces are not timeless. [René] Magritte is a timeless artist; he was always timeless, the images he used and the situation he put them in.

SMITH: Don't you think that somebody could argue that those fantasies are very particular to the period that he lived in? Somebody who lived a hundred years before would not have imagined those things, or a hundred years later?

WAGNER: Not at all, because the only thing he uses in his imagery is his own house, his own living room, and his own windows for his casements to paint. What he puts in the house has nothing to do with the images around him.

SMITH: No, but couldn't those things that he puts in the house--the juxtapositions that he creates are the juxtapositions, fantasies, that could only exist in the first part of the twentieth century? That could be argued.

WAGNER: He's a twentieth-century man. I imagine he paints what he wants to use as the images. But locomotives coming out of fireplaces, like in the painting Time Transfixed, are not exactly seen every day of the week, you know. And those sorts of things. God up over the top of a freight yard with all the trains below, you know. The picture of God in the sky with all of the freight trains in the Brussels railroad station, that is not exactly twentieth century.

SMITH: No? How about his horns on fire and all of these sorts of things? But he was a twentieth-century artist.

WAGNER: No.

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO, JANUARY 18, 1987

SMITH: I wanted to ask you if in your Navaho paintings you used reflections of Indian myths, or Indian myth figures, like The Yei-bi-chai [also known as The Navaho Night Chant]. In this series, the Whiskey Marine Series, do you use any Indian mythical materials?

WAGNER: Yes, I might say there were a few pieces that would relate to that era, like when I use feathers and bones. Some of the actual colors of my works relate to some of the old kachinas, the superhuman beings, the dolls, and the colors of the living kachinas. The way they actually made their own dyes and paints, they almost achieved that patina on their masks, in their dances, and whatnot. I've always been fascinated by that patina within the American Indian art and the Eskimo, and all. Even the primitive arts of the Africans, some of them had the color. I think there's probably an unconscious relationship of why I like patina that would be related to that period in my life, because I was very fascinated by the old masks, old Indian artifacts of that time, which I think is a very surrealist image. At one time, André Breton, like so many surrealists, [was a] collector of the old American Indian-- They loved American Indian art. At one time, when he lived in America, he gave a tour of about twenty-five colleges on American Indians, all in French, which is a surrealist act in itself in the United States. [laughter] Power objects often tend to be that finish. As for some of the feathers that hang below and the turquoise pieces, little turquoise stones, symbols of, well, of the sun and the moon, or the yin and the yang, or whatever you want to use. The confrontation of the mating of the hook in the wood over there, it's almost the moon into the earth.

SMITH: Metamorphosis?

WAGNER: Of the peyote ceremony. The way the hook is actually relating and going right into the crescent. The sun went right into the crescent of the moon in harmony. Looking at this exhibition and viewing it, there's, to me, seeing it like this, it has a complete harmony within it. I feel peacefulness in this exhibition, not being jammed with high-chrome colors and slick, shiny, brilliant minimal surfaces. So there's a harmony that I can only achieve from that inner self, which comes through all of my various and sundry spiritual directions unknowingly.

SMITH: What about Taoist or Buddhist imagery, do you use any of that still? Has that continued to--

WAGNER: Well, not actually from the aspect of anything that they've ever used, but there is a-- Same thing, the Taoist and the Navaho-- Taoism and the teachings of the Navaho are almost parallel. After all, they came from the same part of the world. It's almost the same philosophy. So I would almost say they could be related to the Tao.

SMITH: But in terms of Tao imagery--

WAGNER: No, because I'm not interested, not even interested in the Tao imagery in the sense of Buddhism and all of the refined art of that time.

SMITH: When you use Indian motifs, do they reflect a particular Indian group, or is it Indian in general, Indian myths, that takes--

WAGNER: Well, I don't have any Indian motifs in this whole exhibition. I have fragments of the Indian that came probably from my living there, but nothing designed with the Indian in mind in this exhibition.

SMITH: What about the Mexican images that you used to work with? Are any of these pieces reflecting on your past interest in Mexico?

WAGNER: Yeah, I would say that there would be. Maybe like this piece that you're looking at right here. The Letter Edged in Black, with the flower and the cross and the energy-- The heels on each end of the cross with the sole in the center, the cross is the sole. And the hands-- And the heel on each end. That would sort of relate to Mexican imagery. There's a possibility that the one over here with the bones would. It's called the Soup Bone Fetish. And certainly the one around the corner that's called Death Hand, where the hand and the bone and death, and then the skull and crossbones button on the top, would all be related back to the death period, I would think, in Mexico. It has certainly none of the Mexican colors as far as the red, yellow, green, the primaries.

SMITH: What about La Reyna, that one piece?

WAGNER: La Reyna?

SMITH: Yeah, La Reyna.

WAGNER: That is a really good icon, that's straight icon with the--actually using the metal retablo from the Virgin of Guadalupe in it. She is, after all, the Queen of Mexico. And the spines, the espinas they call them in Mexico, the pointed, pronged-looking things that I use in other pieces sometimes, those are actually from around the beaches of San Blas, in the state of Nayarit, where the Coras and the Huicholes wear those around their skirts and dresses. The Mayans used to prick themselves with those to do penance and pull blood from themselves. That's what they were for: during Easter, the penitentes prick themselves with those thorns that I've used in some of my pieces. They would relate to Mexico.

SMITH: This is called the Whiskey Marine Series, and it does relate to the San Pedro and Palos Verdes beaches. Do any of these pieces provoke memories from your youth when you were a sailor, a lifeguard, a beach person, the amusement-zone person?

WAGNER: Yes, the Bath House, Hap's Bath House. I remember all those old slats of boards and wood where people changed to go to the sea. They had these old slats in different colors. That's a very beautiful piece, Hap's Bath House, because I've used these wonderful textures just for that one. I would say that this piece right directly here, the Penny Arcade, Monument to the Penny Arcade, certainly ties into my youth because that money changer, the coin changer, was my money changer when I worked in the penny arcade.

SMITH: Yours personal or one that you saved--

WAGNER: My personal money changer, yes. It really got beaten up and got lost and damaged and rusted. I found it, with parts of the container-- it's only got one in it now. Even the pennies that are in it are from that era, the twenties. It's a monument to penny arcades.

SMITH: What about something like Cabrillo Beach Memories? Does that resonate in terms of your personal memories?

WAGNER: Not particularly. Not particularly. It was just that day. It was an event; it was right after the Fourth of July, and there were a lot of good things to find.

SMITH: And then the House of Willem?

WAGNER: That's a very poetic thing, isn't it? It actually is very random; everything is just there, things are stuck into it just like they all flew in and hit it. It was a very random piece.

SMITH: But you do have a particular interest in things Dutch and Flemish, don't you? It triggers something.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Then there's the juxtaposition of the arrow.

WAGNER: The arrow and the hanging things, and pens and pencils jammed through it. It's real poetry, at least to me.

SMITH: What about Christian imagery? You use it, of course, in La Reyna, the crosses everywhere. Are there some pieces that are more religious than others, where the poetic statement is a religious statement?

WAGNER: No, I don't believe so. I haven't considered that.

SMITH: So these are purely secular.

WAGNER: It would be purely subconscious. That Cruciform and Skyrocket happened to work well together against those textures. And this, as I say, this one here. Letter Edged in Black, with the cross-- I had received a letter edged in black, have you? Years ago, they used to, when someone died, they mailed a letter-- If you got a letter edged in black, it meant that somebody died. You opened it up and they announced it. Those are hard to find, letters edged in black.

SMITH: You just found it on the beach, that particular envelope?

WAGNER: Yeah, and a bunch of junk. Somebody's civilization thrown away. The [Soup] Bone Fetish, that bone, I thought maybe it was an animal bone, I mean a human bone or maybe something to do with a sea creature. My friend in San Pedro, John Olguin, who's the head of the Cabrillo [Marine] Museum, he told me that during the war, '47, '46, '45, when the battleships came into San Pedro, they used to throw all the meat carcasses over the side. All of the creatures would devour the meat, and the bones would float to the top. He said that at one time Cabrillo Beach had over 8,000 beef bones stacked up on the beach like that. That was one of the beef bones that I found maybe two years ago. It was an incredible bone. That's how it got the title Soup Bone Fetish; they were soup bones, they boiled them, you see.

SMITH: Is there any significance to the heel at the top?

WAGNER: No, in that case, the heel just happens to be a beautiful image on the top that works with the tap on the bottom, the steel tap from the shoe hanging below it. Just a nice relationship.

SMITH: Now, when you work with things like this, with junk, throwaways-- You say that your work is timeless, and I think-- You know, putting the content aside, when you work with these types of materials, isn't what's happening also a meditation on time, on history, on the things that preceded us?

WAGNER: You mean if you actually analyze the object and where it relates to time?

SMITH: An assemblage is an assemblage by what it's constructed out of. In addition to the poetic statement that it's making, isn't it also a statement about time and change in our society?

WAGNER: Well, if you wanted to look at it that way and take these assemblages piece by piece and take them apart and look at each object you could relate to time. I don't think I have anything in this exhibition that's newer than maybe, oh, maybe twenty-five years old. Most everything is older. I'm not interested in plastics or any of the new shapes or images. They're all older, older objects completely.

SMITH: But you do use plastics in Shot at Twenty Fathoms, the hypodermic needle is--

WAGNER: You mean the photograph?

SMITH: The photograph and the hypodermic needle.

WAGNER: Well, in that case, yes. But I'm talking about physical objects like bones and handles and pieces like that one. These old standing pieces, that's very old stuff on here: old Whipple tree hook, and rods, and pieces from old wheels--the penny arcade conductor's money changer goes back to the twenties. They don't make those wheels like that anymore on the carbohaulic calculator. Those are old baby buggy wheels or wagon wheels, a toy wagon in the early times, in the past-- So if you took the pieces one by one and took each part out of them, you would find that all of these things go back in time. That's a nice shoe--Cat's Paw. Cat's Paw shoes and things of that nature, you could take them in that way and relate them to time, your own experience with that particular time, but that is not what I had in mind.

SMITH: But it's inherent in the medium in a way.

WAGNER: Well, if people see it that way, that's fine, but it's still not making a statement.

SMITH: That is, you didn't go down to the Woolworth's and buy all these things--

WAGNER: No, no.

SMITH: --and put these pieces together in the same kind of graphic forms.

WAGNER: No, no. I didn't do any of that.

SMITH: So it's not just the graphic form, it's what the objects are.

WAGNER: Well, each object has its own energy, you know. Like that old Essex hubcap there between the two wheels-- Essex went out of business in the thirties.

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 7, 1987

SMITH: I thought today, Gordon, we would resume the chronology of your life. When we left off with that, we were in Topanga; you had moved to Topanga, back from Arizona in the mid-1950s. So my first question is what led you to return to Southern California from Arizona?

WAGNER: Well, I had a problem there of survival. Arizona is a wonderful place, especially an Indian reservation, but when you run out of money, there's not much you can do but come back to where you were. I didn't want to go back to Hermosa Beach, I wanted to get away from that area for a while. I owned the house there, rented that to people. And I said, well, what would be a good compromise between the sea and Arizona, where I could get the terrain of nature and mountains, and yet be close to the sea so I could go swimming and bodysurfing if I wanted to? And something flashed on me: Topanga Canyon. At that time, there were a group of artists living there, and rent was so cheap it was incredible. The first house we lived in was about five bedrooms and a huge living room and studio, and it was, I think, $57.50 a month rent. I stayed there until the landlord dynamited a big rock in front of the place, and kind of changed the geographic position of the house, his house and all the rest of the houses in the neighborhood. Yeah, that was on Fernwood Pacific [Drive]. A guy named Vance Sanders. He meant well. He did scare the people a bit. So in sheer desperation-- I didn't know what to do, and this wonderful woman who lived about three blocks away said, "I have a house for rent up on the top of the hill with a view that you just won't believe." And she said, "It's such a beautiful house, and an acre with gardens all landscaped, I'd have to charge you $90 a month rent for it." So I moved up there after a year of the other place.

SMITH: Is that the house that didn't have any water?

WAGNER: No, that's another one. That was after the one on Summit [Drive]. There I met a lot of wonderful people. I got very stimulated by Topanga and by the artists who lived there. That's where I met Karl Nolde, the German expressionist. He lived across the road from me.

SMITH: Nole or Nolde?

WAGNER: Nolde.

SMITH: Is he any relation to Emil Nolde?

WAGNER: Yeah, he was the brother of Emil Nolde. But he called himself Kanol in America, Karl Kanol, of Karl Nol of Nolde. He kept you laughing from night to day, wonderful German. I could go on with stories about him for years. Incredible what he got into, just living in Topanga.

SMITH: Well, maybe you could just give us one of the stories about Karl Nolde?

WAGNER: Well, I wouldn't know where to start with that, because he was always having-- He was a painter who painted German expressionist painting. He still is a German expressionist, and he is still painting, but now he lives in Mexico in Guanajuato. He's lived there since about 1957. He liked to buy old automobiles. He had sort of an obsession for old vehicles in the thirties: '37, '36 models, '35, '32. One story I can tell you, he also painted houses to make a living. But his house was stacked with paintings, and he hung paintings on top of paintings in the house. He lived next door to a woman who kept monkeys, who had a monkey farm up the canyon, a Mrs. Buckman. He lived next door to her. The monkey-farm lady had about three hundred monkeys. She would dress up the most wonderful monkeys in clothes, all sorts of suits and neckties and shirts, and bring them down to the market in Topanga in a group. They'd go into the store and drive the storekeeper crazy, and the butcher, they'd be up on the butcher's counter. The whole monkey farm burned down one day. Two monkeys got in a fight over a cigarette and a match and set fire to the hay. Burned the whole place down before they could do anything. She lost about, oh, 50 percent of her animals. The fire department tried to hook up the water, but the bigger monkeys were unhooking it all the time. They were up on the fire truck putting the hats on. Like the chimps--

SMITH: Did the monkeys escape?

WAGNER: Yeah, well, they were all out of their cages running around wild. The fire department was so frustrated-- Actually, when they went back after the fire was over, down to the station in Topanga-- Bob Etts, he was my friend, he told me the story. When they got back they were all talking about the crazy fire and all these crazy animals. They went out, and there were two monkeys that were unrolling the hose out of the fire truck at the fire station. [laughter] Well, Karl became a neighbor of Mrs. Buckman, who slept with an ape and had a donkey that was always right in the middle of the road. In order to make an entrance into my house and Karl's-- And Hazelett lived up there, he had the Hound of the Baskerville. It was a big dog he'd named something or other. He had these huge hounds. The three entries where it was very steep, at night we'd come home at one, two in the morning, the donkey would be lying across the road. We'd have to get out and sit on a steep angle and pull this animal off the road to get by him, he wouldn't move. We told Mrs. Buckman about it a hundred times; it didn't do any good. Karl was always painting, but he left his window open. One night there was a knock at the door, and there was a monkey, or two monkeys, dressed up in Lederhosen. He opened the door and they both jumped up on him and hugged him while the other monkeys came through the back window. They were throwing his brushes all over the studio, you know. Karl was going mad with these monkeys. So that was a typical Topanga story. As for his cars, that's a whole different thing--that goes on and on and on. The things caught on fire, and he was arrested. He drove one car to Santa Monica down on the Pacific Coast Highway near the overpass, the Wilshire overpass. It ran out of gas. So he went to get gasoline, and he came back and the car was gone; somebody had stolen it. So he went to the Santa Monica City Hall, told the police, reported it. He hitchhiked back to Topanga, and then he got his other car. He drove that down, and that broke down in the middle of the highway. He went for help at a gas station, came back and that one was stolen. He went to the city hall again, and they refused to accept his complaints. They said he was crazy and threw him in jail. [laughter] So he finally got out after he convinced them that he was not crazy, and he really did have two cars, and they were both stolen on the same day within four hours of each other. He went home and got his old truck. He had to paint some house in the [San Fernando] Valley, and he's going down the hill, and he got down there and this woman stopped dead in front of him and slammed on the brakes, and he rear-ended her. Well, when he did that, all of the paint in the truck tipped over, and the lids came off and it started running all over the floor--green, white paints, mixed. The policeman screamed at Karl to get out of the truck. And he said, [with German accent] "I can't get out of the truck, I'm stuck." And he said, "What do you mean you're stuck?" "Well, I'll tell you." "I'll pull you out." So he opened the door to pull Karl out, and when he did that all the paint ran out all over the policeman's pants and boots, completely down over his feet and legs. So Karl was again taken in that day, in Van Nuys. He had these things happen to him. One car caught on fire on the Pacific Coast Highway, in the back seat, and he had nothing to do, so he kept running over across the traffic getting sand in his hands to pour on it, to put out the fire. [laughter] Back and forth. Karl's eighty-two now. When he was seventy-nine, they had the Cervantes Festival in Mexico, in Guanajuato. Karl walked up to the conductor, the conductor of the Leipzig Symphony Orchestra. They played Mahler, and when they got all through, he said, "You know, Mahler was my hero, and Bruno Walter was my hero." And the man said, "Who are you?" "Well, I lived in Leipzig, my name is Karl Nolde." "Karl Nolde. Where have you been?" He says, "Why do you ask?" He said, "We've been looking for you for years, you've been lost." He said, "How do you mean that?" He said, "Half of our museum is full of your work. I'll send you a catalog." So they sent him a catalog this thick, and just about half of the book was his paintings, his works. So they invited him to have a retrospective on his eightieth birthday of all that work and his new works. So he went to Leipzig to celebrate that. I had him for a neighbor and all other kinds of eccentrically wonderful people for neighbors. Topanga was a place where you didn't expect anybody to come in it, and the people who lived there, you didn't expect would ever leave.

SMITH: Was Topanga more isolated then? Was it harder to get in and out from the highway?

WAGNER: No. It was for a while, because they cut the highway off, took one mile out of the curves, and you couldn't go to the coast at all. It was all shut up from the coast up to Topanga, to remove these curves. So if we came home before two in the morning-- They'd let natives through on this dirt road, but no one else. If you came home after two in the morning. It was locked up and you had to walk home. I remember those icy cold nights going up that canyon, and the full moon. It was a beautiful thing to see, and it was like walking on the moon. You'd have to walk all the way home.

SMITH: At this time, you were working at Rocketdyne in Canoga Park?

WAGNER: Rocketdyne? No, not at that time, I wasn't. I was just painting. I wasn't working right at that moment, no. It was a little later I took a job in Santa Monica, at the Steven Douglas Company. I worked on the plotting table for a jet simulator, a jet-fighting FJ-1 simulator, for pilots in plotting the curves. I worked on the first plotting table like that to get all these curves related to the flight situation and developed all this as a machine to do it. It was purchased by Benson Lehner later. The original concept, the actual electronics, were worked out by a man from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], and I was doing the electromechanical design for it, to make it work. He had the theories of how it might do it, so there were two of us working on this device. Then I took time off for Mexico and went there for a while. I came back and moved up on a mountain where I purchased a house for $10,000 with a living room that was fifty feet by forty and a twenty-seven-foot ceiling. That was Charlie Chaplin's house at one time. And Payne--what was his name--Robert Payne? The poet. He lived there before me. It was three acres and no water. That was the place that was waterless.

SMITH: You had a well or something?

WAGNER: No, nothing. Water tank. Had to supply the water through the water tank. It was supposed to come up from the bottom of the canyon. The Topanga Oaks Mutual Water Company supplied the water, but by the time it went through about thirty houses down below, it never reached my tank. I had to go and get water and haul it back up there. I built a water tank on a trailer, and I'd go down to Santa Monica on a Friday night to Zucky's and have my coffee; usually take Karl along, or somebody, John Raymond or [Arnold] Schiffrin or somebody. We'd go spend about two hours in there while my water tank was filling up in the service station across the street. You know, I'd stick it in, and I knew about the time it was filled. It was five hundred gallons; truck it up there, and it was good for about a week.

SMITH: I'd like to ask you a little bit about some of the places in Los Angeles and Southern California where you were exhibiting at the time. Did you have shows at Von's [Caf6 Galleria] coffeehouse?

WAGNER: Yes, I did. Ed [Edward] Kienholz got that show for me, following him. I met him in Topanga when he came to visit me.

SMITH: He lived there at the time?

WAGNER: He was having a show at Von's. No, he lived down in L.A.; he lived on Melrose Avenue, I think it was.

SMITH: At the time, yeah.

WAGNER: Near Melrose in an old house, a roofless house. I was introduced to him through Arnold Wagman, who was a New York character, a true man from the Lower East Side, you know, and a funny guy, a wonderful wit. Anyway, Von gave me the exhibition right after Ed Kienholz, and I think the next show after that was Hans Burkhardt.

SMITH: In terms of the shows that Von had, what was he, as far as you know, what was he concerned about doing with these shows? Was it very open, was he trying to show a lot of different types of work, or did he have pretty specific criteria?

WAGNER: I don't think Von much worried about anything like that. He was a very happy man that ran an espresso bar and coffeehouse, and good quality food. What his basic interest was--was to have fairly good quality art hanging on his walls as decoration, you know. I think that's what he was basically into, but it was a good place, because a lot of people came there at that time. It was the time of the coffeehouses, when things were getting going. He was probably one of the first.

SMITH: What about Syndell [Studios] gallery, Walter Hopps's first gallery, did you exhibit there?

WAGNER: No, no, I never exhibited at Syndell. That was before-- Ed Kienholz did have an exhibition at Syndell. There were people there like Bob [Robert] Irwin, and Craig Kauffman, and, oh, the San Francisco artist who was the big artist, you know.

SMITH: Hassel Smith?

WAGNER: Hassel Smith, he was there, yeah. Wally [Wallace] Hedrick, and just a few. Wally [Wallace] Berman. Walter put on the Merry-Go-Round Show, which was in the Santa Monica merry-go-round building, where he had a lot of these kind of pieces, you know, from his gallery. It was a really exciting show. I remember there was one painting that had--a big black painting with a hole in it, just punched through. There was a weightlifter from Muscle Beach, and he was standing there, and he was so angry, he used to come in every day and bend a one-inch bar of steel double like this to vent his fury about the piece. Syndell was on Gorham Avenue, right off of San Vicente [Boulevard] and--

SMITH: Barrington [Avenue], right?

WAGNER: Barrington, where the intersection is. It was a redwood building that was made out of logs. It actually was a real estate office at one time. A very nice juxtaposition, because here was the Syndell gallery, with Walter, and then there was Robert Mallory--on the end was Nellie Trout, who was a little old lady who had life-drawing classes for menopause-type women, real pretty paintings, and the Syndell on the other end of the building. It was an interesting juxtaposition. [laughter] Entirely opposite.

SMITH: What about Exodus Gallery? Did you ever exhibit there?

WAGNER: Not really, no. No. I went to performances there. You're talking about Connor Everts's gallery in San Pedro.

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: I showed a couple of things there, but never had a big show; you know, things. It was a wonderful place.

SMITH: In terms of the artistic community that exists in San Pedro now with Angel's Gate [Cultural Center] and the artists who are living there now, was the Exodus Gallery an important thing in terms of attracting artists to the area? How important was it in terms of what has developed in San Pedro?

WAGNER: I would say that 99 percent of the people in San Pedro never heard of the Exodus Gallery.

SMITH: Even the artists?

WAGNER: Well, there weren't any artists in San Pedro. They didn't exist. The reason I think that Connor Everts opened the Exodus Gallery was that it was a funky neighborhood. It was right off of Beacon Street, which was the center of San Pedro, with all its bars and the red-light district. It was funky; it was where it was supposed to be. It was like a beat coffeehouse, but it was elegantly put together by Connor, who's always been a master at building and designing. He had performances and happenings and all these sorts of things, and everybody came there, but I don't think anybody from San Pedro ever would even bother to look in the place. I think the reason that Connor got there was because Connor was a longshoreman, and he worked unloading banana boats in the old days when they did it by hand without the containers. I think it was a convenient place for him to have a coffeehouse, being in San Pedro where he worked. He was married to the Nisei Queen [Chizuko Everts] at that time. She was the most-- You know, in Little Tokyo they have every year the Nisei Week? She won that. She was a beautiful Japanese girl. At that time, Connor was doing all sorts of fantastic pieces of art. He was a good draftsman, and he had a wonderful sense of humor. He still has a wonderful sense of humor. The last time I saw him, he said, "Gordon, if you don't have a show by the time you're fifteen years old, you just ain't going to make it." A retrospective, he said.

SMITH: Now, the Ferus Gallery, did you ever exhibit your work in the Ferus?

WAGNER: Yeah, a little bit. Ed Kienholz opened his own gallery, the Now Gallery, out on La Cienega [Boulevard]. He gave me my, actually, first show in Los Angeles in that area in his gallery. Right after that a sort of partnership came about because Walter moved from the Syndell to a gallery that was a warehouse in the back of an antique store [run by people] by the name of Streeter and Camille Blair. They gave them that whole space for the Ferus Gallery. So Ed took all his artists with him, and they kind of combined the two together for a while until Walter decided which ones he wanted and which ones he didn't want. Two different personalities and reasons, and so there were some eliminated and some stayed until they got what they wanted.

SMITH: Ed Kienholz, in his oral history, mentions that for a while the gallery was run--it was his and Walter's gallery, but it was run, in a way, collectively; the artists would discuss things until they arrived at a consensus. Is that how you saw it?

WAGNER: Yeah. Bob [Robert] Alexander had a big part in it, too.

SMITH: Did you participate in those discussions?

WAGNER: Oh, a few, yeah.

SMITH: Like what kinds of things-- Like whose work would be shown?

WAGNER: Yeah, that sort of thing, nothing major. When they closed down Wally Berman's show, for the cross with the sexual photograph of Shirley and Wally, the police shut that down. Bob Alexander was very big in the gallery then, you know, he was working. You know Baza [Bob Alexander], don't you? He's in Venice, he has the temple. I'm a member of that, [laughter] I'm an ordained minister, as a matter of fact, of that temple. Still have my license from the State of California. He invited me, and there were a lot of people like Berman and [George] Herms in his temple. He's still running it. But he was important in that time, and he says, "Okay, guys, it's all over. We're being shut down." He came running into the-- "The fuzz are here to close down the gallery for Wally's show." And Kienholz, he was most of the time sitting in the lotus position working on his wood pieces, like the one behind you on the floor. At that time, Gil Henderson was pouring the paint all over the canvases. The guys worked in this gallery; they used it as a studio. Gil was pouring all this paint all over the canvas, and then he'd take a stick or knife and scrape half the painting away, leaving it kind of tracked. Then he'd throw it up onto the roof of the Ferus Gallery and let it dry. Artie Richer was walking around making things out of torn roofing paper. And John Reed, he was building things out of paper and collage. John Reed always walked around, he wore a Greek sailor's hat, and he always said, "You know, an artist's work is never done." A lot of those people moved, like Dane Dixon. They all took off or died.

SMITH: Kienholz, in his oral history, mentions that, well, he mentions Henderson, in particular, moving to New York and then disappearing. He feels that if Henderson had stayed in Los Angeles he would have developed as a stronger artist.

WAGNER: Who?

SMITH: Kienholz said that in his oral history about Henderson, Gil Henderson.

WAGNER: Oh, Gil Henderson? Gil Henderson moved to New York, and he had a big show when he came back. He had a show in the-- What was it? I saw Gil Henderson at Kienholz's exhibit at the Dwan Gallery, and he was all dressed up in a suit and a necktie and a top coat. He looked like a millionaire. [laughter] I first knew Gil Henderson on the beach in Hermosa when he was married to Olympia. They lived right about a block away from me. He spent quite a bit of time in Hermosa Beach. I think the last show he had was in Molly Barnes's gallery with Picture Frames. He worked in the framing company, and he had moldings this big, and cornices. They were coming out of the walls, and he put frames inside of frames. The whole thing was creeping all over the gallery, the picture frames as sculpture. It was a beautiful show, I loved it. Then in the middle of it, he'd put up a glass cover like that, and he'd write a note and ball it all up and throw it in there, and it would say something like-- I forget the quote--why are kids so nasty, or something like that. He worked for Art Services as a picture framer, you know, cutting molding. He stacked all his work up and said he was never going to show it again as long as he lived. And last I heard, he hasn't shown anywhere. I remember when he won the first award in the [Los Angeles] County Museum show back in I think about '51, '52, the Atavistic Image. He had a lot of talent, and [Lorser] Feitelson was really behind Gil Henderson. I like Gil Henderson. He was a calm guy, rather negative, but he was okay.

SMITH: What do you mean negative?

WAGNER: Bitter, I mean bitter.

SMITH: At this time, I'm talking about the mid-fifties, late fifties, was Irwin already discussing perceptual theory, or was he as intellectual as he--

WAGNER: No, he was doing just kind of-- In the fifties he was making bone paintings, drawing bones and things like that.

SMITH: In terms of when he would be talking to other artists, was he very intellectual compared to--

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Super intellectual, yeah. He could talk pretty well when he wanted to. If he didn't want to sit down for an hour and meditate in a lecture. He'd do that sometimes, the class would wait for him to say something, he'd sit through the whole class in meditation and then he'd leave and not say a word.

SMITH: This is in the fifties already?

WAGNER: No, that was later. And he always refused to have any photographs of his work done or reproduced anyplace. I don't know if he's still doing that, but that was his-- "I'll never have anything reproduced."

SMITH: Well, a lot of his stuff doesn't work if you see it in a photograph.

WAGNER: Wouldn't reproduce anyway. It's pretty hard to reproduce a white painting, isn't it?

SMITH: Were there other galleries that you were showing at at this time?

WAGNER: Well, I had an exhibition in the Lucy Bayne Gallery, which was on Beverly [Boulevard], about Robertson [Boulevard]. I had an exhibition there of my Navaho paintings. Lucy and Walter Bayne, they were Swedish.

SMITH: Was she interested in showing avant-garde work, or was she more commercially oriented?

WAGNER: I don't know. My paintings were totally abstract, I'd say that my Yeibichai [also known as The Navaho Night Chant] painting and the big one, those sort of-- In those days they weren't exactly what you would call conservative. She showed Leonard Kaplan and a lot of people like that. She was a nice lady, really. All she wanted was three paintings for an exhibition. Yeah, I had to give her three paintings to have an exhibition in the place. She didn't tell me that until the end.

SMITH: Oh, you had to give her the paintings?

WAGNER: Yeah. She didn't tell me that in the beginning, but I couldn't take three home. Then I was with another gallery there, it was called Foch Rayboff, Ernie Rayboff and Nina Foch.

SMITH: The actress?

WAGNER: Yeah. He just represented me. That was about three blocks from where the Lucy Bayne was at that time, on Beverly. I had exhibitions in different places, in Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, Pacific Palisades. Different galleries. And with Silvan Simone. Before he was on Olympic [Boulevard] and Federal [Avenue] he was on Westwood Boulevard just south of Wilshire [Boulevard]. He was there for about eight years, I guess, seven or eight years. He had some interesting artists at that time. He sold a lot of art for me, that's why I went with Simone. Two galleries really sold art for me: one was Silvan Simone and one in Manhattan Beach called the Hickson Gallery, Russ [Russell] Hickson. Those two, and Simone's gallery in the Palisades, which was called the Florentine, which was his gallery run by a German by the name of Edward Kneifel.

SMITH: Now, when you worked with Simone, let's say Simone and Hickson, was there any--did they try to influence your work at all? Did they say, "This is nice, but maybe you should do more of this?"

WAGNER: No, never. Never once.

SMITH: You brought in what you did and--

WAGNER: Well, after my Indian period and I'd sold all those paintings, I couldn't keep painting those, so I started moving into my assemblage. He was so good, he'd take a chance on things. He was a pioneer type. He told the collectors, he said, "Well, this is a show I'll lose money on, but I'm going to give it to Gordon anyway, because I have to show a loss once in a while." That's the kind of guy-- But if I had a show, he'd talk the people into it, and they'd buy the works regardless.

SMITH: Now, take Hickson in Manhattan Beach, what kind of work did he generally show? Were you typical of the kind of work he was showing or were you kind of on the extreme side of things?

WAGNER: Well, he showed a lot of different kinds of artists: James Jarvaise, Francis De Erdely, Rico Lebrun and Henry Miller. A lot of people you don't know. He showed my old instructor, Norman [S.] Chamberlain, and people like that. Keith Crown, and people like Dave Miller and Frank Jensen and Ben Shaw. He had a nice group. No, my work wasn't far out at all. He was a very open person. He didn't sell junk. He didn't sell pretty paintings and pictures. No, that's why I liked him.

SMITH: Did you participate in the--the Monday night walks on La Cienega?

WAGNER: Yeah, I used to go and see them walk around, check them out. I had a gallery there. At that time was probably, when, in the sixties?

SMITH: Fifties, sixties, yeah.

WAGNER: Well, the late fifties, early sixties. My gallery then was Bob [Robert] Comara [Gallery] right there, Melrose Place, back of [Felix] Landau [Gallery]. Oh, yeah. I had three or four shows in his place.

SMITH: Now, did gallery owners seek you out, or did you have to go knock on doors? How did that work? How did it happen that-- How did representation happen?

WAGNER: How was I asked, you mean?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: They asked me. I never knocked on any gallery door in my life, except in Europe. But never in America. I still won't. I don't really believe in it.

SMITH: Now, Simone--

WAGNER: I've tried two recently, just to see what would happen, and I'm certainly glad I tried it because I realized I would never want to do it again, you know.

SMITH: Who are these?

WAGNER: Well, Jan Baum was one of them.

SMITH: Here in Los Angeles?

WAGNER: Yeah. She handled Bruce Houston and a lot of people, Betye Saar and Alison Saar. I figured, well, she might be interested. She wasn't the slightest bit interested in my work and didn't even know anything about my work, you know.

SMITH: Did she look at any of the slides?

WAGNER: Oh, she looked at them, but she said, "Well, there's really no-- I have no space for you, and time--" She really turned me off.

SMITH: What was the other one?

WAGNER: Who was it, now? Oh, Asher Faure. I was asked to go there by Janice Felgar, the photographer. Somebody that worked at Asher Fauer loved my work. I was in an exhibition at the Design Center, so they said, "Please come and show this to Betty Asher." So I walked in. I was looking at Michael [C.] McMillen's show that time. Betty Asher came out and she was just-- She wasn't interested in talking to me. "She says, "Hello, Gordon, how are you?" That's all. She knew my name and who I was. Virginia [Copeland Wagner] said, "Would you like to see some of Gordon's work and slides?" She said, "I'm not the slightest bit interested, I know what he does." [laughter] Then Michael McMillen walks in, "Hi, Gordon, how are you?" and she disappeared into her room.

SMITH: Yeah. At the time when you--

WAGNER: That was enough. I don't need that. Before, I'd never asked a gallery for an exhibition in all my life, and I'm not about to do it again. That's it. No more.

SMITH: Was there any question of being exclusively represented by one--like Simone didn't mind that you were also represented by Comara and Hickson?

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO, FEBRUARY 7, 1987

WAGNER: Actually, when I was with [Silvan] Simone, I was with him from 1953 until about 1968. Then I went to Comara, and I wasn't represented by Simone anymore. I went to Comara, and I was with him from about '68, I guess, to about '74. I found Comara to be a very negative guy. I liked him, but he was negative, and he was always down. Somebody would want to buy something from me in there, and he'd say, "Well, there's something over here I think you'd like better." He talked the Sara Lee pies man out of buying a piece, you know, the big collector in Chicago. His daughter is a friend of mine from Eugene [Oregon]. He wanted it, and he saw the photograph in the brochure and wanted to know the price, and [Comara] didn't even bother to-- And then he told Simone how business was, how terrible it was. He really disliked Simone because Simone was so positive. He threw Simone out of his gallery because he was saying how his art was selling and how he was doing such a great job. Couldn't stand it; Comara couldn't take that. Comara had some good artists, don't get me wrong. He had a good eye. But when it came to selling and getting into it, there was something lacking in his personality that blocked. His wife was tremendous when she was alive, but she died. She ran the thing; she was the salesperson. But I like Bob. I don't know whatever happened to him; he just dropped out. So anyway, I wanted to have a show of these boxes of mine in 1975, so I went to Simone and told him that I'd made a mistake and thought I'd like to come back to him. "No way! I'm not going to let you come back to my gallery ever," he told me. I said, "I've got all these new boxes. I'm sorry, I made a mistake with Comara. How many times I have to tell you I'm sorry? I made a mistake." "I'm not going to take you back. I'll come and see what you're doing, but I'm not going to take you back." So he came down to Echo Park, and he looked over all the works. I'd been married to Virginia, you know, and he'd never met Virginia, really. So he got to talk to her, and he weakened. I had a nice hound dog type, and he loves hound dogs, hunting hounds, you know. And he weakened, "Let me see what you've got." We go downstairs. He says, "It's fantastic, but as long as you are with me, if you ever change again, you are never going to come back". I said, "Silvan, I was with you for ten years, or nine years, and I was always there, right? But you got me mad at you because you wanted to go fishing and hunting, and you fell in love with Jose Luis Cuevas, and you fell in love with [Rico] Lebrun, and you fell in love with [Roberto] Matta [Echaurren], and you fell in love with [Raphael] Canogar, and you had no love for me. What did you want me to do when I felt rejected like a poor girl with no love?" "Well," he said, "I have to make money, and these people are selling." I said, "Well, that's not my fault because you're not selling my work. The people have to be educated, don't they?" "Well, let me see what I can do. When do you want to have this exhibition?" I said, "Whenever you say so". "Next spring," March, I think it was. "We have to make a catalog. I need the photographs and the whole thing. You come out, we'll put it together and design it and get it ready." So I had the show. I had twenty-one boxes in the show. His son had just come with him, and he was a musician who was a composer, Stephen Simone, and he didn't have the slightest idea about art. But he was going to be his partner because Thorn Andreolas had left. Thorn Andreolas went to Taos [New Mexico] and opened up his gallery. First, I got him this exhibition space to be the director of the Stables Gallery in Taos. He'd crossed Simone--he lied to him--and Simone fired him for a letter that he said he'd mailed and Thorn was still carrying it around and he was afraid to mail it. He carried it around for a month telling Simone he'd mailed it. Simone found out about it and hit the fan and got rid of him. Well, Thom's a big man now; he's about [gestures] so tall. [laughter] He's got the new gallery in Taos. They fired him from the Stables. I got him the job. I went out of my way to help this man get organized; he was so sad and down. Now he won't even write to me, talk to me, speak to me. You know, I helped him, so therefore he doesn't want me. After all that. So anyway, to get back to Silvan's son, who is a sweet man, but he knew nothing. So what does he do in the exhibition opening? He takes these people-- I told him about the boxes, each box in the show, and he had a photographic memory. He's taking people at an opening around on a tour in groups of ten explaining each box to them, and what's inside, and all about it. And out of the twenty-two we sold nineteen boxes that day, you know. Simone says, "Well, are you happy?" I said yes. I said, "What about these other two boxes here?" He said, "Well, the printer, he wants one for the trade of the catalog," which was, I don't know, $1,500 or $2,000. "He wants to trade you for one. And if you're any kind of a guy at all worthwhile, not a heel like some of my artist friends, you will give me one of these boxes for doing all of this for you." So, that took care of them. I had one left and by the end of the show, that was sold to a doctor who was one of his biggest collectors.

SMITH: Now, you had left Simone earlier because he wasn't showing your work often enough?

WAGNER: Right, he was not featuring me anymore. He wasn't interested, you know. He had love affairs with other artists. I mean, when he sold art, he'd go "Look! What you're looking at [is] a fantastic piece! How can you resist it?" And he'd get some poor soul trapped in there. [laughter] He had a beautiful gallery to do it in. I don't know if you remember the gallery or not, but--

SMITH: No.

WAGNER: It was an excellent gallery. It was one of the prettiest galleries in L.A. because it was out of all the mess. It was a big gallery in the front, maybe forty feet square, and then there was a patio garden that had an overhang that you walked out into, where he had his receptions and things, and that was all art. He had huge storage racks. Then you went into a room where there were just little drawings. Then all the way around his house he'd put a glass atrium, and the whole back between the house and the fence was all the gallery with gardens and trees. It was just gorgeous. It was a beautiful place. I said, "How come you're going to move into this place? Nobody's going to come down here." He said, "Zipcode 49. We have all the money. Don't you worry. They'll come here before they go to La Cienega," he says. And he was right. He built it, and he lived there. He lived in the house inside.

SMITH: Were you also submitting every year to the Los Angeles County [Museum of History, Science, and Art] annual shows?

WAGNER: In the beginning, yeah, I usually would, until they canceled that out. I submitted to very few exhibitions, unless they were very important ones. In those days, they had very big shows. They don't do that anymore in museums, they just don't bother, like the Corcoran [Gallery] back East.

SMITH: Like your picture that is in the Denver [Art] Museum, how did that get there?

WAGNER: That was actually a competitive award, a purchase award. That's how it got there.

SMITH: So you would keep track of what the various shows were that were going on around the country and decide if you wanted to submit?

WAGNER: You mean in those days?

SMITH: In those days, yeah.

WAGNER: Not too much. There was one place in L.A. at that time, it was called Brugger's Fine Arts Fowarding Service, and they had a list of what was going on. That was it. And the newspaper, the [Los Angeles] Times, they would always announce these things in the Times for important exhibitions when Arthur Millier was the critic. They don't do that anymore either. They don't bother.

SMITH: Another thing that Kienholz mentions in his interview is that in the late fifties, mid- to late fifties, there was an attitude of the younger artists, the artists around Ferus-- I think he means more than that, the beat-generation group--that they were sick and tired of the art that was represented by [Lorser] Feitelson and [Howard] Warshaw and [Keith] Finch, and he runs off a list of names along with those, art that they thought was just crap and that they wanted to get away from and destroy. How did you feel at that time? Did you share that kind of a feeling, that that generation was pretty much crap?

WAGNER: That's exactly why I didn't have anything more to do with them, because that sort of attitude, sort of snob attitude of Hollywood. It was strictly a Hollywood clique, the whole bunch of them. I mean, all of them were a Hollywood clique, young, semi-beat people. They were all friends; half of them knew each other from Kansas and other parts of the United States. There was a snob thing about that group. I've been in fights with artists of that group, on what you're saying, like [Craig] Kauffman, and Bob Irwin, and people like that, people who berated other artists and put them down, that their work was no good, while they're standing there showing me one line and a scribble on a piece of butcher's paper that's in an exhibition, calling that the great, you know. That's what really turned me off to the whole lot of them. I still have never forgiven most of them, because I still don't think they're that important, most of them. They're living on their own publicity and believing it. I still don't think they should be featured as the "syndicate" artists, because I don't think they really warrant it. You can't-- I appreciate all artists. I mean, they have a right to be artists and they have a right to their expression just the way they are, whatever they want to do. If they want to paint it with feces, or pee on it, or burn it with cigarettes, or draw on it, fine. But they should not go around putting down other artists who are doing a different expression. This defeats the whole philosophy of artists and painters. Although, it's common. I think one time there was in the--at some place in Spain there was a large Rubens, and they commissioned El Greco to paint a painting, I believe, in there. And he said, "I wouldn't bother at all in here unless I can paint over all this crap that's on the wall." So it goes back several centuries that artists think this way. I don't believe in negating other artists. There's always going to-- Artists are limited by their own limitations, and if a guy can't do any better than he's doing, that's his problem. But not to cut him down, not to cut down people like Lebrun, who gave his soul and his heart and his love for his drawings and his work and was a powerful artist. If I took a Lebrun and a Warshaw and a Keith Finch and put the three up against the wall and I took one of those guys-- I'm not going to talk about them; just forget them--and put one of their works in between, you wouldn't even notice their work it would be so weak and wishy-washy. I'm not being old-fashioned about art. I just don't think that Warshaw and Finch and Lebrun and Channing Peake and Bob [Robert] Chuey and Herb [Herbert] Jepson and [Michael] Murphy, who were instructors to all these half-wits and taught them all they knew from the beginning, to have them turn around on their own instructors and belittle them and call themselves a power when they had nothing going at all-- Nobody cared about them. Nobody cared about Warshaw; he was a minor figure. Finch struggled; but he had his own problems to confront. And as for Lebrun, he was a very powerful European man who became very sick and died. He had a different soul than these people. How can this brash bunch of Hollywood [people with] surface to about down to here in life go around putting down a man who's got a soul thirty feet deep? Because they were just a bunch of snots in those days. Just young; wanted to change the world. How the hell could they change the world? The dadaists did it years ago. They were trying to do something the dadaists had already done. Neo-dadaism has got to be very boring.

SMITH: We have a lot of places to go with this, but you said you got into a number of fights, not physical arguments--

WAGNER: Just discussions.

SMITH: Discussions.

WAGNER: Arguments. Usually we came to some kind of-- I always walked out of the place feeling that I hadn't a problem, but the others would take offense. So that meant-- Naturally, if an artist takes offense to somebody else, that means his own work is weak in the first place, right? Because you don't take offense to somebody who-- Like if it had been Feitelson or Lebrun or one of those guys and they said, "I hate your art," they'd say, "That's great! I love it; it's better than giving me some false criticism of it. I'm glad to hear you hate it. It makes me happy." You see? But these guys, if you would mention anything, "What is this that you're doing that is so deeply evolved here?" [grumbles] They'd get going and they'd come over in groups and want to fist fight you, you know. Well, you see, that shows a sign of weakness right there. I laughed at it, you know, and would walk out of the place with a couple of writer friends of mine.

SMITH: Kienholz, in his oral history, says--

WAGNER: He was never that way. Never that way. Kienholz was a real person. Not anything to do with that group at all.

SMITH: Yeah, he left in '58, I guess.

WAGNER: Had nothing to do with that group.

SMITH: He said in his oral history that he really doesn't, he never knew much about art history. I don't know if this is true or not, but this is what he said in his oral history.

WAGNER: I doubt if he did. I doubt if he really did.

SMITH: And he wasn't interested.

WAGNER: He wasn't interested in it, no.

SMITH: What about, from your perception--did the people in the group, the Ferus group, seem to know much of art history? Did they know about dada?

WAGNER: We never discussed any of those kinds of things, because I don't think any of them even worried about art history. A lot of these guys were like they were inventing the typewriter, you know? Like it had never been done before.

SMITH: Well, what about you at that time, were you--

WAGNER: I wasn't interested in art history. I looked at books and paintings, contemporary art magazines, but I never really was interested in art history at that time. I didn't really get into art history until I went to Europe and got involved in living there and seeing and feeling, understanding that these guys are a bunch of second-rate citizens. You know, when you go to Europe and you see real art, you know, real masters. We're the only country in the world that gets away with this kind of stuff. Because Hollywood's big, powerful media. Gave it a lot of impact in those days. Now they don't even--they Ignore those guys.

SMITH: Well, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

WAGNER: Hollywood is not even interested in artists.

SMITH: Would you explain what you mean by that, I'm not getting it.

WAGNER: Well, in those days, Hollywood gave all those people big impact. They were all in a clique. The filmmakers, and the artists, and the writers, and the poets, and the faggots, and all these people, they all worked--

SMITH: You mean in the sixties?

WAGNER: --together, and it was a very synthetic world.

SMITH: In the sixties are we talking about?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Say at the time of that big show in '66, the Six Los Angeles Artists show?

WAGNER: You mean in the museum?

SMITH: At the [Los Angeles] County Museum of Art.

WAGNER: Most of them were in that show, naturally. They were in it, sure. But I always felt that you could never become part of their clique, you know? They lived in another world over there. I never was part of Hollywood in my life, and I'm still never going to be part of Hollywood, because it's a symbol that I don't like, you know. They built it up. They've got enough media people on television and movies and documentary films, all different ways of building up that particular group. And then, of course, all of the galleries have cashed in on them to take a loss, Dwan Gallery, and people like that.

SMITH: Do you think that group was built up--is it your feeling, your reaction, that that group was built up at the expense of other artists in the area, not just the older artists, but a broader range of artists?

WAGNER: Well, by that group forming, it's excluded about 90 percent of the artists in California. Yeah, the powers to be. It's changing now, though, because I've noticed now that a lot of the old museum directors and curators are not men anymore, and the women are interested in other ways of thinking, I think. They're becoming more tolerant to the other artists, and it's coming back, slowly. I think these guys will just be a passing fancy. You can't live with minimal art for the rest of your life, you know. It's passing.

SMITH: Let me ask you, in terms of the artist groups that you were involved in, were there any black artists or Mexican artists, Mexican-American artists?

WAGNER: In that group, or any group?

SMITH: The groups that you were involved with.

WAGNER: I was involved in the Sixty-six Signs of Neon group with Noah Purifoy and Judson Powell and John Outterbridge, and a lot of black artists.

SMITH: What about in terms of the Los Angeles art community, was it an integrated community? Were there blacks and Chicanos involved?

WAGNER: Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there were always blacks and Chicano artists in California. Oh, yeah.

SMITH: But were they involved in the galleries? Same things you were going to? Who were some of the people that you knew?

WAGNER: Mel Edwards was one, who was a sculptor, black sculptor. I knew all of these guys I just mentioned, these black artists. There was a lot of Chicano art--Frank Romero and Chavez, and all of that group from Los Four. There's always been a connection; even Indians, American Indians, Navaho Indians. I was involved there, I had an exhibition once--well, three of us were actually having an exhibition together at Simone Gallery: Roland Reese and--

SMITH: Roland Reese is black?

WAGNER: Roland Reese is white. He was in Denver then, he was a painter. He wasn't doing the environments, he was actually doing painting. And Carl Gorman, who was R. C. Gorman's father, who was a Navaho, who was an excellent painter. [R. C.] Gorman is a commercial hack, you know, just knock them out sort of thing. But actually, his father was a painter. We were with Simone there. He had Mexican artists, Cuevas and [Leonel] Gongora.

SMITH: But in Los Angeles, within the Los Angeles community, were the black artists, the Mexican-American artists at the same galleries, were they at the same coffeehouses?

WAGNER: They had the Brockman Gallery on Degnan Boulevard that's been going for years, a black gallery in the Crenshaw district. They showed wonderful black artists' works, you know.

SMITH: One gets the sense that it was only a handful of white artists who became important in terms of Los Angeles in the fifties and sixties.

WAGNER: It's true. The others were rejected by the Ferus Gallery, who took it over. They were the ones who really were responsible for cutting everything down of all the other artists, and just building this one group, the "syndicate."

SMITH: What about women artists in Los Angeles in the fifties and sixties?

WAGNER: Oh, there were lots of women artists.

SMITH: Such as?

WAGNER: They're not-- There were hundreds and hundreds of male artists and hundreds and hundreds of women artists, and they were all exhibiting somewhere, in galleries and museums. But when it came to the international scene and the big scene, they were cut out, just like that, to this select group. And that's why, the reason, right now artists are getting a little bit irritated by it, I'm sure. Especially by the new museums, where they're still cut out, most of the California artist, along with a few others, and show all over the world, different places, to be cut out of an exhibition that's supposed to be a museum for Los Angeles artists, and then it's all New York. Or these damn galleries that-- Few "syndicates," you know. It'll always be that way until they get rid of the powers that be.

SMITH: The powers that be, who are?

WAGNER: Well, New York, basically. [Leo] Castelli, Walter Hopps.

SMITH: You got into a fistfight with Walter Hopps once.

WAGNER: Well, not a fistfight. I just punched him. No, he didn't retaliate. [laughter]

SMITH: Could you explain what happened?

WAGNER: Well, he just wanted all of the artists to be--have nothing to do with the other artists in town, stay away from all other artists and just be exclusive.

SMITH: He told this to the--

WAGNER: He told that to the group, and Dane Dixon said, "Punch the son of a bitch in the nose."

SMITH: Where did this take place?

WAGNER: In the Ferus Gallery.

SMITH: In the Ferus Gallery. About what time, do you recall?

WAGNER: What year?

SMITH: What year, yeah.

WAGNER: Probably in the sixties.

SMITH: Were you drunk at the time?

WAGNER: No, it was the late fifties.

SMITH: So you were kind of angry, and--

WAGNER: Oh, I really used to get really, emotionally angry in those days with people who came up with that kind of garbage. I didn't care who he was.

SMITH: So you heard him say this, or-- I'm trying to reconstruct the circumstances. You were all in the Ferus Gallery, and Walter Hopps was talking--

WAGNER: With Jim [James] Elliott and a few other people, a few other directors. They all came one time, I remember, to an exhibition at Sears Roebuck in Westwood that was put on by Arthur Secunda. There was an invitational show for 150 artists in the show. We each had a space, like fifteen to twenty pieces. It opened on the night that [John F.] Kennedy was shot, that day, so it had a rather depressed start. So they didn't open it until the next night, the following day. All of this group, all of these young shavetails, you know, young guys that looked like little babies. There was Walter, and there was Jim Elliott, a couple of other museum directors, all walking through the place all dressed up in suits and neckties and looking very, very efficient, and not speaking to a soul in the place. They were all in the exhibition; they were all represented, every one of them. But it was something. I'll never forget that scene as long as I live. You could see how that whole clique was embedded right there and who ran it, locked right in. This is what I'm talking about. Then I said, "You poor, unfortunate people who have sold out for the rest of your lives, you can't even make art, you've got to get some guy in Santa Monica to make your art for you."

SMITH: Meaning? What are you talking about?

WAGNER: There's a guy in Santa Monica that makes all their art for them. They just order it, and they make it, the plastic stuff. They don't do anything. They just give them a design and they make it.

SMITH: Well, it's their design, though.

WAGNER: Yeah, I know. Send me fifty pieces for a show in New York; send me fifty pieces for a show in Chicago, all the same, you know. There's a guy in Santa Monica that does that kind of stuff. I met him one time at Renata Druck's party. He told me he does it for all of them.

SMITH: Did you--

WAGNER: That's not sincere to me when an artist has somebody else building their art for them. There's nothing there, they're just a bunch of commercial hacks! It's sad. And they are the ones who they actually publicize, and the museums haven't got brains enough to know that, they've been so brainwashed, you know.

SMITH: Did you ever apologize to Hopps?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, we're friends. I've seen him a lot of times, he says, "Gordon, how ya doing? What you think about opening a gallery in Topanga Canyon," when he's about ready to steal an assemblage out of George [Herms]'s house. [laughter] "I've got to come and see what you're doing."

SMITH: Does he come and see what you're doing?

WAGNER: No. Richmond Art Center, somebody was having a class there--

SMITH: Where Tom [Thomas] Marioni was?

WAGNER: Somebody was having a class up there at Richmond Art Center in San Francisco, Oakland, or Berkeley or--

SMITH: Richmond.

WAGNER: Richmond. This young student told me, "I was talking the other day to my teacher about you, and I said, 'Well, Gordon Wagner told me this,' and this man came around from the back of the wall and said, 'Where the hell's Gordon Wagner, tell him hello.' And he said, 'Who are you?' And he said, 'My name's Walter Hopps.'" [laughter] This is about a year or two ago. I like Walter as a person. I think he's-- He has a nice personality. He had a mental breakdown too, you know, himself. Arthur Secunda took over his class. But he was-- No, I have nothing against Walter Hopps at all now. I think he's okay. It's just a question. I have nothing against any of these people, they can do whatever they want to do. But I think they're being too exclusive in the museums by only including a few of the-- Like [Henry] Geldzahler in New York: I remember I read something he made a statement on one time. He said, "The artists have got to be tough on themselves. Because from now on in the art [world], there aren't going to be any new discoveries. We're going to take the older artists and put them in the cartel and leave it that way." You see? And that's what's happening.

SMITH: Well, back at this time, in the mid-fifties, late fifties, early sixties, were you a beatnik?

WAGNER: Well, I was a little old to be beat, but I was always with the beats. I guess you might have called me an older beat. The beat generation in the fifties were probably in their twenties, right?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: And in the fifties I was in my forties. I was very sympathetic to the beats, and I hung out at all their beat coffeehouses. They visited me, and they liked me, in Topanga Canyon. Topanga was sort of a dropping-off place between San Francisco and Venice. It was a very active place for beats. Yeah, and I loved the beat poets, and I knew the beats, and I went to the Gashouse, the beat scene, and other coffeehouses, at Bob [Robert] De Witt's in Topanga.

SMITH: Were you writing poetry at the time?

WAGNER: Yeah, I'd written some. I never wrote poetry, I wrote word pictures. I was never a poet in the sense of being a poet, you know, just word pictures.

SMITH: Okay. Well, briefly continuing the chronology, you stayed in Topanga, then your wife died, then you moved to Mexico. When did you come back to the United States, then. after then?

WAGNER: Well, I moved down there for about two years, two or three years. I came back about 1962, back to Topanga.

SMITH: Same place or different?

WAGNER: No, I rented-- I knew this friend, a girl in Topanga who used to eat with me at Bob De Witt's, and she was going away. She wanted me to rent her house, because she didn't know how long she would be gone. She might be gone for a year or ten years. So she had a great studio downstairs and the house on the top, all nice windows. It was just gorgeous. Well, I rented it for $40 a month. A beautiful place. At the end of the year, she came back, so I had to move. I moved down to the Silver Lake district. Echo Park area.

SMITH: You knew [Ramblin'] Jack Eliot?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, I knew him in Topanga when he used to sit on the highway and sort of entertain people while they were changing tires on their cars, and help people along the road. He'd always travel on the road with his guitar. That's before he went to Spain on his motorcycle and fell into the lake. [laughter] He always told me that story. He was going around this curve, and he doesn't know what happened at all, but the next thing, the motorcycle and himself were both in the lake. [laughter] Yeah, I liked Jack Eliot. He's a sweet man.

SMITH: And Lord Buckley you knew?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, the Lord lived there. He lived in a place called Buchanan Flats, and they'd set up this old, kind of an auto-camp house.

SMITH: Why was he called Lord Buckley?

WAGNER: Well, he classified himself as that. All the people were princes or princesses, and his wife was Lady Buckley. Lady Buckley wore pink leotards and danced about, A beautiful person, really. She spent most of her time up out of Las Vegas in Mattress City, where he had five acres of mattresses stretched out across the land, and they would dance and spring in the mattresses. That's where Lady Buckley spent most of her time. He was so square! He wouldn't even allow a porch swing on his back porch. [laughter] "Lord" --this is viewing the Grand Canyon--"Lord, look at that." [imitates Buckley] "What a gasser, that's the biggest ditch I've ever seen." [laughter] He was a marvelous man. Great voice; one of the greatest voices I think we've had, according to Henry Miller; he even thinks that. And ad-libbed right off the top of his head. He'd come out with things and really make you laugh.

SMITH: Did you know [Jack] Kerouac or Neil Cassidy?

WAGNER: No, I never met either Kerouac or Neil Cassidy. I met [Gregory] Corso and [Lawrence] Ferlinghetti and Snyder, Gary Snyder, those sorts of people. From San Francisco more.

SMITH: Down in Topanga, or--

WAGNER: I met them in Topanga. I met two of them-- I met Ferlinghetti in San Francisco, but I met the other two in Topanga.

SMITH: Did you think of Topanga as being a place that had spiritual power?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, energy; great place. Great place for just about everything. It does have a-- It has its own-- It's a music canyon, that's what it is.

SMITH: What do you mean by that?

WAGNER: I don't know, it just generates music. It just comes out of the rocks and mountains.

SMITH: So there was something special about it that wasn't in, say, Beverly Glen or Laurel Canyon or--

WAGNER: Oh, different altogether than Laurel Canyon, that's Hollywood, you know. And the [San Fernando] Valley was different, and Malibu was different. No, Topanga was an isolated community that was full of people who just wanted to get away from all of those other things. Eccentrics, absolutely. No, it was-- There was a ruralness, but yet there was a sophistication. There was an intellect, and there was the primitive. It had all of these different facets that you can't get in a homogenized place like Laurel Canyon, full of corporate people and company-oriented types and professionals. Never had any of that in Topanga. Now they do, I'm sure, but they didn't in those days. I'm sure they found it now and ruined it. It can't be the same.

SMITH: You never lived in Venice?

WAGNER: Yeah, I lived in Venice. I lived there for about a year, not quite, nine months. I lived in May Murray's boudoir, down by the Ballona Creek bridge in an old Moorish-type house. I had a nice studio there, temporarily. I liked it.

SMITH: You mentioned before that after your wife died, you never really worked again.

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 7, 1987

SMITH: Well, Gordon, I wanted to ask you how and where you met Virginia [Copeland Wagner], your second wife, and when.

WAGNER: I met Virginia in 1963 in Oaxaca, Mexico, on the evening of December 18 in the atrium of the Soledad church at a fiesta for the patron saint of Oaxaca, the Virgin of Soledad.

SMITH: Like those drawings, you captured that in the drawings in the exhibit.

WAGNER: They were with the fireworks and all of the Indians. A huge celebration, because it is one of the biggest celebrations in Oaxaca. And, funny, in the afternoon I met a woman who I had talked to in the drugstore in front of the house where I lived in Oaxaca, and we were talking about Arizona and New Mexico and Navahos and whatnot. And she said, "I have a friend here in Oaxaca that lived with the Navahos; you might like to meet her." And this same lady, with her friend, came to the fiesta. I saw them, and she walked over, introduced me to Virginia, and I said, Yata-hei, in Navaho, which means hello. And that is when she said Yata-hei back. So we talked a little bit. I lifted her up so she could see over the heads of all these people, the fireworks, the castillos, and she got very indignant about that.

SMITH: You didn't ask her if you could pick her up?

WAGNER: No, I just liked her, so I picked her clear up. [laughter] She disappeared on me after that. I used to see her around Oaxaca, and she'd wave, but she always had somebody with her, people walking with her. She had very long hair and braided yarn in her pony tail. It was beautiful to see her walking. I drove around in my old jeep a lot. One day I'm drawing in my studio, and there was a knock on the door. It was Virginia asking me--well, my friend was with me, Hedy [Mergenthaler], my Swiss mistress--if we'd like to come for a drink at their place in the Pension Suisse, which was in Oaxaca, where they were staying, for a couple of days from then. I thought it was a good idea. I don't know about Hedy, what she thought of the idea. So we went to the party, and I remember I drank up most all their scotch. At least that's what Virginia told me later. Then I took her around to different places, she and her friend, to different villages and some other fiestas, a New Year's Eve party in Teotitlan del Valle, which is a weaving town of Oaxaca. And she danced. She was a dancer from New York; she lived at that time in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was teaching dance and had a school at the fine arts museum in Santa Fe [Museum of New Mexico]. I didn't see any more of her after that, I took off. I was going back to the United States just about the time I met her. I didn't see her anymore until about 1967. I had a friend who lived in Rustic Canyon who went to Saint John's College in Santa Fe, and I said, "Well, I think it would be nice if you met this lady, Virginia, you'd like her." So it was kind of a liaison I was establishing between us. They kept in contact, and when Virginia came to California, she came to stay with my friend in Rustic Canyon. Well, I was teaching in Rustic Canyon that day when she showed up, and I just picked her up. [laughter]

SMITH: Again without asking her?

WAGNER: She didn't complain that time. I'd already separated from my mistress. She ran off with my best friend in Mexico a year before. A guy named Paul. We went on a trip down there, and she just decided she wanted to go with him. So I was a year without any lady.

SMITH: Can I ask you--

WAGNER: So Virginia came along about the right time. We were married in 1967 on a rock in Topanga Canyon by I Ching. And then we were married by the justice of peace in Albuquerque [New Mexico] in July.

SMITH: Of '67?

WAGNER: Yeah, first we were married May 30, then in July by the justice of the peace. That's nineteen years ago, isn't it?

SMITH: Then you were married again when you became Catholics. When you converted to Catholicism you were married for a third time?

WAGNER: I was married twice again to her. That was way back. [The Catholic ceremony] was only six years ago.

SMITH: Why do you refer to Hedy as your mistress and not just your girlfriend? You always use that term.

WAGNER: Well, she wasn't a girlfriend, she lived with me. She was my lady, I guess you'd call her.

SMITH: There's no special reason.

WAGNER: We're still good friends, Hedy and I are good friends. She lives in Mount Washington. She has a good job with a Mexican airline, one of the managers. Yeah, we're good friends.

SMITH: And Virginia, when you met her she was a dancer?

WAGNER: Yeah, she taught dance in Santa Fe, she had a school. And she was a dancer in New York before that, in dance companies. She had her school there in Columbia University.

SMITH: After you married her, is that when you moved to New Mexico, or did she move to Echo Park?

WAGNER: She moved to Echo Park. I haven't been back to Mexico since.

SMITH: New Mexico.

WAGNER: No, I haven't been back to Mexico since, but New Mexico, we used to go back and forth to New Mexico in the summer. Stay for two or three months.

SMITH: You haven't been back to Mexico--

WAGNER: No.

SMITH: --since 1967 Not once?

WAGNER: No.

SMITH: Not even to cross the border?

WAGNER: No.

SMITH: Why not?

WAGNER: I don't know, just never have any desire to go anymore.

SMITH: That whole side of you is now gone?

WAGNER: Just disappeared.

SMITH: Disappeared.

WAGNER: I was talking to a friend of mine last night, he was kind of keying me up to go back. I don't think it's the same as it was when I was there, you know. It's probably changed so much, the different places. But you never know, it might still be fine-- Because a lot of people go back there and love it, you know.

SMITH: Well, once when we were talking you mentioned that after Alcatraz, after the Indians occupied Alcatraz, that you felt you really shouldn't--it was becoming more difficult to do the Indian motifs in your work.

WAGNER: After Alcatraz?

SMITH: After the Indians occupied Alcatraz. So in general, about this time you're moving away from the Mexican and the Indian and the Asian influences in your work, after '67?

WAGNER: Yeah, I think I'd already been through it. I mean, our lives change. We go through different cycles about every seven or eight years, different values and different ways of seeing and doing things. Different blondes or redheads or brunettes; some guys change women, and other people change moods, and countries, and feelings. I think that it's always underneath; you never forget those things, they're always underneath. You're not divorcing them out of your mind. But I don't think you have to dwell on them forever, I think you can move on to other things.

SMITH: This is a followup question from our last session, but in Icon to Great Railroads, you take all these railroad things that you've found. The railroads were one of the main ways of destroying the Indian way of life in the western part of the United States, and you take all these railroad objects, and then you construct them into something that looks like an Indian piece of art. I mean, to me there's a social comment in it.

WAGNER: Well, railroad pieces to me don't really go along with that. Railroad pieces to me-- The railroad was a very romantic piece of machinery, especially the old railroads.

SMITH: But the old railroads were what destroyed the Indians, or one of the things that destroyed the Indian way of life, the laying down of the railroads.

WAGNER: Did I say that?

SMITH: No, you didn't say that.

WAGNER: I never thought I said it, because I don't think the old railroads ever destroyed the Indians' way of life, not at all. Indians could care less about the railroad. There were people-- In fact, I don't think the Indians' way of life is destroyed at all; I think their way of life is stronger than ours, because they have the inner soul of-- An Indian will always be an Indian, and we can't ever be an Indian or know what the Indian's thinking, no way. They're Indians. I don't care if we were here for ten thousand more years, we could never understand the Indians' way of life, because their nature-- They have their own spirits and their own gods and their own values. The railroad could go through the reservation, they'd take what they could off of it. If something was thrown away, they'd use it. They would take advantage of the railroad, because the railroad to them would be just-- They don't use the railroad themselves, and actually railroads don't go through their reservations in any place. The reservations are set apart. Like the Navaho reservation is-- A third of Arizona belongs to the Navahos, and the railroad runs along the edge of it. Indians don't live anyplace near the railroad. When the settlers in the West came out, they wanted to kill the Indians, but they came in covered wagons, and they came by horse, and they came in a lot of ways before the railroad came along. Actually, the railroad employed Indians to build the railroad. It didn't bother them if they were laying ties or doing something else. I don't think the railroad destroyed the Indians at all, the way of life, because the Apaches are very alive; the Navahos are alive; the Hopis are alive; the Paiutes are alive; the Sioux and the Shoshone, they're all alive. The ones who have lost some of their culture are maybe the Osage and the Indians who own oil wells in Oklahoma, some of them. Not in the Southwest.

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 14, 1987

SMITH: Today I wanted to get into a discussion of your boxes. It's a big topic. Can you tell me when you started? When did you begin to make boxes?

WAGNER: Well, my first boxes were different from the boxes of today. My first boxes were actually made in Mexico using a lot of the objects found in Mexico, in junk places and out in the graveyards and carnivals and whatnot, where I could pick up objects. Those boxes were related to a lot of the Day of the Dead and humorous things about Mexico in sort of a funky way.

SMITH: This was in the early sixties?

WAGNER: Yeah, yeah.

SMITH: At the same time you were doing Funeraria and Between Heaven and Hell?

WAGNER: Yeah, right, early sixties, exactly. Then the development started, and I went through various ways of doing boxes with different expressions. They became the object, but I got away from Mexico. A lot of the boxes were almost like putting objects in, like assemblage pieces, you know, but they usually were a narrative in mind. But there was still that old material, old rusty toys or rusty trains and things, rusty pieces of wood and junk and metal, related to painting in the background.

SMITH: Now, in Mexico, in Mexican folk art, you have the arks, and the cathedrals, sporting scenes, where all the little clay figures are put together. There's even a box form where the folk artists will just put in like a whole kitchen, all these little toy kitchen utensils. Were you familiar with those kinds of things?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. I used to enjoy looking at them, but I never really used that as a stimulation for my work, because that kind of narrative didn't interest me. Mine was more on the humor and dada relationship.

SMITH: You were in Oaxaca in the early sixties, right?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Did you know any of the artists who worked-- Indian artists or Mexican artists, folk artists, who worked in Oaxaca, like Teodora Blanco in [Santa Maria de] Atzompa?

WAGNER: Well, I met them, I met a few, but basically I was doing my own work. Artists just don't socialize much in Oaxaca. Even [Rufino] Tamayo was around there at one time, you know. But no, that-- I knew a few in Oaxaca, painters, Figueroa, people like this. And Laventa. A few people that I actually came in contact with by looking for objects, they seemed to be interested in the same sort of thing that I was, and I got to know them pretty well. I was really into my own work there, completely. And really feeling Mexico, the Indian of the Zapotec and their culture. I knew more anthropologists than I knew artists. They were studying the Oaxacan market system. They said it was the most complex market system in the world, the traveling market, everyday it went to a different town. They seemed to interest me more, because I was sort of being-- Constructing my boxes and doing my objects, I was sort of an anthropologist in my own rights, by using the things of their culture and rearranging them.

SMITH: What were the boxes that you did in the early sixties, then?

WAGNER: Well, a lot of boxes that I did at that time were the Day of the Dead, The Devil Set the Church on Fire. The titles are numerous; I'm trying to remember some of the better ones. The Bracero. A lot of boxes related to love and Indians. There was one box in particular that I really liked (it's in a collection now), called The Spectator.

SMITH: Could you--

WAGNER: It belongs in a collection.

SMITH: Whose collection?

WAGNER: I'm trying to remember her name. She lives in Santa Monica. Paula Fishman. She was with Anhalt Gallery for years. That particular box was using a cardboard piece of folk art they call entierro, or the interment. When you turn the crank, the procession, the funeral procession, came up--first came the people carrying the coffin, then came the procession, and then came the priest, and it went around on an endless belt. It came up through the devil's mouth and went down through the gates of heaven, around and around it went on a crank. I had bones on the box sticking out. Then they made coffins that you pulled the string and the corpse would look out of the hole in the coffin, and I had that centered in the piece. So every time the funeral passed above or underneath the man in the coffin, I had it hooked up so that he would pop out of the coffin to look at his own funeral. He was the spectator. It's a beautiful piece. The other one was the Day of the Dead box I did for another collector by the name of Niels Baggi, who was a great collector of those sort of boxes. He was one of my collectors from the [Silvan] Simone Gallery. He had one where the coffin was on the table, and all of these things were going on in the foreground. You'd pull the string on the outside and the man popped up to look at all of the people and things about him. You could look up in the corner and you could see him in the mirror from the box, so he didn't--you could still see him, it was reflected down. These were funny boxes at that time, in Mexico. Using things off the street: pieces of this, fragments of that, angels and devils and all sorts of metals. But not busy, not just thrown together, but a narrative. Less is more. Down to the essence, but using black velvet and laces and all these things.

SMITH: How did Simone feel about your boxes?

WAGNER: Well, about The Spectator box, in particular, I remember he had it in the very front of the gallery on the wall as you came in. He had about three hunting dogs, and one of the hunting dog's names was Kasha. And every morning. Kasha would go in the door, go over to The Spectator, and sit up and howl, and bay and bay at this piece that was in the gallery at that time, before it was sold to Paula Fishman out of that show. So Simone always felt that my works--as I told you once before, I was a risk, you know. He just respected me for what I did, and my free spirit, you know.

SMITH: Did your boxes sell?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. Well, that one sold.

SMITH: Much better than the assemblages?

WAGNER: About the same, yeah.

SMITH: But you said that the assemblages hardly sold at all.

WAGNER: That's right, in the very beginning, but he did sell some assemblages. In the first show, as I said, my assemblages, people didn't hardly see them, except the critic, [Arthur] Millier, who gave me a great review on the assemblages, and sort of didn't pay much attention to the paintings.

SMITH: The boxes are somewhat of an unusual art form. Conceptually, what were you drawing on when you decided to put things into a box form? Were you already familiar with the work of [Joseph] Cornell?

WAGNER: Well, I was familiar with Cornell, but I really wasn't that much interested in Cornell at that moment, or any other artist of box construction, actually. I wasn't even stimulated by other artists at that point, because I was in Mexico so much I didn't see them. Actually, the thing that really got me into boxes, I think was that it was a lot more--it fit better for me to combine objects and work in three dimensions than on a two-dimensional surface. I was tired of painting; I'd painted too long. It was an excitement to move through assemblage. And I knew that assemblage-- I was going to get into something else, and the box just manifested itself for me from these old funky boxes like I'm talking about in Mexico. They got more concise, more symbolic, for a while. I was using-- In the mid-sixties, '67, '68, during the revolution of the psychedelics and whatnot, there was a great period in there when everything was spiritual and centered, mandalic in form. And the mandala, I went into that pretty much, and I created probably a hundred boxes related to centered forms, the centering of the light. That took me back when I moved-- When I was married to Virginia, we moved to New Mexico, where it was possible for me to go to wonderful dumps in New Mexico, just outstanding dumps. No one in New Mexico, in Taos, was particularly interested in assemblage so I had the whole thing to myself, practically, until two or three other artists that I met, who came to see me, I found out they were also doing assemblages. So we used to spend-- We'd have more fun going to a dump than we would any other social function in Taos. Enjoyed the dump, enjoyed each other, have our picnics and really have a great day.

SMITH: What dumps were you going to?

WAGNER: Well, one was in Hondo; it was a wonderful one up on the top of a mountain. You drove up around and there it was on the crest of the hill. Marvelous dump. Things there that had gone back, oh, I imagine 150 years, laying around in that dump. The other dump was an especially exciting dump because it was long. You forded a river, and then you drove up this long road winding through all of the debris, from refrigerators to old cars to pieces of this and fragments of that, dead animals and bones, objects and junk. Then you curved around and the final destination was the Penitente Cemetery of Valdez Valley. So it would be nothing while you were in the dump to have to stand at attention and bow for a funeral that was going by through the dump to arrive up at the top of the cemetery. Actually, the cemetery, all around the cemetery, was also a dump. So you could-- They had a fence there to keep the goats out from chewing up the paper flowers from the crosses and other things, but basically the dump surrounded the cemetery even on the top. This dump was hundreds of years of civilization. Things there that were magnificent! So therefore, when I found these dumps and I found these things, it was--

SMITH: Like what?

WAGNER: I started working into this form because I was interested in the centering, in the spiritual, the Buddha, the Taoist, the mystics, the meditation, the American Indian, the quaternity of the four directions. All these things were laid out for me right there.

SMITH: Were these Hispano dumps? or Anglo? or Indian?

WAGNER: No, all Hispano. Yeah, both of them. No Indian dumps there, no. What was so nice about that form was that they were contemplative. They were not really narrative, they were more fetishlike, power pieces, you know. And they would combine painting, geometric painting and whatnot, in relation to the objects themselves, which were all sorts of American Indian and Spanish imagery.

SMITH: Do Mexico and Fetish come from that period? The two boxes, the large boxes that you had in your show?

WAGNER: Yeah, they both come from that period. The Fetish comes a little later, but the Mexico comes from that period exactly.

SMITH: And is that stuff that you found in Mexico or New Mexico?

WAGNER: There I found in Mexico.

SMITH: Okay.

WAGNER: But it all-- That was about '64.

SMITH: 'Sixty-eight is Mexico.

WAGNER: No, I mean when I found the stuff.

SMITH: Oh. The Devil Exorcisor is from that period, correct?

WAGNER: Yeah, it is, but it's a whole different concept. It's an enclosed box all the way around with mirrors, sending the devil to infinity. It's different.

SMITH: And then you have the box with the adobe house with the train-- I can't remember the title of it--that you had in the show at Barnsdall [Junior Art Center].

WAGNER: The ship, you mean?

SMITH: Yeah, the ship, right.

WAGNER: The Phantom Ship, the adobe house with the room in the back with the picture of Lily Langtree, and then the Indian fireplace, and the adobe floor, and the crucifix on the wall, and a chair or two. Like a New Mexico house, adobe. The whole house is that; had bullfight posters on one corner, theater announcements on another corner. Then you look through the door of the adobe house at one point, and you look in, and there's a lake with all mountains and trees completely around it. If you look for a moment, this ship will appear, a double-ended ship, and it comes out, and it goes back and disappears right in front of your eyes. It's a pretty magic piece. It's called The Phantom Ship, is the actual name of the box.

SMITH: What size are the boxes that you were doing initially? What kind of scale were you working on?

WAGNER: At that time?

SMITH: Yeah, at that time.

WAGNER: In New Mexico?

SMITH: Yeah, in New Mexico.

WAGNER: Small, small boxes. Maybe the largest one would be sixteen by twelve [inches] or something.

SMITH: But The Phantom Ship is larger than that.

WAGNER: Yeah, but that is not a box. The Phantom Ship. That is actually a construction, a house. That's a different-- Like the Devil Exorcisor and The Phantom Ship are constructions. Like Firaskew's a construction, it is not a box.

SMITH: Okay. So you were also beginning to do constructions at that time, simultaneously?

WAGNER: Yeah. Yeah, at that time. The Phantom Ship was one, and I have another one that you've probably never seen. It's called the Zodiac Box. It moves one revolution an hour and goes through the whole twelve signs of the zodiac. It's in a construction similar to the Devil Exorcisor. You're looking in and seeing a change all the time, with the planets and the signs.

SMITH: Were a lot of your boxes and constructions at this time mechanized, motorized?

WAGNER: Not that many, but a few, yeah.

SMITH: That's something that you've stopped doing, it seems.

WAGNER: I'm working on one in San Pedro called The Castle of the Graf van Rommelgem. I hope to have that finished someday. That's Flemish. Graf means count, right?, [and] rommel is junk, and gem is the place. And that's what they called me in Belgium. The Graf van Rommelgem, Count of the Junk Place.

SMITH: Well, at the same time you were-- It seems I've read about very large-scale environmental things that you were doing that were used in theatrical performances. They sound like your constructions, but on a very, very large scale. What were some of those that you did? The dance piece?

WAGNER: I've done two.

SMITH: Or the piece with dancers.

WAGNER: I've done two: one was in Eugene, Oregon, at the Open Gallery, and the other one was in San Francisco, at the Vorpal Gallery, upstairs on the top floor of that gallery. It needs lots of space, because we actually constructed the box about eleven by eleven by eleven.

SMITH: Feet, right?

WAGNER: Yes. With mirrors and Pepper's ghost-glass. Pepper's ghost is something that was used in the time of the early theater. Samuel Pepper, he invented this great glass that could be tipped at a certain angle, and the audience would see phantoms. I had them; fixed phantoms and mirrors on the other side. I had dancers, mime--two mimes, and two dancers, and two poets. And dream readers: four women reading their dreams and dressed up in their dreams simultaneously, bumping into each other like the other one never existed. An audience on each side, about 150 people on each side, so each side absolutely saw something different from the other side as far as the box was concerned. They changed sides at the intermission, everybody shifted, then they saw a different expression of the same piece. The reason I had the two poets, two dancers--because they switched. These read to this audience, and these read to this, then they moved through and they'd read the same thing over here, and back and forth. And these mimes would work on both sides and go right through the box.

SMITH: Couldn't the audience hear what was happening on both sides of the box? I mean, they could hear both poets reading, couldn't they?

WAGNER: Not really. No, they couldn't. And if they did, it made no difference, because we had four dream readers simultaneously reading. The box was deep enough so the poet could do what he wanted over here, and this poet could do what he wanted. There was no interference.

SMITH: Was the performance aspect of it, was that your conception?

WAGNER: Yeah. The whole thing was my conception and choreographed.

SMITH: Did Virginia [Copeland Wagner] do the choreographing?

WAGNER: No, I did the choreography. Virginia did tai chi sword in the piece. One side tai chi, one side tai chi sword.

SMITH: Who were the poets?

WAGNER: The one up in Oregon, I don't think we had a title for that piece. But the one in San Francisco, we called it Living in Infinity. It was a little different concept, different box, but it was basically the same. We had wonderful musicians in Oregon that made all their own instruments out of auto parts and junk and scraped things on the floor. They sat in four corners of the gallery, and we got all this wonderful music. When I got to San Francisco, we had all these dancers from San Francisco, and all the poets from San Francisco and from Berkeley. We had good talent to draw from; we had the best. We had a surrealist poet and a realist poet.

SMITH: Who were they?

WAGNER: One was Latif Harris and the other was Taddeo Young. They're both Bay Area poets. And dancers like Theodore Roszak's daughter, and people like that. And Manuel Nieto, he gave a whole performance. He was at Berkeley, Spanish, with his company.

SMITH: So you had different groups? The performers would change, then?

WAGNER: Yeah, it lasted for six weeks, each one, Saturday and Sunday nights. We always had a full house; never, never stopped coming, these people. Then I did it again with a different scene in Monterey; I had nothing. I did the same thing at Angel's Gate [Cultural Center], nothing.

SMITH: What do you mean nothing?

WAGNER: Nothing, nothing at all; just the actors and the performers, but nothing there. Just tape on the floor. I made a maze of tape that they could not cross the maze lines, and that was called, in Monterey at the Pacific Grove Art Center, it was called Loof Lirpa, which is April Fool backwards. And at Angel's Gate, it was called The Maze of Invisible Walls. The mimes would grope along the walls trying to get out. Because I told the audience in the beginning, I said, "I was down in the bottom of the North Sea, and I was trapped, encased, within glass walls, and there was only one way out, and I could not find that. As I looked up, there were four depressed girls from Finland sitting on the corners of the mirrors throwing Pet Milk cans at each other while camels were walking on top of the water." I gave that image, from then on they would-- That was their confined area. They weren't all confined. There were some-- Like the world champion skateboard artist could do whatever he wanted to do. He was everywhere in San Pedro. Oh, it was a wonderful performance there. People were throwing their dreams in the air and flying through the air. It was like a Chagall, those dream readers. Each time I've done it, it seems to get better, you know. I haven't done it now for five years.

SMITH: You showed me a photograph of a piece that you had at your house in Echo Park, the piece with the chains, the piece that appeared and disappeared.

WAGNER: Yeah, that was twenty by twenty feet, and it had twelve elements of burned assemblage, of charred wood from Topanga Canyon, out of fires, from fences and--not trees, but pieces of wood with all the charcoal on them, hanging on conveyor chains, like a cross form. So as it turned, these pieces from all of the sides would enter into the center. And there was a dancer, a nude dancer, black and white painted, and the pieces were black and white. So when they moved in, she would dance through these pieces until they would just almost close around her. In the meantime, Don Preston, who was with the Mothers of Invention, had a group called AHA, the Aesthetic Harmony Assemblage. All his instruments were all built out of porch swings, and springs, and chimes, and bumpers, and gongs, and junk. His sounds were fantastic. He had a piano with thumbtacks, and everything was about-- He was studying then with Harry Partch; he wasn't quite up to forty-three tones, but he was very close. He wasn't too far away from Harry Partch. It's hard to do that on a piano with only, what is it, twelve tones? But he really reached out. He would feel the shapes and the dancer, and the dancer felt the music and saw the shapes, and the whole thing became an integrated piece of art. It was a beautiful concept.

SMITH: This, the performance-art aspect, and the constructions and the boxes seemed to come simultaneously with the hippie movement. Is there a connection, or is that coincidence?

WAGNER: Well, at the time of the hippie movement, there were a lot of people who wanted to do things. It wasn't that corporate attitude. They wanted to do things pure, not something for money, professionally cooked up. They did it for love. They did it for the pureness of art. That was a nice philosophy, and the young people-- There were lots of wonderful people within that movement that I could use as part of the actors and poets. Not all of them were hippies; some of them had already grown through it or were about to become. I had some younger than hippies even, a couple of them. But it was that era.

SMITH: And you were based here in Los Angeles and in New Mexico?

WAGNER: That's just one piece. Wait, now. When I got to doing these things in Oregon and in San Francisco, that was '77; the hippie movement was over. But there was a transition period going on where people had been there and wanted to continue, you see, wanted to do something. The only people that were hard to deal with in these performances, always, were the dancers, because they have some narcissistic thing going within them that builds up their egos to the point where they're very difficult to work with. Because they're very temperamental, where the poets are old tennis-shoe type people, you know, right off the street. A whole different philosophy. But the dancers, they want everything just the way they want it. If the floor had one spot on it, they would complain; if the window was open, they would complain--if you closed the window, they would complain; if the lights weren't right, they would complain, it would show up one of their eyebrows too blue, or something. None of the other people-- Everybody else wanted it and loved it. But they were always the prima donnas, you see. I find that's kind of the way dancers' personalities work anyway.

SMITH: Were you in Haight-Ashbury during the '67, '68 period?

WAGNER: No. No. I walked through it, and I still, when I go to San Francisco, I still go over there. There are some wonderful coffeehouses over there. I can't remember the name; was it the Beethoven? Was that the name of it? The Beethoven, I think, was a good one, where they used to play classical music.

SMITH: The Beethoven is in North Beach.

WAGNER: Maybe it moved. But in the old days it was there. There was another one there that was like an open garden inside and had a piano, and whatnot. That was another good one. My favorite coffeehouse in San Francisco wasn't even in Haight-Ashbury, it was the Meat Market on Noe and Twenty-fourth [Street] next to Bud's ice cream parlor. That was a true beat coffeehouse, with the old furniture. I liked that one.

SMITH: Yeah. In terms of the kinds of things you were doing at this period, were you getting much-- Was the [Los Angeles] Times reporting on what you were doing? Were they giving you reviews of the boxes, the assemblages?

WAGNER: Well, there was only one actual reviewer on the Times that reviewed everything I did during that period; that was William Wilson. He was never very favorable to me in his most of his reviews. He always said, "Puns are cute, kitsch, yuk, yuk," if it was a pun, or "He's continuing with that tap dance of death." Or one he uses a lot with other people, I've noticed, some word I can't remember. But it's the same. He doesn't change his wording, he just keeps writing the same things for everybody's reviews; it's almost identical, what he said about my work in 1978-- He's still--or '77--he's still talking about-- No, earlier than that-- I'm mixed up; '69, '70 was about the last time he reviewed anything of mine. Tintintabulate, that's the word he always used. "They're tintintabulating." And I've noticed he's still using these words. No, I got reviews from others. I got good reviews from Art International and from Art Week and from Artforum and Art News, those magazines. But very little with the Times, very little on that score, you know?

SMITH: What about the L.A. [Los Angeles] Free Press?

WAGNER: They gave me always some things going there. Alex Apostolides was sort of the art editor and in charge of things, and he gave me a whole front page once in the Free Press. And also in Open City, which was another magazine, or newspaper, in Los Angeles during that period.

SMITH: Did you know the people at the Free Press?

WAGNER: I knew lots of people at the Free Press over a period of time; photographers and writers, like Liza Williams, who I really enjoyed. They all lived in Echo Park, practically. Art Kunkin and Susan Smoka. And the photographer that photographed most of my things was a wonderful photographer and lived in Echo Park. I'm trying to remember her name. Sharon Ackerman. All of these people were great. The Free Press wasn't anything like it is today, it was really a fine paper. Jeanie Morgan, who was married then, I think, to Art Kunkin. There was a different love feeling to the paper, you know? Although it honestly stated about social comment. It covered everything.

SMITH: Well, did you feel it was a paper you could go talk to the art editor whenever you wanted to?

WAGNER: I'll be actually honest with you. I've never talked to any art editor in my life on any basis of trying to achieve any information or have a review given. I've never done that, never asked the newspaper to review my exhibitions to this day, ever. I have no intention of ever doing it. If they want to do it, they will come. That's up to the people who give the exhibition. If they have enough interest to give me the exhibition, I think it's up to them to do something about the rest. Because after all, they are charging a commission for the work, and I think it's part of their duty. It's not up to the artist to go around blowing his horn to get a crit.

SMITH: Did you do any pieces that were related to the Vietnam War?

WAGNER: Yeah, a couple. I did a rocket in a glass cylinder with some metal pieces I found in a dump in Rocketdyne that looked like rocket pieces. Up to a point. And I had a whole army of soldiers inside, all trapped and encased in this penis of glass. Yeah, that was one. I did one on peace in Navaho, Yiddish, Spanish, French, English, and German within hands clasped together, trying to pull together from all of the different races of people, the red, the yellow, the black, the brown and the white.

SMITH: Was this a box or a construction?

WAGNER: This was a box. There were a few.

SMITH: Then you were involved in some things concerning the American Indians.

WAGNER: The America Needs Indians.

SMITH: How did you get involved in that? Where did that come from?

WAGNER: Well, there were a lot of people that I knew, like Steve Durke and Dion Wright, Walter Chappell in North Beach. That's where it really got going. North Beach. Actually, the name of the group was the Love Generator and America Needs Indians. This was to do something to help the American Indians, who were being absolutely torn apart by the white man at that time. When the hippie movement came along, well, everybody wanted to be an Indian, so naturally it brought the Indian into fame. Of course, the hippies went to the Hopis. The hippies at the Hopi [reservation were] running around nude, and the Hopis, being very conservative people, never heard of such things. They didn't have as much love for the hippies as the hippies had for the Hopis. The Navahos didn't have much to do with the whole thing. They went to the Plains; they went to Rolling Thunder, up in Nevada or wherever he is, on the border there. Rolling Thunder and a few Hopis--

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO, FEBRUARY 14, 1987

SMITH: Ok, you were--were saying Rolling Thunder--

WAGNER: Yeah, and a few Hopis, like David Monongi, Jack the Snake Priest, and Tom [Thomas] Banyakia, and some of those people, they took a liking to the hippies. They saw that the hippies were nice kids with money. It was either going into the Hopis or going into some yogi group. They were cashing in like mad. All of them coming over here from India making fortunes off of the hippies. Well, David, Thomas, and Jack, and a few of these boys, they were the conservative party of the Hopi, but they were the most progressive of the two clans. They knew when they had a good thing going. So they'd go off to these love-ins, and the Hopis would be the center of attention. They weren't using Plains Indians, the Hopis came to love-ins. And Rolling Thunder. I guess he was, I don't know, up in--

SMITH: Lake Pyramid?

WAGNER: Up in Nevada. What is that, Comanche or one of those--

SMITH: Shoshone or Washoe.

WAGNER: One of those things, Washoe Valley, around there. [coughs; tape recorder off]

SMITH: So you were talking about, before we took a break, about the Love Generator.

WAGNER: Well, we were talking about a particular part there. At that time, I think we were mentioning David Monongi and that group of Indians who were connected up with the--knew all of these people we're talking about: Steve Durke, who had the Lama Foundation in Lama, New Mexico; and Dion Wright, who was the head of the Brotherhood of Man in Laguna Beach and the Mystic Arts World with [Timothy] Leary; and Walter Chappell, who was a filmmaker, and a good one, who lived in Pilar, New Mexico. And then there was Henry [Harry] Hay and John-- John, what was his last name?

SMITH: Burnside, you mean.

WAGNER: John Burnside. They were all involved in TILL [Committee for Traditional Indian Land and Life], which was another organization, the Traditional Indian Land and Life committee, who were trying to help the Hopis and other Indians, especially around New Mexico and Arizona. An omnibus bill was trying to be passed that would remove the land from the Indians and slowly take away their reservation. They went to Washington, D.C., and they battled this thing out in Washington. They saved that from being passed. Henry Hay and Craig Carpenter, who was basically with Rolling Thunder up north, the two of them were working together. But Henry Hay lived in San Juan pueblo, and John, and they were trying-- The last I saw of them, they were trying-- The state of Texas was trying to claim all of the Rio Grande, right on up through New Mexico, all the water rights. Henry Hay was out trying to put across to the Pueblos that live all along the Rio Grande that they've got to do something about using that water in some way, such as for growing rabbit brush and things like this for their animals, so that they have to rely on that water, a reason for using it. But the Indians weren't using that river at all. It could have been taken away from New Mexico, the whole water rights of the Rio Grande. I think he fought that; that never came about. TILL was an organization. Love Generator, America Needs Indians; all of this came together as a group to sort of make the Indian a hero in America, rather than a bum, like he'd been treated for years, as a ward of the government.

SMITH: Were you attending the meetings?

WAGNER: Yeah, I used to go to the meetings.

SMITH: On a regular basis?

WAGNER: Yeah, just about every month. We published a magazine even, a little book that was written, the Prophecy of the Hopi by Chief-- What was his name? Dan Bear, you know. Chief [Dan] K'achongva. We put that book all together, Detta Lange and Hannes Lange, Charles Port from Immaculate Heart College. We had the meetings at Immaculate Heart College on Franklin [Avenue] and Western [Avenue] in their auditorium. Lots of Indians would come, and they would dance, and they would do all these things, and they would bring all their culture to L.A. through that. So it was a big thing. Everybody was buying Indian jewelry, and everybody had to be an Indian. My aspect of the thing was I just loved the Indians' being there, but I wasn't romanticizing Indians through their trappings and things. I was romanticizing Indians through my boxes and constructions and earlier paintings, perhaps. I was a natural for being in that group.

SMITH: Well, it doesn't sound too typical of you to be going to political organizations' meetings.

WAGNER: Well, this was beyond the call of duty. [laughter] I went there because I loved the Indians, and I didn't want to see them-- The Bureau of Indian Affairs, they were a bunch of puppets, and they were really against the Indians. They were Indians who were against the Indians. I thought it was-- I never really became involved that much in any politics. But it wasn't really politics to me, it was sort of restoring a culture and being part of keeping this restoration from being destroyed. Instead of tearing down a Victorian house and putting up a condo, that same kind of flavor to the American Indian: it was a thing of elegance, a thing of beauty, a thing of love, a thing that we cherished from nature. And to have it destroyed for coal and oil and junk, and taking away the land to put up the poverty-stricken shacks to make the place look like some tenement instead of an Indian community, I wasn't ready to accept that kind of metamorphosis.

SMITH: How was your artwork-- Were you doing what they call agitprop type of artwork connected with this? Were you doing anything through your art to help the Traditional Indian Land and Life committee or the other organizations?

WAGNER: Yeah, I made a few drawings for their magazines and bulletins, and things of that nature, related to protest. Hands reaching up through the mud, prayer hands with the light above, trying to grope for the last light. Smoke and smog and corruption, and debris in the desert, and debris in the mountains that is being just dumped out there in nature. A different kind of debris than good old junk. And shooting up everything that they saw; white man goes to the dump to shoot everything and fill it with holes; not to collect it for a beautiful, insignificant object, a thing of beauty, but to puncture it full of holes with his rifle. That's all the desert is for as far as white man is concerned, I did make one piece related to that with an Indian holding up a whole mountain of debris that's just destroying the landscape, and wrecked cars. It's called America Needs Indians, or the other title is I Think We Ought to Stop This Sort of Thing.

SMITH: That would explain why-- That piece seems unusual in the kind of materials you used, those kinds of cheap, plastic, like Lego kind of toys, but they're not--

WAGNER: That was actually that way when I found it in the dump. Everything had been melted together, and it became a wonderful piece of metamorphosis. Every kind of object in there just fused together. I had no control over what the dump did to that piece. I used that piece as a statement protesting the pollution of our deserts and our mountains and our environment with the American Indian as the last symbol of let's not do any more, let's stop.

SMITH: Is that a time-full piece or a timeless piece?

WAGNER: Well, I think it would be time-full, but so far it's on time. As long as we have this continuing environmental pollution, and the way it's going now, it'll still be timeless.

SMITH: Harry Hay in his oral history interview mentions that the Traditional Land and Life committee was primarily Anglos, white people.

WAGNER: That's correct, except for a few Hopis that I mentioned, like David. They had to have some Indians.

SMITH: Yeah. Was America Needs Indians primarily white people as well, Anglos?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, I would say that most of them were artists.

SMITH: Did you go on any protests, like to Washington or the Federal Building, or anything like that?

WAGNER: No. I heard a story-- I don't know how true it is, but I got it from a firsthand report from David, that they went to Washington about the omnibus bill, and they were talking to some senator about it. The senator was denying them everything, and David said, "Well, if you pass, if you even think about passing this bill, your eyes are going to be filled with spider's poison." And he [the senator] says, "See what I mean? We have to confront these kind of idiots, these kind of superstitious creatures who are telling us--" And at that time the man grabbed his eyes, "Oooh!" He couldn't see a thing.

SMITH: You don't know who they were talking to. It was a senator?

WAGNER: I don't know which one. No, this was a story I heard from David. But I also hear from David stories about how they go to a certain place in Arizona once a year to watch the flying saucers land. [laughter] Then they all go, the whole group, to a special place to visit the flying saucers, and they get their prophecies there. Because they say that the Gourd of Ash will fall, and we must pray every day to stop the Gourd of Ash from falling on the earth.

SMITH: About this time you were also involved with Yogi Bhajan? How did you meet-- You met him in New Mexico?

WAGNER: No, I met him right here in Los Angeles at the East-West Cultural Center. One evening I was going to a lecture by a Sufi master, and I immediately took a dislike to him. My wife talked to him, Virginia, he said, "I can teach you to raise your kundalini in five days." Virginia became fascinated by that, and she went down to his classes at the East-West. Everybody was on the floor (there were only four people there in his first class ). Edith Tyberg was the director there, a great lady. About two weeks later Yogi Bhajan told Virginia, "Your husband couldn't come to my class for all the money in the world." And I sent a note back to him through Virginia saying, "I wouldn't come to your class for all the money in the world." This went on and on until finally we were-- I was talked into attending. We got to be friends, you know. He treated me all right. As a matter of fact, at that moment when I came, about two weeks later, everybody came, whole busloads of hippies from the Hog Farm in New Mexico. There was John Law, the actor, and Tom Law, his brother, and Reno. A lot of actresses that were in the Smothers Brothers Show. Goldie. All these kind of people showed up.

SMITH: Goldie Hawn?

WAGNER: No. What was her name? They called her Goldie. She was one of the hippie girls on the Smothers Brothers. The Smothers Brothers even showed up in their Rolls Royce. What was his name. Tommy Smothers?

SMITH: Tom Smothers and Dick Smothers.

WAGNER: Anyway, they came, and we got people like Barrymore, Jr., John Barrymore, Jr., who was an old dopehead. We got Jim Baker, who ran that restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Jim Baker was an ex-Marine jujitsu champion of the world. He ran a health food restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. We had all of these people. Jules Boucharie turned over an ashram to him behind his antique shop on Robertson [Boulevard] and-- What's the one? I can't remember the street.

SMITH: Melrose [Avenue]?

WAGNER: Melrose and Robertson, yeah, near Cyrano's down a block or two. All of these things started going on. Johnny Rivers, he came along, bought him a new Cadillac, a pink Cadillac. He lived in Jules Boucharie's house, and he ran his whole thing. I made him a big gong stand, and I did a lot of-- I made him mandalas. I worked pretty hard for him for about seven or eight months. I was going every night to study with him.

SMITH: Kundalini yoga?

WAGNER: Yeah. And then finally he-- We used to take him-- We got him classes all over the place. Everyplace, we'd take him. He loved Mexican food. He was an airport inspector in New Delhi. But he loved Mexican food. He was so arrogant to people, the most arrogant man I have ever known in my life. But he was always nice to me. He told me once, he said, [with accent] "I think you're a more holy man than I am, Gordon." Anyway, we used to have great parties, lots of food, feasts with all these people. The Hog Farm did great things to help, you know, to bring the spirit. A whole community from New Mexico. Truches is where they came from.

SMITH: Truches?

WAGNER: Truches. That's where they were, back in the mountain, Sangre de Cristo. Then they had another group in Embudo, wonderful girls there. They were all beautiful, hippies. And they just loved it, they ate it up, you see. They'd been into the Indian thing before, I mean American Indian. They just switched over to Yogi Bhajan like that. Yogi was strong, powerful. He'd put you through grueling, horrible tests of strength every night.

SMITH: Like what?

WAGNER: Yoga exercises that you just couldn't imagine. Standing on one hand, balanced on two feet, the other arm up in the air and fire breathing for fifty breaths, and then switch over to the other one on this hand. And up and this way out, just like this.

SMITH: Your feet would be lifted in the air?

WAGNER: No, they'd be on the floor. You ran one arm up and this one like this, and fire breathe, [repeats very quick breaths] real fast to raise your kundalini. Well, this went on and on. Finally, Virginia went on to tai chi. I was not that interested-- He even had me teaching a class, when he was in New Mexico, at Pitzer College. I had to teach the class. And it was-- We just went to New York one day, and we never-- He wanted to make me the treasurer of the group, 3HO it was called. Healthy, Happy, Holy. John Law was the president, and I was going to be the treasurer, I can't remember his name, but he was the editor and owner of the [San Francisco] Oracle magazine.

SMITH: In San Francisco?

WAGNER: Both, here L.A. [Los Angeles] Oracle, and San Francisco. I can't remember his name now, but he was going to be the secretary. None of us were ever going to do anything; it was just a name so we could have a nonprofit organization. Yogi was-- He told me he was going to get the benefit of everything. He had all these women around him all the time. But we left.

SMITH: Why did you leave?

WAGNER: It was too much. And he really hurt Virginia's back. Pulled her down on his stomach and pressed into her spine. Tried to damage her. And he said, "It doesn't matter where you go. I don't understand how you escape from my net, but just remember the elephant has a very long trunk, and no matter where you are, we'll snatch you back," over the telephone. Well, then he moved to New Mexico, up to Espanola. He's been out there, I guess, all the time. He raises some kind of special horses, and there's a whole bunch of them there, with guns and rifles to protect themselves against the Spanish. An interesting concept. But he never bothered me.

SMITH: What's the interesting concept?

WAGNER: Well, the whole, this ranch and this idea of his. He never bothered me. He bothered so many people. He caused harm to so many people. We came out unscathed.

SMITH: So you were teaching at Pitzer for a while?

WAGNER: Yeah, I was teaching there at that time, as a matter of fact.

SMITH: How did you get that job?

WAGNER: Carl Hertel went on a sabbatical, and he asked me if I would take over during that time. I said only under one condition: that I can come and go as I please and have my class and never attend any meetings. So that was arranged.

SMITH: Had you taught at a major university before, at an art department in a major university before?

WAGNER: Not really, no.

SMITH: Community college and community art centers.

WAGNER: Yeah, things like that, and art centers.

SMITH: Did you enjoy-- Did you find teaching at an art school was different? Was it enjoyable to you?

WAGNER: Well, there's-- You know the people at an art school are interested in art and are there for that, whereas in a college they have a lot of other things on their minds, other schedules to keep and other classes to bring up to date on for grades and points, and all that, you know. Art is-- If you were going to learn about art, I would say that that would be the last place you would want to go, Pitzer College. I mean, there are so many good schools I think that could give you art. Of course, I had a very good-- I had good classes going, because I was the only one teaching what I was teaching in all of the colleges. I was teaching assemblage and three-dimensional construction combined with painting. And design, I had one class in design, and the other-- So that brought in students from Pomona [College] and Scripps [College] and Claremont [McKenna College] and Harvey Mudd [College] and Pitzer; I had all the colleges, students from each one. I was amazed at the beautiful work they really did, you know. We had a wonderful time doing it.

SMITH: Many artists in Southern California, and I'm sure everywhere, have been able to support themselves by getting jobs, teaching jobs, at the University of California or the state colleges. Long Beach State [California State University, Long Beach], Fullerton [California State University, Fullerton], [University of California] Santa Barbara. Why didn't you settle into a teaching job, a faculty teaching job?

WAGNER: Because basically, that's what you become. You become a teacher instead of an artist. It's a trap, and you can get caught in it. I know a lot of artists who teach art, but they're always complaining that they have no time for their artwork because they're so involved in their schedules to teach. They may teach three days a week or something, but in the meantime they're preparing for the next four days for those three days, you know. I think it actually takes a lot out of any serious artist who wants to be an artist to have to take time out to teach. Plus the fact that, not being a person of organizations like that, meetings, and being told this and to do that and get this done, and orders and regulations to follow, all those kind of disciplines, I'd rather just follow my own disciplines and work in my studio and get along the best I can and teach in a place where you have students, but if you don't have the students, you don't have the class sort of feeling, like art centers and whatnot. Money-- If you want to be an artist, I think you have to be one. I know there are some good artists that are teachers. They wait for their sabbatical when they can do their work. But I know so many of them, that's all they do is teach; they never have exhibitions, they never work, and they never get anything done, you know. And when they do something, it's eclectic to everybody else because they can't follow their way long enough. Too exhausting.

SMITH: How were you supporting yourself in the late sixties, early seventies?

WAGNER: That's barely making it in the late sixties. Fortunately, Virginia has a wonderful ability to teach the Alexander technique. She had private students, she would have maybe four or five a week--no, four or five a day, sometimes, maybe three times a week. That paid the bills. And I would sell something sometimes. I taught a little bit, or I'd be asked to give a lecture. Some kind of thing always came along; I never worried about it. But if I think back about it, it was a good cushion with Virginia, because she financed things pretty well for us, kept it there. But back in those days, there was a boom in the arts, you know. I was selling a lot of works. I was selling boxes for $2,000, $3,000 per box. Somebody would come along and give me $6,000 for a couple of boxes.

SMITH: [Silvan] Simone was handling your boxes or [Robert] Comara?

WAGNER: No, none-- That was In the late seventies--no, I mean the early seventies. No.

SMITH: Who was handling your boxes?

WAGNER: At that time it was Molly Barnes and Jacqueline Anhalt [Gallery] on La Cienega [Boulevard]. They sold a few for me. Then I was invited to a lot of exhibitions. I showed some works in the Orlando Gallery, they sold some works for me, in the [San Fernando] Valley. I used to get by, but I was never rich. I enjoyed comfortable poverty, and we lived in Echo Park. Finally, they raised our rent to $200 a month for this big house on two and a half acres of land. It started at $80, and it went up slowly over a period of nineteen years, it progressed up to $200, That was in '78, I think, when they kicked us out. That's when we moved. They sold the house.

SMITH: When did you go to Europe?

WAGNER: Nineteen seventy-one.

SMITH: How did that come about?

WAGNER: I was talking with Arthur Secunda, and he'd had an exhibition in a gallery in Uppsala, Konstsalongen Kavalletin, of assemblages. He had 104 works in the exhibition, and he sold 108, of assemblage. So he said, "You should have a show there. I'll write to Herbert and see what we can do." He wrote a letter, and Herbert answered me.

SMITH: Herbert who?

WAGNER: The director, Herbert Ahlquist.

SMITH: Ahlquist?

WAGNER: He was the owner. He wrote a letter back and said, "You can have an exhibition in October of the next year." And I said, "October, that's pretty good." Arthur said, "That's perfect. It's not too dark, and it's not too light. It's just right. You'll like it that time of the year." I wrote him back and said I'd do it. So I did it. I sent forty-two boxes there, boxes that were--they weren't fabricated boxes, they were still assemblage and some fetish pieces and images, and of that mandalic form.

SMITH: Things like Mexican Bus?

WAGNER: Similar to that period. Forty-two of them in a crate, flew them over there to Stockholm. We took off, and we went ourselves. We arrived there I think it was about September 30, and the show was going to open on October 2. We got there and everything was fine, and I hung the whole exhibition. They had the opening, posters all over the town and the city, and great kiosks. It was beautiful. A nice man. And they sold quite a few pieces for me out of that show. The only problem, he said they would have sold twenty times more, but the teachers were on strike and they had no money at that time. The University of Uppsala, which is an old university, one of the oldest in the world, I think. That's how I started, that was my first show in Europe.

SMITH: How long did you stay in Sweden?

WAGNER: A couple of months. Then I was invited to have an exhibition in the museum, in a place called Sodertalje [Konsthall], which is in Stockholm. But that would be the following year, so I had no immediate plans [about] what to do with this work. Winter was there, and I didn't know where to put it, you know. The whole crate went out into Herbert's storage shed. I figured, well, it's going to freeze, you know. I don't know what happens to art when there's no heat, no nothing, just out in the freezing shed. I don't know if glass breaks or what. I had no conception. So we finally-- I made lots of friends in Sweden, some of my great friends, like Jan Thunholm, Bjorn Evanson, Nils Stenquist. A lot, all artists.

SMITH: Was there assemblage work being done in Sweden at the time?

WAGNER: Yeah. Yeah, there was, by Jan Thunholm, he was one, and Jan Bjorn, he was another one.

SMITH: How did Swedish assemblage differ from California assemblage?

WAGNER: Well, basically, they painted it all. They bought wood, cut it out, sawed it, nailed it on, and stood it up and painted the colors.

SMITH: So they were fabricated pieces, then, instead of the found pieces.

WAGNER: Yeah. Sawed out, randomly sawed out. Bjorn Evanson did big gates for the city of Stockholm, like pie, you know, of bronzes and things; he used car parts and things; he would weld them into his steel. He lived on one of the islands right there just south of a place called-- My memory is so bad for these times. But a wonderful place. He had a studio right on the water. There's a community. It's right there off of the islands. The ships went right by his house; on the Baltic, beautiful. Anyway, after about two months we left. I studied there with an engraver and made some etchings.

SMITH: Had you studied etching before?

WAGNER: No, no. They invited me to do some etchings. His name was Eje Lonn. He was a wonderful old guy. He taught me the Rembrandt technique of etching. He was marvelous.

SMITH: How have you used the etching?

WAGNER: Oh, I just made them there. I just made a couple of etchings, just for the feeling of it.

SMITH: Like that box there that has the line--

WAGNER: That's a drawing.

SMITH: Yeah, it has an etching feeling.

WAGNER: Well, I drew that etching on the same stock, on the asphaltem.

SMITH: Had you done that kind of draftsmanship before, previous to that?

WAGNER: Yeah. He was such a wonderful old man with a long beard and a funny, old blue seaman's cap he always wore. He would laugh, joke. He gave me that pointed long stick right here with the dull point that looks like a piece of bamboo. He said, "You take that back to America. You work with that, that is part of my father's fishing pole when he died." I liked him a lot. When we left there we went to London. We were going to London for a week, and we stayed for almost six months. Then the next thing was when is the exhibition going to be, to be sure that it was going to be held in the museum, in Sodertalje, and at what time. The complications of getting it somewhere after that to a new destination. So the only thing I could do was-- When we arrived in London, I said, "This looks like a place for my art." I was like Gully Jimson, you know, looking for big surfaces to paint on. But I said, "With the British wit and the number of art establishments and galleries and museums in this city, there certainly must be someplace for my work." Well, that took a while. It took a lot of walking and learning about London, which is a marvelous city when you know where you're going. At first we stayed in some hotel next to where Virginia Woolf lived, Bloomsbury Street. We just wanted to get into the flavor of the Bloomsbury crowd, Dorothy Brett, Virginia Woolf, and all those ladies. Then we decided that wasn't the place, so we moved across the town to Victoria, over next to the Waterloo--or next to the Victoria Station. That was near the Alexander Center, where Virginia wanted to go to study with the master, right there at Victoria Station. So we found an old hotel over there, and they gave us a cheap rate up on the top floor. We stayed there for about two or three weeks. In the meantime, I'm out pounding the pavement for the first time in my life looking to see what I could find in the way of a gallery in London. That wasn't so easy to find. I'd go to these galleries and they'd say, [with British accent] "It's so wonderful, it's charming, it's beautiful. It's a pity you're not English, you're American." They would turn me off on that score. This went on and on and on; I must have contacted twenty-five, thirty galleries. But I learned about London. I learned how to walk in London, how to get there the shortest way, and how to take tubes, the underground. Now I'm equally at home in London as I am here, you know, in Southern California, where I was born. Natural-- Just a hamlet, really, but it seems such a massive place when you-- We moved to another place where it said "room" on George Street. I did drawings and things along the way of all these places. Looking at drawings of some of my black and whites, of my Under the Crown series, I was drawing all the time. Probably we moved to another place on George Street, which was about palatable for three days. An awful place, just gruesome when we got inside and looked at the rooms, the bathroom all full of water on the floor and the windows all sagging and broken. The housekeeper, she was a nice lady. I think she was Spanish. With her tattooed spider on her elbow.

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 21, 1987

SMITH: Well, when we left off last week, you had come to London in 1971 for two weeks and stayed six months. You had mentioned afterwards that your stay in London was the beginning of a major transformation in your work--and your life, I guess. Could you explain what you meant by that?

WAGNER: Well, when I arrived in London, in the railroad station, Liverpool Street Station especially, from crossing over from Holland and taking the train to Liverpool Street, I walked into this station, it was so incredible, the ironwork and the mystery of it. I'd never seen a railroad station like that anywhere. It went way back; all the curlicues and all of the imagery. I was sort of dazed at the city. I had no idea where I was. I knew it was supposed to be the largest city in the world populationwise at that time. Apparently people had told me what a great city it was, but I had no conception of it. When we picked up the cab and went the wrong way on the streets, well, then I knew I was in a different place. As I looked at the people all around me, I realized they were from a different place. They weren't like us at all, the British, all different people, their faces, everything about them. And being there as a viewer to this was quite impressive. And also depressing. I went through all sorts of emotions at first. I realized that the people in London are not rich; there are lots of poor people there that live on very little money to keep things going. But they all have that wonderful spark of humor down inside of them and that eccentricity, which keeps everything going very healthily. They live almost in the past; they talk about things that happened four hundred years ago like it happened yesterday. They are very much interested in the royalty, the kings and the queens and all of the-- Buckingham Palace and all of that royal pomp is almost like a fetish to these people. They can't give up that admiration, or that feeling, for these royalty, who actually, really haven't much power in the politics in the country, but they're there. The people wait for them in parades, on the streets, for the queen to appear in a carriage. If she waves at them, then it's going to bring them good luck for the whole year. There's so much of that. So looking around London, visiting galleries and trying to get myself going-- Taking my works from Sweden to London, somehow I thought the people of London would really appreciate what I was doing because they have that humor, and they have that childlike ability to really accept it. They're sweet people, and I thought that it was a possibility for galleries to be interested. As I think we already mentioned, I went from one gallery to another.

SMITH: What were you showing to these galleries? What were you taking to show them, what did you propose to--

WAGNER: I wasn't taking anything but slides. My work was all-- The physical work was still in Sweden.

SMITH: Right, but what works were you--

WAGNER: Boxes. Boxes. That was it. Of the period that I had in Sweden, my older pieces.

SMITH: So they were funk boxes?

WAGNER: Yeah, funk boxes. As I say, they loved it, but it was too bad that I was an American. "You're not British," they would tell me. I stayed on and looked at things and started making a series of drawings that I call Under the Crown, because I realized all of this royalty, all of this elegance, and all of these heraldic symbols and chance were all wonderful images and symbols for my work to come. It was like empires balanced on a dice cube, or a whole empire balanced on a knife edge with the king and the queen in folly. There was always this chance that it was going to fall down, like a playing card castle. Playing cards. All these things became symbols. Dice cubes. All this imagery. It was all like symbols of chance, the aleatory. And I used those in drawings. I started drawing all of these things out in my rooms where we would spend time while we were--in the evening I would just sit and draw until I fell asleep. The thing that was a very amusing situation, I remember asking so many galleries, and everyone had the same answer, all liking my work, but always the same answer, "Oh, you're not British." I finally was sent to the British Arts Council to meet with Peter Byrd, who was the head of the British Arts Council, to get some recommendations of what he thought might happen. The way I found him out was there was a Swedish artist by the name of Brigit Skjoberg on Carlyle Street, who was a printmaker from Sweden and she married Peter Byrd. She'd recommended me to see him, her husband. He told me that the only place I should really go is the American embassy and meet up with a gentleman there who is the head of the cultural affairs by the name of Bernard Lang. So he said, "You might just as well go to the people that represent your country, they can help you." So I went to Grosvenor Square, to the embassy. I called him first, made an appointment and went there. Meeting with Bernard was an odd thing. Bernard was an Englishman. He'd been to America once, to a space exhibition in Florida, and that was about as far into the United States as he'd ever ventured. He lived in Hampton Court and knew everybody in the world, I think. He'd organized exhibitions for Ed [Edward] Kienholz and Barnett Newman and Ellsworth Kelly, Ad Reinhardt, and many of the artists from New York, in the American embassy. They had-- the whole downstairs, when you walked in, of the American embassy was a gallery with great paintings and small paintings. He had it sectioned off so that it could be in smaller galleries with a fountain in the center. That was what he was doing, he was showing American artists, and he was also working with actors, poets, anybody from the arts that came to London or England. It was sort of his responsibility to be the liaison and coordinator between the whole thing. So my first appointment with Bernard, I took slides and background, and he took me to his office upstairs. He said, [with British accent] "Very well, Gordon, You like it here in London?" And I said, "I've only been here a short time, but I'm finding it to be a nice place." "Well, I'm glad you like it," he says. "We have lots of things going, you know." And he said, "Are you hungry?" And I said, "Yeah, I haven't had any lunch." And he says, "Well, come along." So he took me down into the bottom of the embassy to the cafeteria, where we had lunch. He proceeded to tell me about the American embassy and how all of the eccentrics almost had disappeared from the embassy and that it was getting rather dull. The last director went off with one year of unanswered mail, back to America. They set him off on a ship back to New York--or Washington. He was dictating letters as he went to the ones he hadn't answered in one year. We were there for two hours, talking, and he was telling me about the Vauxhall generals and about everything in England. Finally, we went back to the office and he says, "Incidentally, Gordon, what was it that you wanted to see me about?" That was three o'clock in the afternoon. From eleven to three. I was-- I said, "Bernard, what I really wanted to talk to you about is an exhibition that I had up in Sweden, in Uppsala, and it's going on to Sodertalje [Konsthall], Stockholm, in the museum. And I'm looking for a place-- I thought this city would like to share with me what I do." "Oh, very well," he says. "We'll make an appointment. You come back next week, same time, same place, and we'll go through that." So another whole week went by not making any progress whatsoever. I looked a little more; I walked through the whole city of London; I know it by heart. But the more I walked through it, and the more I looked at the art I did see, it was a stimulating thing. In the museums I found, like the National Galleries with all the masters, a wonderful box by Samuel van Hoogstraten, who was an artist from Antwerp who created an environment about three feet square and about eighteen inches high. You looked through a hole and you saw this man with his dog in a corridor, and you went to the other hole and you saw a different scene, and it was all mirrors and painted.

SMITH: Seventeenth-century artist, eighteenth century?

WAGNER: Yeah, he was at the time of Rembrandt, a very early boxmaker.

SMITH: Had you been aware of him at all?

WAGNER: No, never heard of him. He only made five pieces that they can account for. I was really quite stimulated by what I was looking at there, the illusion, and painting with the illusion. So I let it go. I went back to a few places. I used to come out of the museums feeling like I was oh, about an eighth of an inch high, you know, after all-- It's good for your humility to go to museums of the great masters. Your ego disintegrates way, way down. Well, maybe my work's not so good, maybe I better think about something here, perfecting this or changing this and doing it a little differently. The other reason for that being that I was in desperation for money at that time. I was living on about ten to twelve pounds a week, which would be about normal for a lot of people. That's what schoolteachers were getting, which was equivalent at that time to about thirty-five dollars. During that exchange, at that moment, the pound was about $2.60. Well, I got to thinking about these things somehow subconsciously; however it worked out I'm not sure, but within my head were the drawings and what I was seeing and feeling from the masters. There was a transition going on within my head to become more narrative in what I'm doing and sort of move out of the fetish and the abstract. I had one gallery that I found that was interested in my work, and he kept--

SMITH: Which gallery was that?

WAGNER: The Prudhoe Gallery, Raymond Prudhoe on Duke Street. He made no commitments, but he was interested in having my works. He was English, but he lived in New York and ran a clothing store in New York, some big store. His wife was a very rich woman from Spain who financed the gallery. Another man who I couldn't pin down, but he really liked my works tremendously, was a Frenchman by the name of Jean-Pierre Lehman. He had the Archer Gallery off of Bond Street. So those two hopes kept me dangling in London. It kept going, and I went back to Bernard: "Oh, wonderfully interesting, Gordon, you come again. I love it; I love what you're doing. Maybe we can arrange something for you." Let's see, that was in October. In February I was still waiting for some kind of a commitment from somewhere. Nothing was happening, and I'd been through all these wonderful experiences of the British, and I was drawing, and I started to make boxes myself. I made boxes from things I found in the back alleys. For the boxes themselves, I would go to the timber merchant and buy my wood. And walk. Walk and walk and walk. I carried wood on my back and glass to the glazier. I learned a whole lot of things about the British culture from becoming involved like this, actually living in the environment. We moved to Golders Green, which is sort of like where the Jewish people are of England; it's mostly all Jewish. It's near the Hampstead Heath, so I could walk on the Heath. I lived in the attic in the house of Kenneth Lloyd on Golders Green Crescent. It was a circular street right off from the tube, about a block away from the tube, so it was handy to go to London. The next street over was Golders Green, the whole community, so the stores were close at hand. It was a marvelous place to live, very convenient. It was about twenty minutes to London on the Northern Line. In the meantime, I met up with a lady there by the name of-- At the Camden Art Center-- Anyway--

SMITH: It'll come to you.

WAGNER: She was the director. Janice, Janice [Jackson] was her name. Well, I liked her a lot, and she liked me. So she invited Virginia and I to come out to her house in Perry Green in Much Hadham. She had a thatched-roof house, a real English thatched-roof house with walls of all the flint stones; beautiful house. She invited Virginia and I to come for lunch. She said, "Just go to the Liverpool Street Station, get off at Bishop Stortford, and we'll be there to pick you up." I thought that would be a nice trip, so we did that. When we got over there, she had this wonderful house. After we had this marvelous meal, she said, "Would you like to walk on the moors?" I said, "I've been waiting to walk on the moors all my life." It was a dream to walk on the moors. Very romantic. "Well," she said, "It's not exactly that kind of moors, it's Henry Moore's; he lives across the street." So I said, "That sounds like a good thing to do." So we walked out, and right across from her little road on the other side was a big barn. It was a studio filled with his sculpture and with people working on big pieces. From Alsace-Lorraine, I remember, one of the men; I talked to him. Then we went on down and kept going to different buildings where he had other things going on, cast and stone and a lot of maquettes. We kept on walking, and down over this rail, English turnstile gate, we stepped over the fence down into a sort of ravine. She says, "The principal reason for visiting here today, because there's a dump down there, and I think you might find some good things." Janice Jackson. Husband's name was Errol Jackson, who did all the photography for Henry Moore, did everything for his catalogs and-- So they were really close friends. So we went down there and I found a lot of very good pieces that I could use, objects and things, old things. We came back with about four dustbags full, you know, like plastic, like they throw--they call them the dustmen, they don't call them the trashmen--dustbags, plastic sack. So we had about four almost full, and we were carrying them up over the hill, all this equipment. Then we went into Henry Moore's studio, where he worked personally. It was a very small room-- I wouldn't say it was more than fifteen by sixteen feet total--with a window that looked out over his meadow where he had all these sheep grazing. He used to sit at the window and draw the sheep when they'd come up to the window. That's when he did his sheep-drawing series, all from the studio window. Then he had all these small pieces of rock, flint, and he'd add plaster to them and tie them. He was working things out for large pieces. But everything-- There was nothing there bigger than probably about eight inches by eight; it was small pieces that he worked on first, and then they would blow those up. It was an interesting studio. His printmaking studio was a huge, atriumlike studio connected to his house, where he did all of his etchings. It was a beautiful acreage; he must have had sixty, seventy acres of land there. So bringing the junk back to London, on the train-- We rode in a train that time that was--the car we got into was one of those short ones, you know, about four seats this way and four this way and in between. A little one. It was all right. We got back to the Liverpool Street Station, and then transferred the junk from the Liverpool Street Station to the Central Line, and then transferred from the Central Line at Oxford Circus to take the Northern Line. Walking through the tubes carrying all this junk was an experience that I won't forget. But it was an experience that made me feel more like I was part of that culture. Here's all this empire, but people are like this-- Royalty is operating the whole thing, but there's all these people doing all these things like ants, striving-- There's junkmen, there's junk dealers, there's horse and wagons, there's still, on the street, men selling cockles and whelks, and there's [people] collecting newspapers. It's a place-- England is such a sophisticated culture and so primitive at the same time. It's both ways. This is the thing that really hit me at that point, how much I loved the place because I could do all this; I could get on the tube with fifty people, on the underground, on the subway, and ride along with all my junk next to some elegant lady, next to some old character in a top hat, next to some other old man, like a wino, freezing to death. All this conglomerate of people together. I couldn't get away with that very much anywhere else; England I could. Because in the first place-- Bobbies there don't carry guns, they only say good day. It's a whole different social system. So I took all this stuff back to Golders Green and hauled it up into my attic. I found things there that started me out in the direction of found things in a narrative way; not fabricated, found things in a narrative way. An example of that would be that box that I had called the Hilltown Fire Brigade, where the fire engine is a found fire engine, the pump is a found pump of something else, and the monkey running the pumper and the man up in the firebox trying to put the fire out with the hose that has no water. This was in the Angel's Gate [Cultural Center] exhibition; it's owned by Marylyn Ginsberg.

SMITH: That was made out of what you found in England?

WAGNER: Yeah. Yeah. I found a lock this big around. Then I built a jail, like a prison, with bars, and I had a poor little figure behind this in this medieval door, gate, like she was locked in the prison and couldn't get out. The key was way down on the bottom, so she could never reach the key for the house to get it open. She was holding the bars. That was from my experience with the Tower of London. I was feeling all of this world of the British.

SMITH: What you did in Hilltown Fire Brigade, how do you distinguish that from what you were doing in, say, Mexican Bus?

WAGNER: Well, the Mexican box was right along with that, about that time. You mean the Mexican Bus?

SMITH: Mexican Bus, that's four years earlier.

WAGNER: Yeah, that's right. I was still in that period, you see. Four years later I was still working with found objects, narrative. Yeah.

SMITH: What about Three Faces of a Child? That's a box, a fabricated box, that you made in the same year as Hilltown Fire Brigade. Is that one of your earliest fabricated boxes?

WAGNER: That's a very early one, because-- What year was that?

SMITH: Nineteen seventy-three.

WAGNER: It was just in the beginning of changing over. That one was-- The actual cabinet I made. The child's face is looking in the three mirrors, and around inside-- It's a beveled mirror, but each mirror has a different face. But it's the same child. Going back it looks like a child, but it's a young girl, a middle-aged girl and old lady, gnarled. Almost looking like the British women, some of them. They get very gnarled, the older ones.

SMITH: Did you do that in England?

WAGNER: No, but it was conceived there. I drew it up there with the idea in my sketchbook to do it sometime. See, some of the pieces I conceived in England, I didn't build them until I got back to America. Many that I built in England are in Belgium. They're still over there, I never brought them home. About maybe twenty of them I built in England were either sold in Belgium or are still in a gallery there.

SMITH: I wanted to ask you about aleatory art. Had you used playing cards or dice imagery in your work before?

WAGNER: No. No, I hadn't. I got into that through heraldry. Looking at heraldry between Sweden and England and Belgium and the Flemish painters. Way back to Bosch and Brueghel, they used playing cards even. The images-- It's a nice symbol, playing cards, from the aleatory standpoint.

SMITH: Had you used the I Ching previously in terms of helping you work on your art? The I Ching.

WAGNER: Have I ever used I Ching?

SMITH: No. Did you use I Ching in terms of your artwork?

WAGNER: No. I can't say that I ever did. No, I never used the tai chi or the hexograms in any way in my art. I used it to figure out where I was by tossing the coins, but I never actually used it, no.

SMITH: So you had your show at the American embassy?

WAGNER: Yes. That was interesting. I guess it was March. I finally went back to Bernard Lang and I said, "Bernard, what am I going to do? I have to go back to America. Is there anything that you have--you got any ideas what I'm going to do here?" Well, he says, "As a matter of fact, I do. Last week, I called up the--" someplace in Berlin, it's called the house something. They show art. "And I'm going to give you an exhibition with two other people together. I'm going to give you an exhibition with Robert Bassler. Do you know him?" I said, "Yes, he's a Californian." And also a French artist who lives in America, in New York. And he said, "I'm sure I can get him all right. I'll have it together." And I said, "Well, when?" And he said, "Well, how about in May of this year?" March, April, May. No, June, that's what it was, June. And I said, "Well, that sounds pretty good. We should be able to do that. I have to go home, I have to go back to America for a little while, get some things straightened out. We should be able to come back." And he said to me, "How are we going to get the works from--where will they be?" I said, "Well, I don't even know when my show is going to be in Sweden. They told me it was going to be this spring." "Oh well, that's no problem. Give me their telephone number. He called up the museum. That exhibition was going to end at the end of May. So he says, "Would you switch me over to the operator, please? Would you call the embassy, please." They called up the American embassy in Sweden. He said, "Yes, hold the line." [another phone conversation] "Yes, how you doing. Kit? How is everything in Paris? I've got an artist that I'd like to have you meet sometime. He's a good artist, and maybe you could give him an exhibition over there. I can't talk to you right this moment, I'm in a conversation with Stockholm." So he's back to Stockholm again: "Would we be able to pick up the works at the Sodertalje museum on the date that I will send you and ship them immediately to the American embassy so they will arrive by, let's make it by June 20? Okay, that's it." "Yes, Paris." Another man comes in. "Bernard, it's important. How many tickets do you want for the Clutie show?" [laughter] He says, "When is it? Make it four." It was a puppet show for children, for his family. It's all going on like that, he's talking, you know. "Okay, Paris, put John Plompens on in Brussels. John, I'm sending you a man over here in about six months, Gordon Wagner. I want you to meet him. Send me on up to Amsterdam. I want to arrange for him to have an exhibition in Amsterdam." He's doing all this over a desk. Then he said, "One more call I'll make." He calls up the Prudhoe Gallery, and he said, "Mr. Prudhoe, Bernard Lang of the embassy. I'm giving Gordon an exhibition in June, and I think it would be quite nice if we had half of the works here and the other half in your gallery, don't you? After all, you're only two blocks away, and we can both have annexes." Prudhoe says, "Of course, we'll do it." When he did it, he did it. He didn't ask, he just did it. It was just like that, the whole thing just solved itself. He shipped all the works and did the whole thing. We came back about a week before the opening, back to London, and helped them set up the exhibition. I wanted to be there for the installation. Bernard is such a funny man, and he's a real pleasure to work with. I've never met a man like him in my life. Sense of humor and joy and knowing what he's doing. A real wonderful person. Then we went back to Los Angeles. I didn't bring anything with me, I was just going to show what I had in Sweden first and see how that came out. So then we went back again to London. While I was over here for that month and a half, two months, Kenneth Stone of Stone Publications was working with my Memories of the Future, finishing up that edition that he'd started, so it was possible for me to have some of those to return to London with. So I shipped off--

SMITH: The lithograph series.

WAGNER: Yeah. I shipped off about, oh, ten sets of those.

SMITH: When had you done the drawings for Memories of the Future?

WAGNER: In New Mexico, in Taos.

SMITH: When?

WAGNER: About 1968 or '69. In the summer when we would stay in New Mexico for three months, when we lived there, when we had our home there. I worked there on all of the drawings.

SMITH: And the poems were written--

WAGNER: Different times; over a period of time. From Mexico. They were all compiled very late.

SMITH: I wanted to ask you, in terms of-- You mentioned the feelings you felt in England in terms of the layers of society, riding the tube and being with different types of people; the absurdity that you were aiming at-- How is that reflected in the work--or is it reflected in the work you are doing now? Is Firaskew, for example, or The [Interior] Castle of Saint Teresa [also known as The Castle of the Seven Dwelling Places], do they reflect that kind of feeling that you had then?

WAGNER: Firaskew does, very much. Because I find that real cities, like New York and London and Paris, the people are so close together and so with each other that there is no time for loneliness in that way. Because they don't have to be lonely, they can get out there and be right with the people. And they can feel. They always make some kind of a contact with a person. If you just walk out on the street in England, you'll make contact with somebody. The quickest way that I know to make contact with the British is to ask directions to somewhere. They'll go on and on, give you a history of that whole two or three blocks where you're going to walk and what happened there four, five hundred years ago. So you never have to worry about that.

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO, FEBRUARY 21, 1987

WAGNER: People who think that the New Yorkers and the British and people like that are snobbish and not friendly are absolutely wrong. If you walk in London, the people aren't going to say, "Hi, hi, hi, how are you?" They don't even make eye contact with another person, they're so used to being within the movement of the people. There is no contact that way, but on a personal basis, when you meet them in some situation where you like them, you know immediately, and they like you, and you have a long-standing friend, it's not just a flash. They go in depth, because they have that ability of mastering the English language. Even to the man on the street. I asked one day where this building was with a stained-glass window. He was a poor-looking old man; you'd take him here as a street person. And I said, "I know there's a building down here someplace, and it has this beautiful dome." And he says, [with Cockney accent] "Yeah, right down here about a block. Let's go, I'll show you." He takes me there. He said, "When I listen to you, I can tell by the cut a your tongue you ayn't one of our countrymen. Where you comin' from?" He says, "You comin' from Canada? Or maybe one of the colonies, or New Zealand, Austraylia? I know where you're comin' from. You're comin' from Olland." I said, "No, I'm coming from America." "You're not comin' from America, I know that. You're not talkin' like an American," [laughter] he tells me. But this was just getting a direction. Now, you could go on with that man for ten years, because he was ready to be your friend. And it's this way.

SMITH: Firaskew, you did a drawing of Firaskew in that period. Is that the beginning of the sculpted piece, of the assemblage?

WAGNER: Well, it was the first idea that I had about making something that would relate to something. I had no conception of what it really was. I had notes and segments and fragments of Firaskew in sketches and sketchbooks, notes and dreams written about it. But nothing solid.

SMITH: At that time what did Firaskew mean to you? What was it?

WAGNER: It's only a name that comes from a dream that was marked on a beer can or the side of a wall when I'm going in my dreams. I'd run into this sign, "Firaskew," with an arrow pointing. It's either through a cleavage in the rocks or it's marked on the highway or on a dirt road. I always find myself in this environment where the cities, buildings, are usually out of proportion. Some of them are very complicated, tied together with spiderwebs, total mirrors. Sometimes they have churches with a streetcar running down the pews or down the center aisle. The streetcar has been, has come up a mountain where you can never see the city, you only can see under it at all times till it reaches the top, ascending upward. It has so many different meanings, so many different places I've been on my nocturnal voyages, that it's hard to-- I could build twenty of these from the different concepts. I just took one out of one dream. The way it sort of juxtaposed itself, that's this one.

SMITH: Are you going to build any more of those?

WAGNER: I'm thinking about building several, probably, in my lifetime.

SMITH: In terms of the drawings, the Firaskew drawings that relate to the London period, how would you compare that with, say, the work of [Maurits] Escher?

WAGNER: Well, I don't think it would be compared to Escher. Escher was a man who was working more in architectural illusions, in negative and positive space to create trompe l'oeil. My drawings had something else in their mind than that. They weren't mechanical problems, mathematical problems, they were actually feelings of nonsense. They were sort of rebuses, that's what they were. There was no place for mechanical, mathematical, constructed drawings and paintings with that kind of precision.

SMITH: You mentioned once that your work after this period, you were exploring the absurd, but it wasn't a critique. Could you explain that a little bit more? You were showing that society was absurd, but you weren't criticizing it.

WAGNER: Absolutely.

SMITH: That sounds like a contradiction, so could you explain that?

WAGNER: No, I believe that the absurd is very important. And I think that not-- There are too many critics, and there are not enough people who explore the absurd and laugh and enjoy it. The critic just criticizes it without enjoying it. And after all, I believe the irrational absurdity and nonsense is one of our most important elements in order to exist in this society. It's sort of a counterforce against the negation of a lot of people who are putting things down and showing the ugliness and the-- I want to show funny things, joy. Not from a critical aspect at all; I'm not even looking at it from that. Just being part of it. I would be one of the elements within the piece.

SMITH: Shifting a little bit, how would you compare the stuff that you found in English dumps with the things that you found in California dumps?

WAGNER: Wetter, greener, mossier, slimier, and hardly any rust. Hardly any rust.

SMITH: Why was that?

WAGNER: I don't know why things get that way, but they get kind of mossy and green. A lot of lichen gets on the junk, because it's so damp. Damp, really damp. Everything I found I had to take it home and dry it out for about a week before I could use it, because it was just permeated.

SMITH: Then didn't you lose the greenness of the damp, of the lichen?

WAGNER: Yeah, but then you have this wonderful blackness that comes out. Yeah. Even the wood gets that way.

SMITH: Were the objects different, what was thrown away different?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. Quite a few things that I found, Victorian pieces and junk like that. Some glasses and figures, small figures. I got one wonderful-- Two of them I actually found, figures, one was of René Magritte, about this high.

SMITH: A figure of Magritte?

WAGNER: Yeah, a figure.

SMITH: Of him or by him?

WAGNER: Of him. I found that one. I still have that piece right here in the house. Another one was a burgher woman. I put her into a box called the Theatre of the Upside Down, where I had her on a stage in confusion standing on an egg in the clouds. She's looking back through endless doors, and up on the top there's the city of Antwerp, and there's the Schelde with the barges. But it's all upside down. You have to turn the box over to see that it's Antwerp and the Schelde and the water. I found those both there.

SMITH: I'd like to get into the topic of your constructed boxes. You started making them in England?

WAGNER: I started building these things-- What actually happened was that I really took a new look, also, from the surrealist aspect. I met a surrealist there who is probably the best living surrealist in England at the present time by the name of Conroy Maddox. He wrote a book recently on [Salvador] Dalí. Getting to these people and to-- What was his name? Stephan de Villiers--

SMITH: Marcel Jean? Are you talking about Marcel Jean?

WAGNER: No, Stephan de Villiers, he was a surrealist. Max White Joyce, who was the critic on the [International Herald-Tribune] who really encouraged surrealism in England, and Jean-Pierre Lehman and his friend by the name of Jacques something, from Belgium. About, oh, fifteen to twenty other artists that I met, we were all stimulated by going back and really getting back into what surrealism is all about. We really studied it, so it became sort of our--almost a renaissance to us, rebirth within us. Poetry, and all of them. So we really went into it extensively. John Lyle Press, in Devon, who had all of the original manifestoes and books, wonderful surrealist books, one-of-a-kind editions. All of these things became part of my head, and I realized that I would like to get a little purer and not use the objects and the junk. Really get into a pure form. But at that time, I was about to teach at the Camden Art Center, and I met many, many fine people and fine artists there. There was this whole movement, I think. It was regenerating itself again, you know, to go back through this, getting back into surrealism.

SMITH: In terms of your constructed boxes, looking at the development over the last fifteen years, it strikes me that the boxes started out much larger than you're now making them. Is that a correct perception? Were your boxes in the seventies larger than your boxes in the eighties, by and large?

WAGNER: No, it all depended on what I wanted to develop from that. No, I don't think the scale or dimension means much. It wasn't a controlling factor of anything. It just happened that way.

SMITH: Yeah. The other thing that seems to be happening is the figures, the scale within the box gets smaller. Like the box [Black Sun] that you have in the other room with the woman in the mirror-- I forget the name of that box--the figure is a foot high. In Firaskew and many of these other things, you are now using figures that are less than an inch.

WAGNER: Yeah, I've done that on purpose. I'm trying to take a small environment, without filling it up, and make it seem very large with only very small things so it seems--it seems monumental in a very small area by doing the scale, by reducing the scale of the objects related to the landscape.

SMITH: Now, you call these constructed boxes, but many of the elements in the box are, look like, toy figures. Are those figures that you find in the street, or do you go and buy them, or how are they-- Were some of them made?

WAGNER: Well, the ones that are actually made figures are by manufacturers. I found them in different places. Sometimes I'll find them on the street, sometimes I'll find them in a junk store, sometimes in a cake decorating company. If I just happen to be walking someplace; I'm never looking for them. But I say, "Gee, those are nice. I'll pick those up, maybe I could use them someday." You know, I don't buy them with any specific purpose in life at all. I'm always looking for realistic figures. Not cute figures, not rabbits and cute, little things, not angels and things of that nature; realistic figures that are actually to scale of what they are. Like you won't find any cute objects on any piece I've ever made, because I can't stand cute art. I found these four girls the other day on the street. Who knows what will ever happen to them, but they were waiting for me to pick them up. They were from somebody's party, I suppose.

SMITH: They were just on the sidewalk, in the gutter?

WAGNER: In the alley.

SMITH: In the alley.

WAGNER: Yeah, right near the art store down there, near the Espresso Bar. A man who has been very nice and gives me objects and things and I trade with him--we don't trade, I give him things that I think he likes and he'll hand me something that he thinks I'll like--is Bruce Houston. Bruce is always, "Hey, I'd like to give you this. Look here! Introduce yourself," you know. "She'll talk to you. Yes, introduce yourself." Bruce, he's a child at heart, like it should be. He talks to all his people and objects. So, really, the transition between the large-- I find that if you build the environment and then put the people in on the right scale, it really makes it more powerful than if the person is dominating the whole environment. It's like a giant within a house, you know? Gnomes are much more beautiful in houses, little people, you know, than a giant; it takes up too much space.

SMITH: Still, the titles seem to be an important part of the overall piece. I'm wondering if the title and the conception come to you at the same time?

WAGNER: Sometimes. Sometimes I build the piece around the title--it's really the conception, you know. Sometimes not. Sometimes I have to think of a title. The last piece I built--out there--it had to do with the ship up on the mountain and the town below, you know, to give it that dimension of the desert mountain and the riverboat up in the bushes, and down below the white city. Well, there was only-- I couldn't think of a title for that, but then it came out of my dream. Just like that, it hit it. It's called Town Ship.

SMITH: Well, that brings up the whole topic of pun boxes.

WAGNER: Exactly.

SMITH: You have done some pun boxes that go back to the sixties. It seemed to me they were--

WAGNER: No, these are all done in the eighties, these pun boxes.

SMITH: But weren't there a couple-- Well, Circus in a Keyhole, that's not really a pun box. No, okay, I'll take that back.

WAGNER: Oh, I've used puns from time to time in pieces, but the whole Pun Series was done in the eighties.

SMITH: Okay, well, let's talk about the Pun Series.

WAGNER: Oh, that's getting a little far ahead, I think, I've got to go through-- First, I'd like to go back through the boxes that I developed. After my show in England, during that time, Jean-Pierre Lehman and his friend, Jacques, said, "You've got to go to Belgium, my friend, you are missing the boat. England is not the place for you, it's Belgium." And I said, "Why Belgium?" "Well," they said, "you've got to go there for several reasons: The people in Belgium will really love what you are doing. And not only will they love what you are doing, but you told us one time that you had an uncle named Jean-François Millet, a great uncle, and you know, he was Flemish, and you should go and find out about all these things." So we did just that. Virginia and I went to Bruges from London, took the train, while we were having my exhibition. From Bruges we went on to Gent and stopped in Gent. I was told by Jan Thunholm in Sweden to check out about three or four galleries in Gent, because--and also Arthur Secunda said it was a good place. So I went to Arthur's first gallery. I'd already sent that man pictures years ago, and I'd forgotten about it. So I went to see him. "Oh yeah, I know you. I've got your pictures in my desk. When do you want to have an exhibition?" I said, "Well, I have things in England now, in London." "Well, I couldn't give the exhibition before five years, I'm tied up. Go see my friend [Raoul van der Veecken] down around the corner, [Galerij] Kaleidoscoop, he'll probably help you." I went there; he looked at them, he says, "When do you want the show?" And I went to two other galleries in Gent; they said, "Yeah, when would you like to have a show?" So I finally had to make a choice between the three. I went to Brussels and found three galleries there, the same thing. The three I went to all wanted to give me a show. And I said, "Well, I have a show in London. I want to have a show here in Gent and then Brussels, then I'd like to work it out so I have one in Amsterdam." So they said, "You come back." In the meantime, a lady in Brussels, Madame Beele of [Galérie] l'Angle-Aigu, she said, "Bring some works back with you very soon, I'd like to show them in my gallery and keep them here. I have people coming all the time." About that time Joan Shors, who's a critic for the American newspaper in Brussels, walked in and said, "They'll love your work. They only think of one thing in Belgium: surrealism. Everybody's going to love your work." That encouraged me. I went back to England, I told Bernard Lang what I had arranged, and he said, "Don't forget to see my friend John Plompens, he'll help you. Anything you want done. He's at the American embassy in Brussels. He'll take care of everything for you." So that was going to happen in, let's see, February, March.

SMITH: What year are we talking about?

WAGNER: 'Seventy-four. That's when it was going to happen. From London we went back home, and we stayed there until February. So I had a show lined up at Kaleidoscoop for February, March; March it was. March 4, I think, yeah. Then it went to Brussels in April, and it went to Amsterdam in June. So I had real-- I had it all scheduled. In Amsterdam, I had it in the American library [Nederland Amerika Instituut], the first show. Then from there I was asked to have another show in Amsterdam in the Israel Galerij, where they called me the American Jew.

SMITH: Why?

WAGNER: They thought I was, that's all. The critic, naturally, being the Israel Galerij, [thought] I must be an American Jew.

SMITH: I see, Wagner.

WAGNER: The name Wagner could be. The Dagblatt.

SMITH: Did you sell well in Europe?

WAGNER: Yeah, very.

SMITH: Better than in the United States?

WAGNER: Well, when you take it as an exhibition, yes; from an exhibition standpoint, yes. A one-man show, yeah.

SMITH: What about the criticism?

WAGNER: Excellent criticism, wonderful critics. The French critics and the Flemish critics, they have a wonderful quality about the way they write; they're not destructive or self-oriented. They get into-- They really are observers rather than-- They really live within your art.

SMITH: When did you begin to introduce trompe l'oeil into your work?

WAGNER: About '74, right after I came back from Belgium.

SMITH: What kind of things were you doing, what kind of tricks were you trying to play?

WAGNER: A lot of boxes with mirrors and trick angles. I used a lot of rational symbols like checkerboards and architecture of-- A feeling like it was a game. And not putting anything on these rational formats that had anything to do with anything but nonsense, the irrational.

SMITH: How does The Phantom fit into this period?

WAGNER: Now, The Phantom you're talking about is the shadow coming out on the floor without anybody in the door. It fits into the period very well, because it was done about that time, '74, '75.

SMITH: 'Seventy-five.

WAGNER: It was the beginning of using these phantom objects in the glass, like illusions of glass and putting the ghost forms behind them. At that time I was doing that with mirrors. I was also creating physical impossibilities like The Bowler bowling through the wall. There's a brick wall dividing the box with the bowler. He's bowling, but his shadow goes under the wall, but he can't get through himself. On the floor, the shadow goes through. And then the one of the shadow that fell down. The floor tipped up, and it had boards on one side and the dark figure of the man is on the other. But the shadow fell down on the stairs and is in three dimensions going up and fragmented as a person, the shadow. It's called The Shadow of a Doubt. These are all in collections of shadow pieces.

SMITH: What about Separate Reflections?

WAGNER: That one is-- It's in a building where a businessman is all dressed up in his necktie and his suit, off for work, but on the other side in the room there's a mirror, and he was such a disgusting person that his reflection stayed home in the mirror.

SMITH: In terms of the mirror tricks, did that involve a lot of experimentation in order to get-- Let me rephrase that question. Did the concept for the effect come first, or did you have to play with your materials and see things juxtaposed?

WAGNER: Well, not really, because I can draw these things out pretty well, the angles where mirrors are, and the like. I build all my boxes-- I draw them all first to scale; everything, every detail is to scale, like in building a house. So I know the angles and can develop all that on a piece of paper so that when it goes together, there it is; I don't make mistakes and spend a lot of money and a lot of time going back and trying to figure out what happened. Because it's usually all drawn out before I ever touch a piece of wood or a mirror or anything else; I know exactly how it's going to fit.

SMITH: What does mirror imagery signify to you? Why was it so particularly appealing to you?

WAGNER: Well, it's always been fascinating. Mirrors have always been fascinating to everybody, I think, because people spend a lot of time in front of mirrors. Actually, the only real thing is the mirror; everything it reflects is unreal. Mirrors, to me-- Magicians use mirrors; mirrors were signs of elegance in castles and coffeehouses and buildings; mirrors change dimensions of things; mirrors create illusions of things that don't exist; they create illusions of things that do exist but are not there. They do all sorts of things that fascinate me. The more I can adapt the mirror to doing something-- There's just not that many ways you can-- After a while you run out of things to do with mirrors. You can send things to infinity; you can move rooms; you can transfer people from one place to another; you can go through mazes and labyrinths. But actually, after a while you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again, you know.

SMITH: But you use--almost all of those techniques are in Firaskew.

WAGNER: Well, this was kind of a compilation of using all the things that I had previously done with images. In some way or other, I could adapt them into this, into Firaskew.

SMITH: So how long did you work with mirrors as a major theme in your work?

WAGNER: Actually, I used mirrors a little, not in the sense of the mirror as I used it in-- I would have a mirror in a piece, you know, but to perform magic tricks in front of your eyes, about '74, '75 I started using mirrors, I'd say. At the same time, I started fabricating my materials rather than-- Because being in Belgium-- You can't find anything in Belgium. There's nothing to find. It's such a clean country, it's just spotless. They don't throw things away in Belgium; there's no trash. So you are forced to make things, and so that's where I started, actually, in '73, when I worked there. And I was making new pieces. I had to make new pieces; I had to show-- The exact amount of pieces that came into the country had to leave the country. After all, I sold over half of the works in Belgium. I had to replace those to get my works out of Belgium or I'd have to pay a super heavy duty. They let me come in with my works for three months to have my shows, and then out the other side. But nothing was to be sold. I had to get it all-- I had to replace everything. But they'd never seen any of the things, they just knew it was art in boxes. So when I went to the border, I had the same: just art in boxes. The guy said, "Well, let me see what you do." So I had to undo the whole crate, and he counted them. I had matchboxes, and I had tiny little boxes like this; anything to say it's a box. "And what do you value these pieces?" I said, "Five dollars apiece, that's what I came in with." I sold about twenty in Gent and five in Brussels, out of about thirty-five. So I was busy making things the whole time I was living in Gent, which was probably about, at that time, three months that I could stay there. I had to start right away. I had a $17-a-month studio up on the roof and a place to work. I was working night and day to get these-- Virginia was here and I was there. She didn't come over until Easter, so I had lots of time to work.

SMITH: One of the things I wanted to ask you about your stay in Sweden, England and Belgium, perhaps Belgium and England in particular, was, were you attracted to the symbols of medieval Christianity? Did that begin to interest you at that time?

WAGNER: Belgium, no; Sweden, no; England, yes. Some of the artifacts, like censers of that time, that were in the British Museum, some of that medieval art of that time was incredible. Patinas and censers for the incense burners for the castles, and the playing cards, you know. They had playing cards cut out for the smoke to come through, for the censers, you know?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: All of that sort of thing fascinated me. I did drawings of them, as a matter of fact. I've got them in my Under the Crown series, a couple of them, where the king is balanced on his censer puffing the smoke from underneath, from a chimney pot. He's just floating up there, he could collapse at any moment.

SMITH: So in terms of your religious development, your stay in Europe did not draw--it was not an aspect of drawing you back to Catholicism, or drawing you into Catholicism?

WAGNER: I was never drawn back to Catholicism because I wasn't a Catholic in the first place. I never was, so I couldn't be drawn back. But I appreciated going to the Catholic church, because everybody goes to Catholic church in Europe, because that's where all the art is. Incredible art in the churches. Like in Gent: one of the greatest paintings in the world is in the Saint Bavo's Cathedral, the [Adoration] of the Mystic Lamb [by Hubert and Jan van Eyck]. So many great paintings. Antwerp has some great paintings in there. They've got one of Michelangelo and one of da Vinci and all the Rubens; some of his most important paintings are in the cathedral at Antwerp. So there's a feeling that gets you off the street to go into the cathedrals. You feel like you're protected there. I was fascinated by some of the things. I used to go into the church at mass and sit in the back row. Just sit there, meditate. Like a yogi or something. But I felt a lot, and I cried; I used to cry in churches in Europe. It was like a purging of my inner self from the feelings of the music, the great music of Bach and-- They had the greatest concerts of all of them in the Saint Bavo's Cathedral. That's where Bach did his first Saint Matthew's Passion. The first place he ever did it was in Gent, in Saint Bavo's Cathedral, the preview; he conducted. That kind of feeling, it's-- Naturally, there's a certain feeling of the spiritual. It's all so cleansing. But as far as being brought back to the church, that had nothing to do with it whatsoever because I never was in the church in the beginning. My wife, my first wife, was a Catholic, and my children went to church and were baptized, but I wasn't. I thought I was part of it. I thought they'd given me some papers that would make me that way, but I never followed it.

SMITH: I'd like to talk a little bit about Russian Hill Incident.

WAGNER: That's an interesting piece that relates sort of to the same as The Phantom and Georgette and Separate [Reflections], taking people and putting them into sort of impossible positions. I was always fascinated by a window next to my house there, the kitchen window. In San Francisco, you look out of your kitchen window and often you'll see somebody else's staircase running down the side of it. This particular one, the staircase was running down and around until you saw the underside of the stairs. And I used to visualize somebody actually walking horizontally up the underside of those stairs. It was a nice impossible situation. What I was trying to get was "impossibility" in my art. Impossibility, as Laszlo Logosi, I believe, quoted one time, "Impossibility is the operative mode of art," when he did the film Szirkus, the Ferenc Karinthy story.

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 28, 1987

SMITH: We left off last time with your coming to Belgium. You had a show in Gent, three shows going at more or less the same time in Gent, Brussels and Amsterdam. How long did you stay in Belgium?

WAGNER: That time I stayed about-- Well, first I was in Belgium for about two months, and then I went off for a little trip to Madrid. Then I came back to Belgium; I had my studio there. Then I went up to Amsterdam, up to that, and stayed in Amsterdam for two months. Then I came back to Belgium again, and I was there for another three months. Put it all together, and it makes about seven months, I guess, right?

SMITH: Did you go back to Belgium later?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah.

SMITH: Have you continued to-- Through the seventies?

WAGNER: In '79 I went back again. When I left Belgium I came back home to Silver Lake.

SMITH: Where were you showing in Belgium? Who were your representatives?

WAGNER: My first gallery show was in Gent, and my gallery dealer was Raoul van der Veecken. He had the Galerij Kaleidoscoop. Wonderful art dealer, wonderful man. A real joy to be with him and his family. I don't think I've ever laughed so much in my whole life as I did with that man. He had a tremendous wit and sense of humor. We both were in complete rapport with one another. It was interesting, because at the exhibition he told me that everybody liked my work. Gallery openings in Belgium are usually on Sunday morning from ten to one, and everyone comes, all the families, children by the tons, everybody comes. They go to all of the galleries within the city on that morning, all the openings. They call them vernissages, or tentoonstellingen in Dutch, which means opening. You meet some of the most amazing people at these openings. You try to communicate with them in some way by learning their language a little bit, trying. They can speak enough English, so between the two of us, we get along just fine. At the end of the show, at the end of the opening, I said, "Well, how did it do, Raoul?" He said, "Well," he says, "that piece over there is the only one I see that we're not going to sell."

SMITH: Which piece was that?

WAGNER: "Because I'm buying that for myself," he says. [laughter]

SMITH: Oh, I see. These are all constructed boxes?

WAGNER: They were all boxes.

SMITH: Not funk boxes, but constructed boxes.

WAGNER: No, they were funk boxes. They were within the old context of found objects from England and some from Sweden, and different things. Plus the ones that I had in Sweden. I had a pretty good collection then, close to fifty pieces, you know, that I could-- We actually showed about thirty, so I still had some left over for Brussels. But it was an amazing exhibition and an amazing turnout. It's a university city, Gent, a very old university. Professors were there, the heads of the music department, all sorts of interesting people live in Gent. It has a population of 500,000 people. It's a very old city. In fact, it was the second largest city in northern Europe next to Paris.

SMITH: At one time.

WAGNER: At one time, yeah. So the whole place, it feels right to me. I still love to go there, and I just kiss the street like I was back home.

SMITH: But you had mentioned once--this was a long time ago when we first met--going to Belgium was in some ways like returning home, home to the world of the piers. Could you explain that a little bit more?

WAGNER: Yeah. When I went there the first time from London, when I arrived in Oostende on the boat, it was all of a sudden some feeling that I was home, that I'd been there before in some other time or period in my life. I was really home, and I knew it; I could feel it. There was no way to explain it, but-- There was a warmth. And the architecture, the beauty-- Most people don't even like Belgium. They never advertise it in the tourist guides. Nobody goes to Belgium. It's wonderful, because the Belgians discourage advertising Belgium; they want to keep it the way it is. Belgium is so full of great art; some of the greatest, the Flemish. The cities are so--they're not spoiled, no high rise, no junk, no Bauhaus-type of high rises in the city.

SMITH: Some in Brussels, but--

WAGNER: No, I'm talking about Gent.

SMITH: Oh, Gent, yeah.

WAGNER: They've kept it the way it is, the old buildings, the old way. Bruges is the same way; you wouldn't see anything like that in Bruges. The countryside going there was like when my great-uncle, Jean-François Millet, painted the landscapes and the feeling of the peasants, of the gleaners in the Angelus. Probably the reason I like Belgium-- I can't understand it. My mother was from Paris, and my father was from Amsterdam, so maybe I'm supposed to be in between in Belgium. [laughter]

SMITH: Well, that's a possibility, yeah.

WAGNER: The more I was in Belgium, the more I realized that people there are like people from fantasy, fairyland people. Their whole makeup is surreal, the way they are. the way they think. That's why I think that surrealism was very strong in Belgium. More painters came from Belgium that were surrealist than probably any other country, because they were actually influenced by the Salon 20, which was the group of the Dreamers of Decadence, you know, Jan Toorop and G. [Georges-Antoine] Rochegrosse and Fernand Khnopff. They were all Belgians, all those symbolists before surrealism, and they belonged to the Rosicrucian, rose cross. So with that energy within the country-- You can't explain what it is, but it's in the air. It's the light of Bosch, it's the light of Brueghel in the atmosphere, the clear, steel-blue light. There's no light like it anyplace; it's a painter's light. All of those elements make up some sort of an alchemical solution that made me realize, well, I was home again.

SMITH: I wanted today to talk about surrealism and your relationship to surrealism. In our last session, you mentioned that you had embarked, at this period of your life, on an intensive study of surrealism. How did that develop?

WAGNER: Well, it really, actually, started in Belgium, where I really wanted to go into it. I started reading all of the manifestoes everything on [André] Breton, everything on [Paul] Eluard, everything on [Robert] Desnos; and realizing [René] Magritte was a Belgian, Paul Delvaux was a Belgian, Leon Spillieart and a lot of younger ones. Surrealism was strong, and when I would talk to these young men from the academy, I found that that would just about be the only art interest they had.

SMITH: Which academy are you talking about?

WAGNER: In Gent, the painting academy of Gent, which is an excellent academy. In Antwerp I had the same reaction to the gallery that handled my work in Antwerp, the Galerij Te Zwarte [Panter]. Adrian van Raemdonck was the owner, and he was only interested in showing surrealism. Belgian surrealism was stronger at that time than at any other time in the history of art. Well, I was very influenced by it, and I started to think that-- I had realized these people existed, but being from the funk school, and whatnot, we were still doing dada surrealism and California funk. We were influenced by it indirectly.

SMITH: Did you know you were doing it when you did it?

WAGNER: I wasn't that much interested in what school it was; it was just the California funk school. When I started looking at the objects of Breton and [Joan] Miró and a lot of the assemblages of these early surrealists, I realized they pretty much had been into that. Also, I realized that the daddy of them all was probably Marcel Duchamp, who was into the object.

SMITH: Did you realize this, say, in connection with the Duchamp show at the Pasadena Art Museum?

WAGNER: I knew there was a parallel, definitely. The same with Joseph Cornell at the Pasadena Art Museum and René Magritte at the Pasadena Art Museum. I knew there was a parallel, and I knew that we were in simpatico. If I would have met them, we would have been able to be good friends, because we were all in the airwaves, you know.

SMITH: Were you studying surrealism by yourself or was it with other artists, other poets?

WAGNER: By reading and by being with artists who had that sort of tendency. I think it just evolved automatically.

SMITH: Were there California artists who shared this interest with you? Any names in particular?

WAGNER: Well, at that particular time there were quite a few artists that were doing parallel things, like [Edward] Kienholz and Artie Richer and Tony Berlant, Charles Frazier.

SMITH: We're talking sixties now, fifties, sixties. But you were not studying surrealism at this time yet?

WAGNER: No, I was making art, not worried at all about any of it.

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: Just making art.

SMITH: But you began to study surrealism in the mid-seventies when you went to Belgium?

WAGNER: When I felt there was a movement. I realized at that moment that surrealism to me was beyond dada and funk. So that's when my change actually came, was in Belgium. It evolved into the more narrative, like with the figure and telling something of the humor, the wit; not just found objects, but starting to fabricate the objects. It was at that time I knew I had to go beyond funk, I had to step over the boundaries. By reading all of these people here, from Max Ernst to Breton to Delvaux to Duchamp, I collected every bit of fragment. I still do; anything that has to do with surrealism is either filed in my cigar boxes of small drawings or small postcards into my bookcases, all surrealism. I'm still a surrealist fanatic, because there's never going to be a death of surrealism because it was never born.

SMITH: Well, at the time you were studying surrealism in the seventies, were there other artists with whom you were discussing it?

WAGNER: Oh sure. In Belgium there were many. Like Lucien Cornelis was one of my best friends in Belgium. Then there was Arnold Verhé and there was Camille Davé, who was one of the best surrealists in Belgium. He died recently. And Pierre Roobjee, who was a poet. All of these men were very much in simpatico with me. They would come and invite me to their projects. Lionel Vinche. They all did surrealist objects and combined painting and sculpture. They were all in the museums in Belgium. A wonderful group of people. We talked about it all the time in the coffeehouses. I would go into the coffeehouse, and they would say to me, "Goeden avond, Graf," which means good evening. Count. Because that was my name; they named me that, the Count of Rommelgem, the junk place, so the Graf van Rommelgem, who was actually a cartoon character in Belgium by a very wonderful artist who did this sort of thing. I even looked like him. The Count of the Junk Place, that was my name. I would come into the bar, and we would immediately get into surrealism. We would talk about [Stéphane] Mallarmé, about Benjamin Peret or Tristan Tzara. We'd have arguments about surrealism, about where it's going and what it means, and really get into it. And I say, I would ask, "Would you ever be anything but a surrealist?" They said, "What else is there?" Then they would always have something for me, these artists. There was an artists' bar; it was called the Gallows.

SMITH: This was in Gent?

WAGNER: Yeah. It was called the Gallows. It was at one time the gallows hanging place for the castle of Gent, right on the square, and it turned into a coffeehouse, an artists' bar. They would always have something for me. They'd reach in their pockets, "Hey, Graf," and they'd hand me an object. They'd collect things for me. The children would--little kids, four and five years old, "Gordon, Gordon," and then they'd hand me something, a toy or something they didn't want anymore, they'd give it to me. I've never been treated anyplace in my life like I was treated in Belgium. Probably the fact I was from California, American, and they had expressed an interest in finding out about these things from me.

SMITH: Let me ask you-- We'll get back to the subject of surrealism in a little bit. In Sweden, England, Belgium, was there a high interest in what was happening in American art at the time?

WAGNER: I didn't feel there was much interest at all in Belgium. In London there was a bit, but not much, because the British still love Romney and Reynolds and Gainsborough, you know, for their Victorian houses. There's very little interest in contemporary art in England.

SMITH: What about Sweden?

WAGNER: Oh, they love contemporary art. The Swedes are good artists themselves. All these people have such-- They have great artists, you know. When you have somebody like Walter [Hopps], who controls the world of the arts, he sees to it that [Claes] Oldenburg and all of these people are in the right places in all the museums.

SMITH: So pop art was very popular?

WAGNER: Yes, pop art in England. It wasn't popular at all in Belgium. Even abstract expressionism-- They had a very difficult time accepting the abstract expressionists of American artists. Because they had their own artists; they felt that [Willem] de Kooning was Dutch, Cornelis [Van Beverloo, also known as Corneille] was Dutch, [Karel] Appel was Dutch. It was called the Cobra movement, and that was enough for them; they didn't need an extension from that.

SMITH: Was there an interest in color-field painting? In the manifestations of perceptual art?

WAGNER: Not too much, no. There were environments and installations by [Pol] Bury and [Vic] Gentille. They were sculptors, assemblage.

SMITH: Dutch or Belgian?

WAGNER: Belgian. All of them were-- Cornelis, of course, was Belgian. Appel lived right on the Flemish border. They had a feeling for [Maurits] Escher, who was from Antwerp. Basically, they-- There weren't very many American artists showing in Belgium at any time. I was one of the few, because I went there personally and represented myself. But most American artists wouldn't even think about going to Belgium; they'd go to Paris, or they'd go to London. The last place they would go would be Belgium. "What's there," you know? It's still that way. They say. "What's in Belgium? Dull country, dull people," you know. It's not true. They're a very alive people, and very warm and friendly and giving. I don't think there was hardly a night in the whole time I was in Belgium that I didn't have a good meal in somebody's home, because when you had an exhibition, everybody wanted to invite you to their house for dinner. We had all this great, gourmet food that was presented to you. It was wonderful. And every Wednesday night I went to the prime minister's house.

SMITH: The prime minister now?

WAGNER: Well, he's not prime minister now, he was. De Scrijver, Auguste de Scrijver. He was the prime minister of Belgium. I used to go to his house every Wednesday night. His son, Leo, admired my work and myself. He was a real Proustian-type man.

SMITH: What do you mean by that?

WAGNER: Well, he lived in a Proustian world. He lived in this mansion; he lived way up in the corner all by himself. He had a couch where he could listen to Bach and Beethoven and Bartók; he loved Bartók. All these objects in the room, and cabinets full of things like crocodile nutcrackers and ship models and little objects. His bathroom door was completely, solidly located with every print that he could possibly get on there, small prints he had collected. Twenty of the prints were James Ensors. He was a great fan of James Ensor, who was from Oostende. You see, another great artist from Belgium.

SMITH: Now, you mentioned that there was a strong interest in California when you were there. What was the image of California that these people had?

WAGNER: Well, actually I think the image-- I talked to some people who had been there, and they didn't consider anything in California really attractive, except San Francisco, and they felt that was the jewel of the United States. As for the rest of it: it was too spread out, there was no transportation; they couldn't get around, there were no rails like in Europe, where you can go from one town to another, anywhere. It was very difficult for them to get about, except a few. The other thing that a lot of them asked, "Is Los Angeles in Disneyland?" They thought that Disneyland was bigger than Los Angeles. [laughter] They'd never been here, but they wanted to know about these things. They'd heard of Disneyland, and they wanted to see that. That was the most important thing, because they heard there was a lot of magic in Disneyland. Like they knew all about the pirates, and they knew all about the haunted house and all the illusions, and they wanted to see that. They didn't think too much of a lot of the young girls in California that came to visit in Belgium. They acted very silly, they said; they didn't seem to be mature people, you know. The European girls in Belgium are very beautiful; some of the most beautiful women I've ever seen live in Belgium. Because they have this Flemish face which is almost something out of a [Hans] Memling of that time. Pure and real; there's no façades. So they asked about that, about "Are all women like the ones that come here or are there others?" Or, "Do they talk with a [speaks with heavy drawl] 'Well, I'll tell you now, it's like this,' like the Western accents, like movies? Are they like the movies?" Most of them watch American films because they can learn English from that. That's the way they find it, in their TV, to watch English-speaking films. That's the way they learn their language, a lot of them, and go to school. They're forced to study four languages in school. They have to study Dutch, French, English, and any other language of their choice, from Spanish to Russian to Chinese to Greek or whatever. And that starts when they're five years old, they're already studying four languages. They're wonderful. And so warm. So me, being an American, which there are not very many American artists coming there, I was sort of-- I don't know what; you might call me some sort of a freak, coming to their country to have an exhibition. But Arthur Secunda had an exhibition in Belgium and did well. He loves Belgium. All of Arthur's friends and my friends, we're all together, we know each other. Beautiful people to deal with, because they want to help you all the time. They're so concerned about you, be sure that you're all right and find you your studio that you want to work in. It was really an experience.

SMITH: Since the mid-seventies, a number of critics who have written about your work have compared it to the Belgian artists Delvaux, Magritte. There was obviously a great change in what you were doing in terms of the boxes. Do you feel that your work is Magritte-like?

WAGNER: Well, I really admire Magritte. I think he was one of the great surrealists. I love his humor. The actual context of his work is basically his own house or windows that he looks through and objects juxtaposed within his house in a surreal manner to create a whole different ambiance. I don't think Magritte ever worked too much from dreams and therefore--

SMITH: Well, he said he wasn't interested in dreams.

WAGNER: I do, so I think I probably parallel Magritte sometimes architecturally, arches and interiors, but what I say, I think, is a whole different approach to it than Magritte.

SMITH: Well, in terms of the general subject of surrealism and your placement within surrealism as a continuing art movement, generally, eroticism and sexuality are considered to be really prominent aspects of surrealist art. I'd like you to talk a little bit about the sexual, the erotic aspects of your art, how they manifest themselves.

WAGNER: Actually, in Belgium and Holland there's a whole movement of erotic and sexual art by academic painters that really make it look like it's really happening right in front of your eyes. They're really great painters. Especially in Holland more than Belgium. But I've seen paintings ten, fifteen feet long and three feet high, you just can't believe what you're looking at. Really eroticism, pure pornography.

SMITH: Well, I was thinking more about the Magritte painting where the dress is hanging on the hanger with the breasts coming out and the shoes with the toes coming out, or the [Alberto] Giacometti with the ball and bananalike object.

WAGNER: Well, at one time--

SMITH: The more ambiguous and evocative kind of eroticism.

WAGNER: At one time I did quite a few erotic pieces. That was back a ways, in the sixties. I mean deliberately erotic.

SMITH: What pieces were they?

WAGNER: Oh, I went through a whole series of pieces related to eroticism that you-- I don't have them.

SMITH: Yeah, but could you describe them, give me some of the titles?

WAGNER: Oh, they were penises and breasts and lace.

SMITH: Evocative penises and breasts, or explicit?

WAGNER: Yeah, yeah. Lace and jewelry; very, very decadent.

SMITH: But were these explicit--

WAGNER: Boxes.

SMITH: --or were they evocative?

WAGNER: They were evocative. Sometimes they'd become a little more than evocative.

SMITH: What were some of the-- Can you remember some of the titles?

WAGNER: Majestic Memories was about a dancer, a woman who was wound up in webs and nets with all of these erotic things happening, and perfume bottles and beads and glass and phalluses. It was from a-- And a boa hat. It's in a collection at the moment; it belongs to Ronald Loeb. The reason I call it Majestic Memories was because most of these things came from this woman who was a dancer and entertainer in the Majestic Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

SMITH: These are actual things that belonged to this woman?

WAGNER: Yeah, a lot of her goods, and a lot of things. But I really twisted it around to make it quite sensual.

SMITH: How big was this box?

WAGNER: Oh, about [gestures] that large, eighteen inches by eighteen inches by four inches deep. It was a good piece. I had to repair it one time because his wife hit him over the head with it, [laughter] so we had to reconstruct it. His ex-wife, that is. But I did some with bottles, and things happening with them. I did things with different acts of sex going on.

SMITH: Explicit or evocative?

WAGNER: Expressing it, but it wasn't actually that, it was evocative. You knew it was there, but it wasn't.

SMITH: Dream images again?

WAGNER: No. This was at a time when I was not married to anyone. I think it was a lot of libido drive coming up that created it, because I was in a state of, sort of a demonic state of my love object [at the] time. I mention that in my book. Memories of the Future. I have a couple of drawings in there that are pretty erotic.

SMITH: Which ones would you say?

WAGNER: Well, one is the girl on the cross, and the other one is the one where she's sitting with your back to her in the vagina, you know? At that period it was love objects I was creating, because it was a sort of sublimation for being without sex.

SMITH: There is sort of an equation of vagina, rollercoaster, death in that series.

WAGNER: Exactly. That's what it was all about, basically. There were quite a few symbols like that throughout. And also, my boxes were of that same imagery at that time. William Wilson made a comment on it. What did he call them? Quite decadent, or something. I was having an exhibition of them at the Comara Gallery at that time, quite a few pieces.

SMITH: There was the other comment he made about you spend too much time on sex, love and death.

WAGNER: Well, he made that statement, yeah. What was it? No not-- Death, sex and religion; too much time on death, sex and religion. Well, these were so subconscious to me, these weren't dreams, because I hadn't started really working within the dream at that time. This was back before I really got into the dream, you know. They were only written dreams, but not manifesting dreams.

SMITH: Is there a relationship between this erotic art and the peyote altar art that you were doing at the same time?

WAGNER: No, that followed. But of course, that one is a rather sexual one in itself. That has sexual connotations: the man and the woman; the sun and the moon, moon being the woman and the sun--the mating of the two, where the sun fits into the crescent, or the man and the woman. Yeah, that's in that symbolism.

SMITH: There's kind of a genital feeling of the--

WAGNER: Well, the legs coming down from that, you know.

SMITH: What about in your work since the seventies, is there a sexual or erotic element to it?

WAGNER: Well, I've avoided it completely now. I've turned it off, it doesn't exist within me. Any art relating to erotic art just doesn't exist. I've gone through it; it just doesn't happen anymore. Those things just happened. For some reason no more would I have that in any of my work that I know of. It just doesn't happen. Unless somebody wanted to read it into it, but certainly it's not intended to be in there by anything that I would have been responsible for.

SMITH: Was that a conscious decision on your part not to include it, or just--

WAGNER: No, I just outgrew it when I became married to Virginia [Copeland Wagner] in '67. My sublimation was over. I didn't have to sublimate anymore. The whole different thing changed. When I was in Belgium and Holland, and I looked at these paintings in these galleries, as a matter of fact, I was--

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO, FEBRUARY 28, 1987

SMITH: You were saying when you went to Belgium and Holland--

WAGNER: I looked at this dealer in London, the one I told you about. Jean-Pierre Lehman said I should go and see this gallery in Holland, in Amsterdam, because she would probably really love my work. I went to see her, and she said, "I'm not interested in your work at all." You know, Dutch are very gruff. "I'm not the slightest bit interested in your work. Where would Jean-Pierre Lehman get that idea from?" I looked in the gallery, and everything in the gallery was like a pornographic exhibition. I said, "When I look around, I realize that I wouldn't want to be in your gallery anyway because I'm not interested in this sort of art. I think it's decadent, and it's like a horror show. Thank you very much", and I left. And that sort of art, the more I looked at it the more I became really repelled by the stuff. It actually made me sick inside to see it. The cheapening of the beauty of love, taking away that wonderful magic of love for some cheap paintings and exploiting it like that was a little more than I could handle. So I think that was another reason that I subconsciously just moved away from even thinking about such things.

SMITH: Well, is there in your art--if it doesn't reflect, say, the sublimation of eros, is there then reflected in it anything of the state of marriage, the domesticity, the communion of a man and woman in marriage?

WAGNER: Not much. No.

SMITH: I'm not necessarily talking physical, carnal, but the overall--

WAGNER: Well, probably what happens is that it's a sort of escape from everything.

SMITH: Your art?

WAGNER: My art. Everything. Completely. Anything that can be tied down to a way, it's an escape from it. This is hard for some people to understand, because they're looking for a message, an erotic message, a protest message, or some kind of time-full message. In the dream state and through the context of my work, I want to make people happy, give them more humor and joy in life. People who are looking for the other have a difficult time finding that because actually they probably do not have appreciation or humor for my work. My work goes beyond face value; it goes inside, and it's up to them to find it.

SMITH: Well, another aspect of --an important part of surrealism is cruelty, sadism, a reflection of that. All of these are according to the classical surrealists, eroticism, sadism are what really inhabit the unconscious and what need to be liberated. Is there cruelty in your art?

WAGNER: No. No more than Magritte shows cruelty; no more than Delvaux; no more than Max Ernst.

SMITH: Well, there is some in Max Ernst.

WAGNER: There was that part of surrealism, like Marat-Sade. [Antonin] Artaud and some of those people showed cruelty, but they were sort of the crazy people within the surrealist movement. Breton probably showed cruelty by the way he treated the artists within the movement by just throwing them out. But Breton really was a very sensitive man. I don't think he was actually cruel. I'm sure that people like-- Yves Tanguy was not a cruel person. But surreal people like [Salvador] Dalí, he showed cruelty and he showed these things, but I always figured that he did it to shock people through his paranoia, and stinking feet and all the things he got into, you know. I think he did it for sensation; he's a showman, where Magritte was never a showman. There is always going to be-- The Marquis de Sade was part of the surrealist movement with some artists, but not all. There was a breaking up-- You might say it would be cruel to stage performances with animals and things-- Actually, the eyeball that they cut open in--

SMITH: In Chien andalou.

WAGNER: --was not a person's eye at all.

SMITH: That was a donkey eye.

WAGNER: Yeah, I know. I mean but not a live one.

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: It wasn't a person's eye. Things like that showed cruelty. The Spanish side of the surrealist movement, like--what's his name? Oscar Dominguez, who tried to destroy every church in Spain. He was out to get revolution, the communist time, the time of Trotsky. All this was going on. But Breton backed out of all that, he wasn't going to be any part of it. Eluard went on with it, and Gala Eluard, his wife, left him; she didn't want to be a Marxist, she went with Salvador Dalí. But Eluard was a great poet. Although with all this revolution that was going on-- Breton only had one idea, he wanted people to be free. His idea was to shake up the bourgeois in France, to make them learn something about creating from themselves. When he found out what these Marxists wanted to do, he pulled out because he didn't want that kind of control. He wanted people to be free, not controlled. He threw Salvador Dalí out of the surrealist movement because Salvador Dalí said that all blacks should be slaves forever. He threw Magritte out of the surrealist movement because Georgette, his wife, in a café in Paris was wearing a cross. He said, "Take off that cross." Magritte says, "Let's go," and he took off and went back to Brussels. He offended a lot of people, and that might be classified as cruelty. In that aspect, he wanted to be the pope of surrealism. He wanted to run the show, right? But there were a lot of sweet people in the surrealist movement, they were not all cruel.

SMITH: But still, in many-- There is cruelty in Max Ernst, there's cruelty in Tanguy. Not across the board, not always, but there are pieces. It's an integral part of the surrealist ideology: Shocking the bourgeois respectability by showing the cruelty that is inherent in ourselves, in our psyche, and therefore in the society.

WAGNER: Yes, but if we go back four or five hundred years and you look at Bosch, you look at Brueghel, you look at the Flemish artists, you look at the Italians and some of the artists in the Sint Maarten Latem school and others in Belgium over periods of time, [Pieter] de Hooch, how much did they paint about cruelty, and they were not surrealists. Stretching people out with horses and dividing them, drawing and quartering people, saints and religious people. And how could anything be more cruel than the crucifixion of Christ? So painters of all-- Lots of painters show cruelty.

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: But they're telling it like it is.

SMITH: But in terms of your art, you are not interested in cruelty?

WAGNER: I'm interested in being aware of the fact that cruelty exists all around me every day. We have more cruelty probably right now than we've had in years in our society, with all of the beaten children and the things that are going on right now, the way the poor are being neglected and the street people. The lack of interest and concern. There's more now probably than we've had in years in a different way, but it's still cruelty. I am aware of the fact that it's there, but if I were to paint it, then I'm being in a protest state, I'm not being in the world of timelessness. I'm telling you something that's either happened or is happening. Like Magritte, he can think of a thousand ideas, I remember him saying, but only one of them is a good one, because it follows what he's doing. Because he doesn't want to jump around and sidetrack himself off of where his direction is, so he has to give those others up. Max Ernst was the opposite, he'd do anything, you know. He'd have one painting this way, and a drawing this way, and a collage this way. But he still maintained his whole. Magritte just painted; he didn't want to get sidetracked by protest, hate. He made a few paintings, like The Murder and The Room, things like that, but basically he was a timeless artist.

SMITH: My understanding of surrealism is that an important part of it is liberation through releasing the unconsciousness. By releasing the unconsciousness, you challenge bourgeois respectability, bourgeois sentimentality, bourgeois conventionality.

WAGNER: That is correct.

SMITH: Is that part of your art? Are you interested in challenging the bourgeois conventionality and respectability of here, in this country at this time, or of California?

WAGNER: No, not really.

SMITH: Of getting whoever to look at their lives in that way?

WAGNER: Not really. I was at one time.

SMITH: Which time?

WAGNER: When I was young, I used to worry about those things, but not anymore. I don't care what anybody thinks about them now. They can love them or they can hate them, it makes no difference to me. I have no-- I disconnect myself with it, detach myself from tomorrow and from yesterday, you know. Now is what is important. I realize the limitations of our society. I realize that most people aren't even bourgeois, they're just nothing. We've lost our bourgeois in America; we don't have a bourgeois here anymore, we've got the yuppies, and this cult and that cult, and this race of people and that race of people. Our country is not all Americans, where France was all French and where Belgium was all Belgians. Here we have such a melting pot of people. I could work here for the next hundred years, and I bet you that 95 percent of the people in the United States would never see it or see any other art. It just keeps going on, and they probably would never know about it, ever. Because they're-- It's not football, it's not baseball, it's not athletics, it's not boating, it's not surfing, it's not Chinese, it's not Japanese, it's not Mexican. And there's only a handful of us American artists, California American artists, left. Where's our audience? A handful of people. So what bourgeois? There isn't anymore bourgeois. Everybody is battling against being bourgeois in California. They've got to be yuppies, or they've got to be something. There's no time for the bourgeois. They're dead or on their last leg of--maybe in their eighties, maybe in rest homes or someplace. Very few of them left.

SMITH: You mean traditional bourgeois?

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: There's still stockbrokers and real estate agents, and all that kind of thing.

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. They're beyond the bourgeois, I think. Because half of them have already been-- I bet half of the stockbrokers and half of the real estate people have been through the hippie movement, and they lived in all of this ferment. They've probably been on all sorts of acid trips, and they've changed into different personalities because the fad changed. That's the problem here with our society here, the fads. So the bourgeois doesn't exist. It never existed in California; we never had one in the beginning, I don't believe. Not in the sense of the bourgeois, who were closed-minded burghers. We never had burghers.

SMITH: Well, we had Warren Dorn saying that Cézanne was a secret communist plot.

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: Back in the fifties.

WAGNER: Well, true. You mean in the time of McCarthy.

SMITH: The McCarthy period, when modern, contemporary--

WAGNER: Well, that was Hollywood they were after, right? The film directors and the producers.

SMITH: Right, but they also said contemporary art, abstract expressionism was communism.

WAGNER: Well, of course, maps of strategic areas that the Russians wanted for blowing up the United States. That was insanity, not bourgeois. That was coming from Councilman Harold Harby's office. He was the one. He was the one who was accusing them. He was accusing Bernard Rosenthal's sculpture on the police building with the faces that are faceless of being communist because they didn't have faces. He wanted the sculpture to be all people; nobody especially, just all people. He wanted that torn down because that was really a communist piece. During the WPA [Works Progress Administration] times a lot of the old communist artists were working on the murals here in the museum, down in the old museum restaurant. [Edward] Biberman. All around the different WPA projects. They were all fighting at that time for-- "We need money, us artists." Well, most of them made more money during the Depression than they made in years. [laughter] They hadn't been paid before.

SMITH: There's another aspect of surrealism that I want to see how you relate to, which is the question of spontaneity, the automatic painting, short-circuiting consciousness. How does spontaneity and non-consciousness fit into your work methods?

WAGNER: Well, in my earlier works I used lots of spontaneity in my assemblages, you know, the object related to some other object with nothing really in mind, just building it up, purely coming from spontaneity, right out of nowhere, you know. That still is a very important thing in my work, spontaneity. It looks like it's frozen. Like this piece here is totally spontaneous, yet it looks frozen. But everything that went in there came off of the walls, or in boxes, or in junk, or that I found around, and it all came together into a spontaneous composition because-- The only concept in that whole piece here--

SMITH: This is a work in progress that you're doing, now.

WAGNER: This was a ship. I wanted it to go disappear through the edge of the painting and come out down out of a fireplace. So what was the fireplace in the painting, what environment was I going to put that in? I held the concept of the ship in the painting and the ship in the fireplace; the rest was a spontaneous experience of the piano and the table and the cards and the saxophone. When I saw the piano and the saxophone, then I got thinking about The Music Room and related to it. Cards and haphazard beer cans and things, like a man who lived in this room. I've known many who live in a single room where things are in a bit of disarray. But they have the things they like around them: cards or chess games or beer cans they don't quite clean up, pianos maybe, musical instruments lying around. So it's a room of a man who's obviously a bachelor, but that comes spontaneously. Everything has to come through spontaneity, because it's automatic. It is. It's like automatic writing; it's like automatic painting. You let it flow from in you out.

SMITH: What is the role of revision in your work? Polish, revision, redoing?

WAGNER: Well, it's only, to me, editing.

SMITH: Editing, right.

WAGNER: Editing your chaos. What you can do is you can take your chaos and put it there in an automatic way, spontaneous, and then you can notice the way it's thrown down or the way it appears. There's some elements or forms or lines or shapes or objects that get in the way of the other, so it's only a matter of moving them or removing them. You can say the whole message many times with less than a whole lot of things. Less is more. So that's reorganizing the chaos and editing your automatic concept, painting. It's removing a whole area that's too busy, and when that area is removed, there's something over here that's too strong, so you take that out. So the form that's left becomes stronger rather than surrounded by a lot of redundant things. So it's removing things of the chaos or the automatic painting, automatic writing. You automatically write something and you leave it, wham. You'll go back and read it, maybe, and that's a redundant line, you throw it out, right? Same thing.

SMITH: Have you ever been in psychoanalysis?

WAGNER: No, never in my life. I've never been in their office. I have no reason to want to go, or any idea of going.

SMITH: Psychoanalytic theory, again, was a big part of surrealism. Have you been interested in it just from a literary point of view, from a theoretical point of view?

WAGNER: Well, I think [Sigmund] Freud did more to destroy our culture than probably any psychologist that's ever been around. Through sexual libido drives, and placing that above all things, and the dream and the automatic writing and the subconscious through cocaine and opium that he used. I've known-- My wife is the victim of a Freudian psychologist, and her husband was, too. Broke up their marriage.

SMITH: Her first husband?

WAGNER: Um-hmm. It's not all the way it should be. Although Freud at that time was very big with the surrealists, with Breton, because he was doing these things. He was talking about automatic writing and automatic painting and automatic creativity. If [Carl] Jung would have been around at that time-- Jung was still not there; he was a student of Freud. If Jung would have been around at that time, I'm sure that the surrealists would have picked up on Jung a lot faster. Because Jung had a lot more to say about the whole, the harmony, the universal harmony, and the quaternity, and all the symbols of man through dream and vision, and the mandalas, and the working of the human mind from the alchemists. He covered so much that Freud didn't bother with, you know. Freud meant well, but Jung went way beyond that, he went up into the unconscious in a different method. So I wouldn't want to be analyzed by-- I know a lot of Jungians, and my work has always been appealing to Jungians. I only have met a couple of Freudian psychologists, and they seem very confused to me about my art. They were the ones-- One of them said one time, actually. Just like William Wilson, he says, "You're only interested in death, sex, and religion." And that was from a Freudian psychologist. But a Jungian psychologist says, "How can you possibly have a full life and understand anything if you have no interest in sex, death and religion," which is the opposite of Freud.

SMITH: Something else I wanted to discuss is the relationship of your interest in surrealism to the piers, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, POP [Pacific Ocean Park]. You mentioned once that the pier, the carnival, is a form of people's surrealism. Could you go into that more? What did you mean by that? What's people's surrealism?

WAGNER: You mean like amusement piers? Things of that nature?

SMITH: Yeah. Well, carnival in general, of which the amusement piers are a particularly Anglo-Saxon form.

WAGNER: Well, as far as the carnivals and the piers and the palaces of gaiety, the distances of the sea and the skies, and the structures, and the loneliness, and the beach, and the feeling of the mist, that's what I'm interested in. I don't care about the people on the pier; they mean nothing to me at all, because they're not surreal, it's the environment that's surreal. Like the cities that almost float out of the sea, sometimes they're almost projected in the sky at different times, how you can see them from distances.

SMITH: Firaskew.

WAGNER: But not too close. There'd be a dreamlike quality to them. They don't exist anymore. There isn't any. They have been destroyed. But the people who worked in the carnival are just people. The ones that went there were just people. A lot of people that I wouldn't have any desire to ever know or care about.

SMITH: But in an interview that you gave with this newspaper in Eugene, Oregon, you do refer to the piers and carnival as a form of people's surrealism, you use that term.

WAGNER: Well, the carnival and the penny arcade was a stimulation to me. And the pier. But as illusion, as chance.

SMITH: You went on to say that surrealism was the common man's art, it wasn't an elite form of art.

WAGNER: Absolutely. It's the common man's art. It's the only art that is the common man's art, because a very unschooled person can make a dream, draw dreams, he doesn't have to go to an academy, to a certain type or school of art. And primitivism, and folk art, all those things sort of tied together, like African art, Hopi art, the kachinas and masks. All these things are art of man, and to me they all relate to the surrealist movement. They're made by man; they're not made for art. Like the African art and the American Indians, they're made for religions purposes, for symbols of power and energy. They're made by a man specially, or a man makes something very strange and weird for his child. An old man makes buildings and things. But they can be very surreal. It's the art of the people. And when I'm talking about the decoration of the penny arcades and the piers and whatnot, they're made--they were constructed with very surreal colors and illusions within them. But the people weren't. What I'm getting at, the people were not that were there, but the environment was.

SMITH: Could you define surreal? What do you mean by surreal? What does the word surreal mean?

WAGNER: Actually, surrealism was coined up by [Guillaume] Apollinaire as a word. It's actually manifesting your work from the unconscious. That's what it amounts to. If I wanted to tell you the elements of what surrealism actually means to me as a person, and to most people, it has about five or six elements that make something surreal.

SMITH: Okay.

WAGNER: One is always, usually, the juxtaposition of objects not related to one another, common and uncommon objects in a different context so they wouldn't actually ever be together. Humor, chance, a riddle, a rebus. A quality, and many times atmosphere, of distances in nature. All of these things. And probably the one that is the most important of all, I'm almost forgetting, is irrationality. It must be irrational to the logical mind.

SMITH: We talked about Henry Miller before, his important influence on you. How do you, at this point in your life, relate surrealism to Henry Miller? Do you see a connection there?

WAGNER: Well, Henry Miller's dead. Henry Miller did watercolors, and Henry Miller wrote wonderful books that I loved. I can't actually say there's much parallel between what Henry Miller was doing and myself in any way except his philosophy, which I still think is a very important philosophy.

SMITH: Which is?

WAGNER: What he wrote is certainly enough to keep me going for a lifetime as far as my attitude toward society.

SMITH: Which is?

WAGNER: He wrote a letter once to Emil Schnelling and aid, "Let them have their automobiles --their tin buggies, and let them have their boob tubes, and let them have all these things. What you have to do, Emil, is to sit down, stop making watercolors, and start painting, because you're temporizing. Get rid of the material world." I have no use for the material world to this day. I'm not interested in new cars, or any of this. I'm still detached from that aspect of it, new things. I don't own any new things. I never bought a piece of furniture in my life, ever. I can never remember buying a new piece of furniture, a shiny object, because I don't like shiny, glittering things.

SMITH: Well, let's get back to your boxes and your work in the seventies and eighties. I think at this point we ought to perhaps talk about dream narratives, what those are in your scheme of things.

WAGNER: Well, that would be starting, probably, when? 'Seventy-four? 'Seventy-five? How I really got into the dream narrative was Virginia. She told me that I should leave the found-object side after coming back from Belgium and start working with my dreams, drawing them and writing them and developing whatever came out of those. My first narrative dreams were railroad dreams. I used to have a dream about maybe once every month about these wonderful trains that were part horse and part locomotive, or they were prancing steeds, or they were sulky pacers, and they were rocker-arm trains. They ran on different tracks and time, and they were so fast that you could hardly see them go. They just, [whistles] shoo, shoo. I called them the squiggle trains in the corners of my eyes. The first thing I did was try to tie them down into some kind of-- What do they look like actually if I take them out of my dream? Can I manifest these into trains with horse and locomotives with prancing steeds? So I pretty much could. I developed them, and I had them carrying clouds, trains with clouds all inside. I had them coming out of things, out of walls, off the tops of mantelpieces and fireplaces. They were big boxes. The one that is in New Mexico--it's owned by Meg Heydt--was probably the first one that came off. It was a mantelpiece with these horse-locomotive trains traveling across the mantel with a mirror, and down below was a rocker-arm train coming out of the fireplace. It was called The Trains in the Corners of My Eye. It was the first actual piece, probably, that I could manifest from a dream into an actual box. That was the starting point. Then I took fragments of all of these dreams and railroad stations and whatnot, and they started to come out. The more I started to find these elements within myself of these buildings and archways, the more I could get inside of it. Then labyrinths started appearing. As the labyrinths started appearing, things started to relate to the labyrinths. I'd make the labyrinths and I'd go into infinity places with these things. I just kept letting it grow. All my dreams that were direct dreams from writing it down in the morning, immediately after my-- Usually, I had my best dreams in that twilight sleep, in the last three or four minutes. I had wonderful dreams in the Silver Lake district. Echo Park. It was something about the place that fed me more dreams than I've ever had anyplace. Maybe the fact that I've manifested so many dreams, maybe I'm running out of imagery. I don't know. That was really the turning point, the drawing of the dreams. Memories of the Future, getting into that sort of thing.

SMITH: Had you written down your dreams previously to this?

WAGNER: No. No, I hadn't.

SMITH: You had done in the sixties the assemblages of the railroad imagery. Not trains, but the railroad imagery.

WAGNER: Parts and components.

SMITH: Did those come out of dreams?

WAGNER: No. No, they didn't. They came right out of the dump into a spontaneous thing. Whatever it was related. No, they did not come from any dream. They were just for real. What's happened. There were no narratives connected with those as far as-- It was just the overall thing that did it.

SMITH: Were you remembering your dreams at that time? Were railroads part of your dreams at that time?

WAGNER: No, my dreams at that time were basically death dreams, the fear of death, funerals, and all of that sort of thing. But I didn't do anything with them in that way. I've made boxes about them, but I wasn't aware of the fact-- They were just there, these death dreams. Scared me to death, a lot of nightmares. I had those right up to the time that I was married to Virginia. She was the one that pulled me out of that. And I wrote it, the death dreams.

SMITH: You wrote those down.

WAGNER: Yeah, during that time. As far as working on the boxes, so many of them are fragments of my night journeys. Maybe just of one corner of a room or something, and whatever relates to that fragment goes into the narrative.

SMITH: Do the ships come from your dreams?

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. Yes, I've had quite a few ship dreams. In fact, I had one just last night that was a wonderful ship dream. It wasn't on the ocean, it was in San Francisco. It started on Powell Street and followed the cable car right up to the top of--

SMITH: Nob Hill.

WAGNER: Jones [Street] over to Hyde [Street], and we went down the other side. But the buildings all moved and rocked and leaned while we were in this huge ship with my friend, Tom Fresh, who was the pilot of the ship. He was telling me about all of his girlfriends, and do I remember this girlfriend and that one. And he was piloting-- It was like the Love Boat, like Viking Line, like the Star Dancer, or one of those big ships. And here we were going down the hills of San Francisco. We made two or three corners; when we made the corner, we almost wiped out a while side of a building. [Laughter] That was last night's dream. That might be an interesting thing to manifest, you know?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: Some day. That was direct. As for other dreams, I had a wonderful dream--

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE, MARCH 7, 1987

SMITH: When we left off last week, we had been talking about surrealism and your first stay in Belgium. You stayed in Belgium the first time about four months, five months?

WAGNER: The first time, yeah, about that long, four months. Then I went to Amsterdam; came back to Belgium.

SMITH: Did Virginia [Copeland Wagner] join you there? Did the two of you live there for awhile?

WAGNER: I'm trying to remember where we were at that moment in Belgium, what had happened. Had I had an exhibition in Belgium yet?

SMITH: Yes.

WAGNER: At the [Galerij] Kaleidoscoop and the [Galérie] L'Angle-Aigu in Brussels and [Galerij] Te Zwarte Panter [in Antwerp]. Virginia was there. She was away for awhile, and then she came and joined me. I was there for about two months, and then she joined me in April.

SMITH: You returned back to Los Angeles. When you returned back to Los Angeles, did you continue making the constructed boxes?

WAGNER: Oh, yes. I really got into it a lot more when I got back from Belgium. I started making boxes more, fabricating the objects within them instead of using found objects, because I was very much interested in getting into a more surreal context than just the objects themselves. My first shows in Europe, in Belgium, were with the object related to the box. I started fabricating-- This would be-- What year are we talking about?

SMITH: 'Seventy-three, '74, I guess.

WAGNER: 'Seventy-four. Yeah, that's when I did the series of things related to kings and queens and palaces, using very rational symbolism and very irrational situations within the boxes, using formats of chessboards and things that were rational and logical.

SMITH: Well, could you explain what you mean by "irrational."

WAGNER: Well, irrationality to me is when-- Actually, irrationality comes from the inside and doesn't make much sense to most people. It's not something that is all logically planned out, rationally planned out. It sort of comes off of the top of your head and has a lot of nonsense and riddles and puns and things of that nature within it. Where the actual box in its environment, like castle walls or moats or doorways or windows, all of these things are pretty much the structure of buildings, normal. But what went on within them, the actions of the trains crossing fireplaces and ships coming through doorways, kings and queens and balloons about to fall down if you took the word blade out from under them where they were balanced maybe on an egg in space, those kinds of things are not exactly what you call real or logical.

SMITH: You also began your playing card series, right, at this time?

WAGNER: That was later. My first actual group of boxes that I'd completed was in '74 when I had my exhibition at Silvan Simone Gallery in about '75. That was the first time that [William] Wilson was kind to me in a long time. He said, "Well, Wagner's onto something new," and he was quite happy with that series that I was into. It was a very positive statement, I was not concentrating on death, sex and religion, but more into the Alice-in-Wonderland world of miniature narratives in the surreal context in the box. So they were sort of minidramas and microcomedies and mental landscapes. That series was very well received at the Silvan Simone Gallery. Sold out the show, except for one piece that I didn't want to sell.

SMITH: I think the next thing I want to discuss is your leaving Echo Park and going up to San Francisco.

WAGNER: After nineteen years of living in my studio in Echo Park, my house, it was a blow, believe me, to pick up my whole world, put it into a public storage and walk away with nothing except a Volkswagen and a suitcase and decide to-- We had to do something, but didn't know what. They sold the house that we were renting. There was nothing we could do, so we moved out and joined a friend of ours in Berkeley for about a month until we found another friend of ours who lived in San Francisco who was going away for three months. So we were able to stay in his house on Bush [Street] and Fillmore [Street]. That's when I had my exhibition at the Vorpal [Gallery], And seeing that I lived in infinity, so to speak, with a "00000" zip code, that's what I called the exhibition. Halfway to Infinity. That's where I built that very large environment in the upstairs gallery that hadn't even been a gallery, it was just raw space. The Vorpal Gallery gave me that space up on the roof, up on the top loft, to set up this piece and have a show of my boxes. Well, he invested so much money in that, because he restored the whole gallery for me, tore down everything that was in the loft and rebuilt it, refinished the walls. So it was a brand new gallery by the time the opening came. He wanted to do it, but he didn't think he was going to be doing it that quickly. It was a good thing. It was a nice to have it in San Francisco, that same performance with the big box and the mirrors and the actors.

SMITH: That you had first developed in Oregon?

WAGNER: Right. The show went well, also, with it. Boxes all around it, about fifty boxes, as a matter of fact. It was a huge space, something like 50 by 120 feet. You can get a lot of art in it, and it still didn't look crowded.

SMITH: Then you moved out to Sebastopol?

WAGNER: Yeah. This friend of ours, he's an assemblage artist; I've known him for years, another West Coast assemblage artist. Raymond Earnhardt, and his wife. Gen. They were going to Spain for three months, so they said, "How would you like to come stay in our house? You can use my studio for three months while we're in Spain." "Well, it sounds like a great idea. I've never been to Sebastopol." When we got there, it was a paradise. I've never lived in a place quite so beautiful, with this huge studio that Raymond just cleared out of a whole big section. So I had plenty of room to work and check out all of Northern California. And it's so beautiful around there. He had about seven acres and a few apple trees and other gardens. So we got out in nature, and we could work in the garden and we could work in the studio.

SMITH: What kind of boxes were you doing in San Francisco and Sebastopol?

WAGNER: Exactly what I had been doing, the same sort of boxes: making things inside, fabricating the objects, and building, still, surreal boxes, until I got interested-- In Sebastopol a thought came to me, I would love to do a series of playing cards. I would like to do the whole deck of cards, but I felt that fifty-two boxes might be a little bit wearing, so I divided up the cards. My first suit of cards were acrylics, small acrylic paintings about 8-1/2 by 11 [inches] on the "Suit of Circles." I developed that while I was in Sebastopol. I did one suit of the cards in circles. Then I worked on boxes at the same time, so I did about ten boxes and thirteen acrylics in Sebastopol.

SMITH: One of the influences, maybe influence is the wrong word, but in your conversation, you mentioned that you have been deeply impressed by Joseph Cornell. When did you really become aware of Cornell's work?

WAGNER: I think my earliest time that I'd really looked at Cornell was about 1947 in the Copley Gallery in Beverly Hills. It was a surrealist gallery, and it was managed by Bill [William] Copley and Doris Copley. They handled nothing but surrealist artists, from Max Ernst to Man Ray to [René] Magritte to Cornell to Dorothea Tanning Ernst and so many of the surrealists. At that time is when I first looked at the first Cornell boxes. And they were very reasonable; I think I could have picked one up for about twenty-five dollars at the time.

SMITH: But an intense interest in Cornell didn't develop until much later?

WAGNER: No, as a matter of fact, I knew Cornell was there, but he never really stimulated me in his way. Cornell was a man that I started to really read about in the seventies--

SMITH: After he had died, yeah.

WAGNER: --when the books really came out on Cornell. Dore Ashton and some of these different writers put out wonderful books on him. I realized then that Cornell and I had a lot in common in many ways. We were both living in another world, not a world of this time, but of other times, other places, and partially there isn't any other place, you're just living there, if not identifiable to it. Cornell was basically interested in dancers, ballet, ballerinas, and he was interested in star charts. He was a Christian Scientist. He loved old memorabilia. He loved sort of decadence. He loved anything French. He was a great admirer of [Stéphane] Mallarmé, [André] Breton and all the French poets, and he was very involved in all that. He used lots of French in his boxes: the words and the hotels and the places and collecting different objects and collage in his boxes from the French. Although he'd never been to France. He'd never been out of Flushing [New York] except I think to go to Manhattan to take some boxes in a paper sack to the Janus Gallery and to collect objects maybe in junkstores that he could find. He loved all of the ballerinas, and he did things for Dance magazine, covers and whatnot. Most of his work was actually constructed for his brother, Robert, who was in a wheelchair. He used to run up and down his three-story house at 3708 Utopia Parkway from the cellar to the top, up to the attic. He had things going at all these levels. He was a recluse, actually. He stayed home except when he went to the Christian Science church, quite regularly; I think it was daily. I loved the way they described his head as if he was a chambered nautilus with sort of-- His whole mind went out to infinity. Cornell's work is like mine in one way: women love our works. Women are the ones who collect our works, not men. It's very interesting that women love boxes. It was the same with Cornell. At one point Octavio Paz and Max Ernst and their wives, and somebody else showed up with them, and-- Cornell took the wives upstairs to see his boxes and let Octavio Paz and Max Ernst talking downstairs because he knew they wouldn't be interested in his work at all. So he kept it sort of for women. He set up his whole house one time as a party for Zizi Jean-Mere, the ballet dancer from the French Roland Petit company at the time. He loved her, but he never met her, so he prepared his house with all boxes and decorations to give her a party. She came to the party, but he disappeared; he never met her. He was that type of person, too shy. He was telling us about what he really loved about dance and about shooting-gallery birds and about soap-bubble kits and rings and all of this astrology and mythology and the things that he was into. They were sort of alchemical almost, magic, and his sand fountains, and all these different wonderful collages he made with almost alchemical symbols. Although inside of the whole thing, there was usually somebody that he admired. He took Magritte's postcard, I remember, and rearranged it and altered it, the one called Time Transfixed, with the train coming out. He loved Magritte's wife. Georgette; although he'd never met her, he loved her. She was a beautiful person, and he loved the image of the person. I don't think he actually could really-- He never really wanted to know the person, although he did in many cases, with some of the poets. But he had trunks full of old poetry by some remote poets and dossiers in his garage just solid with butterflies and objects and balloons and circles and rings and star charts. When he died, I was in Sweden having my opening at the Konstsalongen Kavalletin, and they told me that Cornell had just died. It was '71, I think. I was very disappointed about that because I had never had a chance to meet Cornell. I had always wanted to, but I never got around to it. We're going back now to when I was still in Echo Park. When I was having my show in New York and staying in Jamaica with my friend who was a painter. Vitas Sakalofski, I said, "Vitas, someplace around here-- You must live close to Flushing." He said, "Oh yeah, it's only about ten blocks away." I said, "Do you know where Utopia Parkway is?" He said, "Of course." "Well, I'm going to go to see Cornell's house." "Where does he live there?" "3708." "Oh, let's go tomorrow. We'll go in the afternoon." We got in his old bus and took off for the Utopia Parkway. He lived in a community that was like Europe, Dutch houses and wonderful houses. I felt like I was in Belgium or someplace. It didn't seem like anyplace else in Europe. So I could see where he could get all this energy through this kind of architecture. We walked-- There was somebody in the garage with a car, and we walked over to the man next door. He says, "You looking for somebody?" And I said, "Yeah. I was admiring the house here of Joseph Cornell." "Oh, yeah? You like the guy?" And I said, "Yes, I found him to be quite a nice artist." I said, "Did you know him?" "My wife knows him." I said, "Do you own anything of his?" "Oh, yeah, a few things." I said, "They're worth a lot of money now, you know." He said, "You mean to tell me people pay money for the crap he did?" Finally, the wife came out. She said, "I've known Joseph ever since I was four years old, and my son used to work with Joseph and help him with his boxes to treat the outsides. I'll show you something." She brought this box out and a collage and two or three other things. She said, "The last we saw of Joseph was at Christmas Eve. That was his birthday, and every year he loved to celebrate Christmas Eve on his birthday. We invited him to come over to our house for a big party for him and for everybody, and he phoned up at about ten minutes before the party started and he says, 'I don't really want to come over. There'll be too many people there, and I don't want to talk to people.'" So he never showed up for the party, and he died right after that. So Joseph, his philosophy is parallel to mine, but with a different message. We both have that same inner feeling about poetry and threads of our life parallel each other. His father was a Dutchman like mine; he comes from a Dutch family. I would like to have actually met him.

SMITH: Recently there's been some discussion in the art critical circles about the importance of the grid in twentieth-century art, and Cornell's name of course comes up frequently as an artist who has imposed a grid framework upon what he was doing, similar, in a sense, to [Piet] Mondrian or any number of artists, actually. Is the grid framework important in your work, would you say?

WAGNER: Well, if you're actually squaring things off like this one or that one with the spiderweb for a grid instead of this [rectangular] grid.

SMITH: What's the name of that piece there?

WAGNER: That is called The Staircase, the suitcase with the stairs coming out of it with a grid. For awhile there, for about, oh, several years ago, I used to adapt the grid a lot to my work. It was a way of killing the space that you were afraid was too dull. It did liven up a distance. This one has a grid. No, this one doesn't have a grid. No, I guess I don't have any with grids at present. Except this one is an example.

SMITH: With the suitcase. And what's the name of the spider--

WAGNER: But I've used the spiderweb as a grid.

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: Rather than the actual 90-degree grid.

SMITH: Your use of windows and portals and that, are they also a form of grid for you?

WAGNER: Yeah, right, they're setting up a negative space. The grid has a tendency to strengthen many works that would lose itself if it was just blank. A grid pulls things forward so that everything behind it goes back. It's like looking through jail bars.

SMITH: It's a form of control of the space, then. I wanted to move on to the subject of you and Virginia becoming involved with Catholicism, That began when you were--

WAGNER: In Sebastopol.

SMITH: In Sebastopol?

WAGNER: Yeah, that's where I was at that moment. I was working in my studio when Virginia came home one afternoon, and she said, "I've just met a wonderful Jesuit priest who agreed to trade Alexander [technique] lessons." And he said, "What could I do for you?" And she said, "Well, I'd like to learn something about the Catholic church and about religion, on that matter."

SMITH: What were your religious leanings at that time?

WAGNER: At that time we were pretty much into the Oriental philosophies, into the Taoist. That was our favorite of all that we'd tried. We'd gone through Hinduism and Buddhism, and we found that Taoism seemed to be the one we loved the most, because it had the most balance and was closer to what we knew. Because living with the Indians, that was more or less their philosophy; it was almost a Lao-tze philosophy, all their myth and their quaternities. The Jungian way. It all tied together.

SMITH: So what was your reaction to Virginia's interest in trading lessons for--

WAGNER: I was pretty unhappy with the whole situation. I said, "I'll tell you: you can do whatever you want with it, but don't count me in on joining up with any church. I don't want any part of it." I'd been through it in my life with my first wife and my kids, and I didn't like the way the church was operating. I didn't like the parish life or the community or anything about it at that time. I used to have to go as a duty, being married to my first wife, who didn't go, I had to go to take my children. My first wife was a Catholic. We were married in the Catholic church in the Carmel mission, but she never really wanted to go to church. She was turned off by the church from childhood, and so that made it very difficult for me because I would have to take my daughters. I thought that I was a Catholic, or had been; when I went in, they gave me communion. It was so long ago, I couldn't remember, but I knew I didn't want it. I battled it with Virginia, all kinds of pros and cons, about why would you want to do this thing? She said, "I'm going to go and find out more." And I said, "You go right ahead, but don't count me in on any of it. "

SMITH: So she began to study Catholicism. What led you to decide to investigate it for yourself?

WAGNER: Well, I was invited to mass at Saint Ignatius [de Loyola] Church at USF [University of San Francisco] by the Jesuit who was talking with Virginia, Father Swain.

SMITH: What's his first name?

WAGNER: Father Arthur Swain. After the mass we would have lunch. This we did, and I remember him saying to me--the first thing he said to me when he met me-- "What's a nice guy like you hanging around a place like this for?" So we had lunch. He was very brilliant, good sense of humor, laughed all the time; I enjoyed it. Then we went across the street to the Carmelite monastery where the cloister is, the [Monastery of] Cristo Rey is the name of it, where there's about twenty-one Carmelite nuns of the order established by Saint Teresa of Avila. We talked with them. Father Swain was their confessor, so he introduced us to the reverend mother and her assistant, and they were just charming women. They were from Mexico; they had to get out of Mexico at the time of the revolution. They came to America, and they'd been in the Cristo Rey ever since.

SMITH: They were quite elderly, then, at this time.

WAGNER: Oh, yeah. The reverend mother, she must be about seventy-eight, she looks about thirty right now. Not a line on her face; she looks like a young girl. Incredible person, wonderful energy. So we talked to them for awhile. They were just-- I was really impressed by these women, but I couldn't understand how they could live all their lives within this enclosure with never knowing anything about what was going on in the outside world, never. They know nothing about anything in the outside the world except zip codes. They mail things a lot, but they don't know-- They say, "That zip code, oh yeah, that's in North Beach, isn't it?" or, "That's in the Richmond district," or "That's in Sea Cliff", or "That's up in the Haight-Ashbury. Where's the Haight-Ashbury, Gordon? We've heard so much about that from time to time." Well, Haight-Ashbury is actually about three blocks down the hill and across the panhandle, about five blocks away, but they didn't exactly know where it was.

SMITH: They never leave the walls of the cloister?

WAGNER: Only in an emergency. It was very interesting, that life within that cloister. It's probably one of the most beautiful places in San Francisco; I mean, once you see it. It just illuminates with light, just drips with light, it's so beautiful. So they gave us each a rosary and how to say it. They gave Virginia a book on the life of Saint Teresa of Avila to read. Their blessed mother--their holy mother, rather, is Saint Teresa of Avila. Then we left and went back to Sebastopol. Virginia kept going to Father Swain and I kept working in my studio. The thing of it was that Gen Barnhardt had some of the writings of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila in her library because she was a Catholic. The sculptor, Ray's wife.

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: So we started going to the churches around there on Sunday, not receiving any communion, but just going, seeing what it was like. Went to Sebastopol one Sunday, we'd go to Bodega the next Sunday, we'd go to Petaluma, we'd go to Santa Rosa; we'd go to different ones and see what it was like and how it felt, you know. All the time, every Sunday we would go, in Sebastopol, just on a little drive someplace. We found that the people were so incredibly friendly and so loving that it must be something wrong. The priests were so nice, and they talked about things that--there was no hellfire and brimstone; there was none of that sort of thing going on. Good sense of humor, good wit. There was something happening within us at that moment. I was still resisting the actual idea of any organization of any kind, because I've never belonged to anything; I don't believe in organizations, and I was always a nonorganization man. So it was a battle going on within me.

SMITH: Then what happened?

WAGNER: We left Sebastopol.

SMITH: There was something that was appealing to you, but it sounds like it was more on an aesthetic level than a spiritual level.

WAGNER: Well, of course, because in Mexico I used to go to the church every day and sit down by myself. I loved the Latin mass; I loved the chanting; I loved the mysticism and the things that you couldn't see. Logical people can't accept mysticism and the mythical. Being an irrational person, it was easy for me to pick up on these things. Because this story about Jesus Christ and the Lord in the Bible, the Old Testament and all of the Gospels, verse and everything that goes with it-- Either there's about nine hundred million, almost a billion. Catholics that are really suckers to the biggest lie in the world, or it's the truth. So if it's the truth, then you've got to go along with it. So what are you going to do? I'm going to just go along and accept the fact that it is and have that kind of faith. It's faith, that's all it is. You either believe it or you don't believe it. You don't have to analyze it, it's an aesthetic thing. It was the same thing when I'd sit in the church in Mexico, I had faith. If I didn't have faith I couldn't be an artist all my life, I would have given it up for the material world thinking, "I can't make it as an artist. I won't have any money; I'm going to starve to death. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that." I never thought that way. I just keep doing what I have to do. It's sort of an assistance to me to be able to do what I do now and know that I have faith and that I'd turn it over to the Lord. I do not turn it over to myself; I am not running my show. He's running it. But to get back to Sebastopol: We left Sebastopol, and when Virginia came home, she said to Gen, "Boy, I sure loved your books. I read Saint John of the Cross and I'm thinking about becoming Catholic." Gen turned around and said, "Well, join the club." So we went over to San Francisco then. We were invited to stay in Mary Jane Staymate's house on Sutter [Street] and Fillmore [Street], where she gave us the whole top floor except her bedroom. We had a big bedroom in the front, and then there was another room, and then there was a small room that was Mary Jane's bedroom. There was an unfinished kitchen and deck, and that was turned over to me for my studio because it was empty. It was a big room, so I had plenty of room; it was like thirty by thirty feet. So I could work there, I worked in that studio. I had to wait until she would get up in the morning so I could pass through her bedroom to the studio, there was no other way in. Sometimes she didn't get up until nine o'clock and I'd be up at six, so I'd have to contemplate and think and do something else. She wasn't very much in favor of the Catholic church; she was a good Presbyterian, in the choir. But she was a very kind person, and she was a fighter for the community, and she was against HUD [United States Department of Housing and Urban Development]; she was trying to stop a housing development in San Francisco. All these kinds of things; she was working on projects. She was from Arizona. She was a strong woman. She had a beautiful Queen Anne house. Well, Virginia was going on studying with Father Swain. She finally asked me if I would come and talk--he asked if I would come and talk to him about things, get something going once a week. I didn't want to do it, wasn't interested. But the way it worked out, I finally condescended to go once a week to go talk with him for one hour. And he said, "I'm not going to do the talking, you're going to do the talking. You tell me what's on your mind about this church." So for about ten weeks, I think, everytime I talked with him, I told him everything I didn't like about the church and about the people involved in the church and the way the church operated in-- Any organization I didn't like, no matter what. But it seemed to me that he was able to get around all those things; he always came out on top of the argument. So we found that it was really quite an interesting battle between Father Arthur Swain and myself.

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO, MARCH 7, 1987

SMITH: Were there religious things beginning to appear in your art? In terms of your boxes, were you beginning to deal with religious subjects?

WAGNER: Nothing, no. Nothing whatsoever was appearing in my boxes except what I was doing. When I was at that period, when I was arguing with him, I was going to [see Swain], I was making boxes. I made about, oh, fifteen boxes in that three months we stayed with Mary Jane. I guess it was more than that, almost six. I made the "Suit of Squares" playing cards, thirteen acrylics for the "Suit of Squares." Yeah, I started that. Then I had a big exhibition coming up in L.A. at the Downey Museum [of Art] that Lukman Glasgow had invited me to. So we took off from San Francisco; we came back down to L.A. and stayed with a friend of ours out in the [San Fernando] Valley in Woodland Hills, a painter, Pat Benefield, a surrealist painter, a very good one. We stayed there for probably about a month, and I worked on some more boxes there. She had a place where I could work. As a matter of fact, I built that box over there. The Gemini Lady, at her place, and this one out there.

SMITH: What's the name of that one?

WAGNER: That's Georgette.

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: We only stayed with her temporarily because we were going to go to Belgium.

SMITH: So you returned to Belgium to have a show there?

WAGNER: Well, I didn't know what was going to happen. Prior to that they had given me an exhibition, oh, probably about a year before, and they'd sold about ten or fifteen pieces for me out of that show in the Architektenhuis in Gent. They had money in the bank in Brussels for me, and it amounted to something like, oh, I forget how many Belgian francs, but it amounted to $5,000 American. So it was possible for us to go, and live there without spending any American dollars. So we decided we would go with nothing really in mind except to go and see what was going on, check it out. So that was an experience, going to Belgium, getting there and being there the first-- You wouldn't want me to discuss that would you?

SMITH: Well, we discussed your going to Belgium before.

WAGNER: This time going to Belgium was a whole different experience.

SMITH: In what sense?

WAGNER: Well, I've never been treated like that in any other country in the world. We took off on the airplane from LAX [Los Angeles International Airport] and arrived in London at twelve noon, and from London to Brussels, and we got there about three thirty their time, which is about an hour difference, really, in flight. I got there, and there wasn't any-- I figured that they knew we were coming, I figured somebody would be there to meet us. Nobody was around. We couldn't get out of the customs line. So then when we did come up to the customs, they don't open anything up anyway, they say, "How long are you staying?" I said, "Oh, probably three or four months." "Oh, that's okay, go ahead." And we tried to find where we were going to stay. You know, when you got jet lag like that, it's hard to come out of the Brussels airport and wonder where you're going the first night. To get to Brussels it was thirty dollars, to get to here it was thirty dollars, the hotel was thirty dollars. I said, "Forget it. How do you get to Gent?" "A Sabena bus." So we looked all over for the Sabena bus. I've got tools and equipment and all my tool box and stuff to work; I'm going to work there. The man says, "You get it over there," so we wheeled everything over there. "No, up there," back and forth. We finally found the Sabena bus, right in front of the station as you walk out the door. We got on a Sabena bus, Virginia and I and one more man going to Sint Maartens Latem, that was it--and the bus driver; that was the total amount to go from Brussels to Gent. We got to Gent about six o'clock at night. I said, "I'll go down to our old hotel," where we used to stay sometimes, the [Hotel] du Progres, when we first went to Gent a couple of times before we got settled. I carried the tool boxes and everything down the street, and I said, "You wait here, Virginia, I'll come back and get you in case--" I get down there and everybody was welcoming me. I hadn't seen these people since 1973; this was 1979, and they were shaking hands like I hadn't been gone all those years. I asked them if they had a room. "Oh no, no rooms. Just put your stuff back there and keep it for a while." So I put it in the back room with the birds. I went back up and called my friend Lucien [Cornelis]. He says, "Gordon--" Yeah, he came right down and kissed me three times, and he says, "You're on time. I thought you weren't coming. We're waiting for you." I said, "For what?" "You're having an opening tonight." I said, "Where?" "In the Artemis Galerij." I said, "What?" He said, "Where were you? We sent the daughter of the governor of West Flanders, the Countess [Regine van Outryve d'Ijderwalle] van Odenheim, to fetch you at the airport. The airport printed a big sign for her because the one she had was too small, with your name on it. You didn't see it?" I said, "No". "She said she waited for over forty-five minutes." (And all the time we're back in customs.) "She came to fetch you." I said, "When is this opening?" "Eight o'clock. You have to eat. Annie [Niset] has all this soup. We're going to have a feast." I said, "Part of my luggage is in the du Progres." "Okay, we go and get that." We had a beer and talked for a couple of minutes, and then we went over there. We went back, and here's all my friends from all these years back all at the opening. After the opening closed at ten o'clock, they said, "The countess of the castle of [Baron Donj du Lovendegem] van Odenheim is having a party, and you are invited as one of the honored guests, the artists. It's necessary that you go there." I said, "Van Odenheim? That's out by Zottegem and Zomergem. That's about twenty miles out of town." "Yeah, that's right." "You mean we got to go there? We're a little tired." "No, you've got to go, it's important." We get out there, and it's a beautiful night, the stars are all shimmering. We drive up this tree-lined-- they call it a dreef, the tree-lined roads to the castle, over the drawbridge, the moat, into the courtyard. There were all these towers and turrets and weathervanes, and the stars were twinkling. We got out and these big doors opened, and here is the countess, she is waiting, and she has two six-foot porcelain hunting hounds, dalmatian dogs on each side of her. She's bowing and sweeping Belgian-style, escorts us through the corridor with the kings' chairs and all of the velvets and the golds and the heraldry. We walk down this long hallway and down these winding stairs into the dungeon; that's where the party was. It was full of people. And she collected boxes. She had a fireplace that was wider than this room, and six of us stood in the fireplace and smoked cigarettes because the smoke went up the chimney, didn't offend anybody that didn't smoke. It was really something. At two o'clock in the morning we were pretty tired, and Virginia was getting tired. And I said, "Lucien, we got to go pretty soon." He said, "That's all right, we'll go." We took off, and on the road two guys come alongside, "Let's stop for a beer down here in another pub." "Forget it." It could have gone on for two weeks like this. This is a strange way to enter Belgium, with jet lag, you know, to have that all happen on the first night you arrive. Also, at that party I made the commitment-- These dealers were sticking money in my coat pocket, a thousand Belgian francs, two thousand, [laughter] I got all this stack of money. We made a commitment for me to have an exhibition on December 14 of that same year; this was October, or the middle of September, I guess. December 14 would be the time for the exhibition. That meant that I had to do some work while I was-- I couldn't fool around much. So we took a house in Belgium, in Gent, and I started working. I made the exhibition all right. That opened on December 14. It was very interesting, because I wasn't a Catholic yet, I was still on the outside of-- I wasn't one of them from the standpoint of-- Although we went to church every Sunday in Gent, never missed. Cold in the winter. They have big heating lamps in the churches on posts because they're big stone buildings, and they can get pretty cold. The birds are flying all over the roof, the pigeons and the doves. That night was where I was told that I was to construct The Interior Castle [also known as The Castle of the Seven Dwelling Places].

SMITH: Who told you?

WAGNER: He is one of the Carmelite priests at the Carmelite monastery in Gent. It's called the Centrum vor de Bezeining, meaning the Center of Prayer. It was Carmelite men. So I was told by Pere [Frans] Hoornaert that I was to build this castle. I said, "What kind of a castle is that?" "Well, it's about-- It's by the book from Saint Teresa of Avila." I said, "We have one at home, in Gent here." "No, this is not the life, it is the interior castle." I said, "I don't know anything about it." "Don't worry about it, you'll find out, no problem. We're going to have a competition. We're going to invite artists from all over Belgium to submit their models, drawings, paintings of the interior castle. We will give 150,000 Belgian francs for the first award." So my friend Lucien, who was-- We were going to collaborate on it. He was going to do part and I was going to do part. We thought that would be a good thing to do. We didn't know if it was a good idea; we didn't even know what it was. I barely knew anything about Saint Teresa of Avila, except what I'd learned in Cristo Rey. So all of the friends that were with him, "Oh, you'll like it. It's like your work, got lots of toads and snakes and demons." I mean, like Bosch, oh, yeah, that's right, like Bosch. I said, "That does sound interesting." It started from that night, which I found out later, December 14 is the feast day of the great Carmelite saint, John of the Cross. It was his feast day that my show opened in Gent. San Juan de la Cruz, who was with Teresa of Avila, you know, they were together. She asked for two priests to help her: Father Antonio and Saint John of the Cross. She looked at them, and one was a big man, and Saint John of the Cross was little. She said, "Ah, I have a priest and a half." [laughter] Saint John of the Cross was so small.

SMITH: So you had decided that you were going to build The Interior Castle for this competition?

WAGNER: Well, we discussed it. Lucien and I were going to collaborate.

SMITH: What kind of concept were you playing with?

WAGNER: I had none. Nothing.

SMITH: What did you know about what the interior castle was supposed to be?

WAGNER: I had no idea what it was. It's really hard to do anything until you understand what it's all about, right?

SMITH: You would think. So how did you find out what it was all about?

WAGNER: Oh, that was much later. That was a long time after I came back from Belgium. San Francisco and everything else.

SMITH: Let's continue. So you didn't The Interior Castle in Belgium.

WAGNER: Oh, no. No, I didn't even attempt it. I had no way of being able to understand the interior castle as it should be in Dutch. They didn't have the Spanish version, and they didn't have an English version.

SMITH: When people turned in their works for competition, did you see anything?

WAGNER: It never happened.

SMITH: Oh, it never happened.

WAGNER: They got in a lot of trouble in Belgium, financially.

SMITH: The church, or--

WAGNER: Just Belgium got in a financial bind. I guess they ran out of money to do that. That was a pretty tough time, 1980, in Belgium. It wasn't easy; they were taxing everybody, the land taxes, underneath their houses and on top of their houses, taxing the artists, taxing everything, you know. So it was really ruining the economy.

SMITH: Then you came back home to the United States after a while?

WAGNER: Came back to San Francisco and moved to the Richmond District, out by Sea Cliff, on California [Boulevard] and Twenty-eighth Avenue. I set up my studio there. I started reading about various and sundry saints and whatnot. I started working on my playing card series; I did thirteen boxes on the "Suit of Keyholes" at that point and finished up a little more polish to the "Suit of Circles" and the "Suit of Squares." I just went over. So I had the whole series together, and I read a little bit.

SMITH: What kind of ideas were you working with in the "Suit of Keyholes"?

WAGNER: Boxes.

SMITH: Boxes, but that--

WAGNER: Thirteen boxes of puns.

SMITH: Okay.

WAGNER: Related to numbers. Take one, for example, a box that would be in the "Suit of Keyholes," The Five of Keyholes.

SMITH: Which was?

WAGNER: Well, it was actually in a room, like a kitchen, with a sink and a plumber's friend and a ship sinking down into the cabinet, into the dishtray, sinking. Up on the wall was written sinko, a pun on cinco. Such things as a golfer out in the country with a cow off in the distance, and he's swinging the golf club for four, and that sort of thing. There were a lot of puns, and yet they have that medieval feeling to them. It's the same kind of imagery that I would use in my boxes.

SMITH: The "Suit of Keyholes" was a series of boxes.

WAGNER: Oh, yeah, all thirteen of them.

SMITH: Then you continued with doing pun boxes, right? There was Door Jam.

WAGNER: Well, then I got into just plain pun boxes, but that was not in San Francisco. While I was in San Francisco, I was just doing the keyholes. That's when we went to Father Swain and completed our discussions. Virginia could not become a Catholic because she had had another marriage she would have to have annulled. She couldn't track down her former husband, he had disappeared and there were no papers. It took two years until a Chinese canon lawyer just went [whistles] shoo, shoo, and cleared the whole thing off down on Church Street, you know, at the archdiocese of San Francisco. Then we were allowed to get married in the church.

SMITH: But you had already become Catholics?

WAGNER: No. No, we weren't. And then we could become when we were allowed to-- At the final thing we went through all of the sacraments at once. And Virginia-- The way it was, I thought I was already cleared being married to one back down there, but I never knew exactly where I stood. I said I had been baptized, I'd had communion before at Carmel, at my wedding. He didn't ask me for these things, but Virginia had to go through it from scratch; she had to do everything. Baptized, first communion, confession and confirmation, and marriage all five sacraments at once. We went through that in one day. Father Swain did it all in the baptistry in Saint Ignatius church with a couple of friends for witnesses. It took about twenty minutes, and then we went over and she had her first communion in the Carmelite monastery. The sisters all sang for us, and it was beautiful. They chant so well, you know, and they have an organ there, beautiful chanting. They did that for us privately the next morning with Father Swain as the celebrant of the mass. Then that solved that. That's when we got the book of The Interior Castle. I bought one in San Francisco, and it was so bad, I couldn't even understand what they were talking about. It was by another translator, Allison Peers. Didn't understand it; I just tossed it out.

SMITH: Why were you pursuing it?

WAGNER: Well, I sort of made a vow with Pere Frans that I would do something about it. And the Carmelites, I told them about it in Cristo Rey, and they were so happy that it just had to be done, they knew that. It was going to be 1982 when it had to completed, not before.

SMITH: Who said that?

WAGNER: Well, that was when the four hundredth anniversary of the death of Teresa of Avila would be coming up. It was a festival for that. It was their feast. So it had to be; it was that year. In Belgium they call it four hundred Jubeljaar. Anyway, they gave me the book by a different writer, by Kieran Kavanaugh and [Otilio] Rodriguez.

SMITH: Different translators, you mean?

WAGNER: Right. That one started to interest me. The more I read it, the more I realized, "This woman is totally insane. Why am I even thinking about such things?" I just put it away.

SMITH: What do you mean by insane?

WAGNER: She was just mad, you know, madness. I couldn't understand what she was driving at.

SMITH: You like madness, so why would that put you off?

WAGNER: Well, no, but I couldn't see any way that I could manifest it into a three-dimensional work of art, you know, until I read the book about seven times. I kept reading it, and everytime I would read it, I would find, ah, there's an image, and I would make notes. I would keep writing down these notes. I'd go to each mansion of the seven mansions, and it took months and months. In the meantime, I'm doing everything else: I'm working on my keyhole boxes and other things, and I'm writing poetry and enjoying things and dreams, and I'm doing my normal thing. But I would set aside time to go through this, and I saw that there was no hope. I said, "But I've more or less made a commitment that I'm going to do this thing, and there's something going to make me do this." I can't explain it. Well, Virginia and I had been married, now, in the Catholic church. Father Swain said, "Well, your papers should be coming here pretty soon because-- I've got to have your baptismal papers from Carmel Mission and your--" or from Sacred Heart in Hollywood, where I went through my lessons with Father Ring, who was the head of USF [University of San Francisco], he was the dean later, Jesuit. Well, I got a letter from Carmel Mission, they said I was a heathen and never had any baptism and that I had a special dispensation.

SMITH: To get married the first time?

WAGNER: I showed this to Father Swain, he said, "Well, now what?" He'd married this woman-- "I'll be back." We were in the middle of a talk about things. He took off for the office, he said, "Come on, let's go." He got the secretary out of the office, and he got a girl walking down the hall. "Let's go, we're going to have a wedding." So we go back in the baptistry, and we go through the whole marriage again preceded by my baptism. We had to write out all the papers and send them down to the archdiocese and do it all over again. It was funny. He was laughing so hard. Anyway, so we were married again. So Virginia and I were married by the I Ching in Topanga Canyon. We were married by the justice of the peace in Albuquerque. We were married by Father Swain at [Saint Ignatius de] Loyola Church USF two times. So we've been married four times. So The Interior Castle was on my mind all the time, but nothing was really happening, nothing was really developing. And I was starving to death; I was really on the bottom. I was paying $400 a month rent out there. I'd never paid that much. I'd been used to paying nothing or $200 a month all my life. The highest I ever paid was in Echo Park, from $80 to $200 they raised it. So $400 was-- I couldn't believe it, that high. And Virginia was having a difficult time getting students. And artists in San Francisco, I don't know how they live there. They must starve to death. There is nothing going on for the artist as far as selling their art. It is a great place for them to work, but they've really got to get out and hustle. So I was so glad--

SMITH: Did you have a gallery in San Francisco.

WAGNER: Yeah, Vorpal [Gallery], but they weren't doing anything for me. I was so glad for this man to come along. Bill.

SMITH: Who is this man?

WAGNER: I'm trying to remember his name.

SMITH: No, but where--

WAGNER: He appeared from-- Justine Fixel brought him over one afternoon and introduced me to this gentleman. We had a little lunch, and he looked at my work. "I've been waiting for this! For months I've been waiting for this," he said. "I wondered what I was going to do." I said, "What are you talking about?" "I'm going to give you an exhibition the end of this month." And I said, "Where?" He said, "At Cal State [California State University] Fresno. I'm the director of the gallery." He says, "I can't pay you much. I can give you $300 for the rental of your work, and I can give you a ten-page catalog and guarantee you about $300 for a lecture and pay for your time in Fresno." I said, "How am I going to get this work down there?" "I'm coming. I'll pick it all up. You don't have to do anything." I said, "Yeah, but if I move back down to L.A.--" "Same distance. I can bring it from Fresno to L.A. just as easy as San Francisco. Right in the middle, same distance. You just tell me where you want it to be." So he moved all of my art for me, gave me this exhibition. We drove away with two suitcases and the basket chair from the living room. That was all we had. Everything else in our apartment we either borrowed from people or found on the street, like boards and doors and sawhorses. I gave them away and gave back the things we borrowed, like chairs and chests of drawers. We walked away with nothing. Drove out of San Francisco-- Came back down to L.A. and stayed with a friend out in Canoga Park until we could find this house in Pasadena. That was in 1980, December, when we arrived here. Bill [William E.] Minschew [Jr.] was his name, a friend of Justine and Lawrence Fixel. Great person. He lives up in Clovis, that's north of Fresno, up on a mountain. What a wonderful way-- Just like it was a miracle just landed. He took care of everything; we didn't have to do a thing, just drive away with our little bug. Take off for Fresno straight down to L.A. after we'd been there for about five days. And get paid for it to boot. I said, "Well, we're getting out of San Francisco. It starts in Fresno, where they start to recognize artists again." [laughter] It was miraculous, how that happened. Moved everything right out to where-- The show ended, and everything came to my friend's place where we were staying. It was easy.

SMITH: Well, let's get back to The Interior Castle. You were working from the book, but all you had was notes and a deadline.

WAGNER: When I arrived here, it was December of 1980.

SMITH: And you knew you had to have it done in two years.

WAGNER: By '82.

SMITH: But not before '82?

WAGNER: I had to have it done, well, if possible-- Her actual feast day was November 15, 1982, but the year before they were going to be celebrating it all this time, you know, through '81. I wasn't coming up with anything. I was reading, reading, reading the book.

SMITH: Were you thinking of a series of boxes?

WAGNER: Oh, I was working on these pun boxes. Anything to escape The Interior Castle.

SMITH: I mean, in terms of The Interior Castle, were you conceiving it as a series of boxes?

WAGNER: I wasn't considering it anything. I had no idea at all what it was going to be. I knew how it wasn't going to be. I had a thousand ways of knowing how I wasn't going to do it. But I didn't know how it was going to be. And then I had some dreams. I had dreams where it was sewn together, and where it was glued together, and it was made out of leather, and glass was all running up and down, and needles were running through all of the things, and it was all tangled up, and there were mousetraps in it. Just awful dreams. I was having all these nightmares about it. Didn't have anything to do with it whatsoever.

SMITH: Those kind of sound like your assemblages from the early sixties.

WAGNER: No, they weren't even that. These things were much more messed up than that, no. These were disorganized piles of nothingness and globs of gloop. It was like they were being dragged up from the underworld, what was coming in the dream. But I knew that Teresa of Avila was a Spanish woman, and she was a fiery Spanish woman, and she lived in the medieval time, right?

SMITH: Well, renaissance.

WAGNER: Well, 1500. Fifteen hundred had pretty medieval architecture, they always say.

SMITH: Yeah, well, the transition from the middle ages to the renaissance.

WAGNER: She died in 1582; she died at sixty-eight years old. She was my age exactly, except for a month. She was born March 28, an Aries, and I was born April 13, so she was a month older than I am now. But she was still an Aries, three weeks older. She is only four hundred years older than I am. [laughter] So I thought about this castle as being something that should be related to that kind of architecture, you know. Oh, I had priests that were telling me it looked like a chambered nautilus. I had other ones saying it looked like a ball of mirrors. I had all sorts of suggestions about how it looked. None of them were what I saw or what I wanted it to be. So I just kept looking, kept feeling, kept writing and kept reading. Well, from 1979, when I started actually--late '79, the end of '79, the end of December, up to about the middle of '81 or around in there, early '81, I was still reading. I read the book, I think, seven times. A lot. I knew what I wanted to put in the castle, but I had no conception what it looked like. So I had to go to mass one morning, and I asked Saint Joseph--after all, he's a carpenter--and I said, "Saint Joseph," I said, "you know that I'm an artist and I like to work and build things. If you want me to prove it, I can bring my saw and my tools, I will show you that I am serious about these things. I would appreciate it if you would actually help me and show me what this interior castle might look--" I never got the word "like" out of my mouth, because there it was; it was in front of me; I was looking at it. He showed me every detail of that castle, and the vision stayed with me for five minutes so I could study it. So I raced home immediately and I drew it out, made a drawing of it, pen and ink, best I could. I took it to San Francisco, because I was having an opening the next day after the vision in Pacific Grove Art Center, so I had to go. I took it to San Francisco, to the Carmelites, and I showed them what I had. They really loved it, blessed it, and thought it was going to be just what it was supposed to be. They could visualize it, too, when they saw what I'd visualized. I talked about the seven levels from seven mansions, what was going to be sort of in it and summarized up the thing. They were very, very pleased with what was coming. Then I came back, and I couldn't hardly wait to get back, because I started making drawings. I worked for the hottest-- I think it was the hottest summer we'd had here in Pasadena, in 1981. It was 110 degrees all the time, and I was sweating constantly. I made all the drawings for the whole castle in two days, scale drawings, working drawings, exactly what it looked like. While I was working on it, there was a couple that came over that are doctors here in Pasadena, and I said, "This is going to be a great thing to do, but I'm broke. I don't know how I'm going to get it together, the money." Two days later they mailed a check to me, and it was enough to get me started.

SMITH: Who was this?

WAGNER: Gordon and Sharon Vigario, who lived down on Oak Knoll [Avenue] across from the Huntington Hotel there. They gave me the first money so that I could get going on it.

SMITH: Were they Catholics or artist patrons?

WAGNER: No, doctors. She works for Caltech [California Institute of Technology] for some laboratory there. She's a research lab person. Anyway, so they gave me money. They were both Catholics. And then Father Joseph Glynn, who's a Carmelite here in Saint Teresa Church in Alhambra, he shows up and he hands me a check for $200. "Well, Gordon, I think you can get going on this now." Because he wanted to see this built. I showed him the concept. "Good," he said. "We keep together." So every time he'd come over, if I'd just put in two pieces, he would bless it. "It's coming. Incredible." He himself is like a leprechaun. He'd bless it everytime. Forty-eight priests and two archbishops. Cardinal [Timothy] Manning and the Archbishop [John R.] Quinn, from San Francisco, they blessed it. All of these guys blessed this castle, so it has a lot of blessings on it. Everytime it went anyplace.

1.24. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE, MARCH 21, 1987

SMITH: I want to pick up where we left off last time, which was The Interior Castle [also known as The Castle of the Seven Dwelling Places]. Where we had left discussing, you had seen The Interior Castle as a vision when you were at church. Now, this was not a dream; you distinguish this from a dream. Why is that?

WAGNER: It wasn't a dream. I wasn't asleep in the church, I was very much awake. It was at the mass, during the mass-- I don't fall asleep during the mass--and I made a personal intention at that moment, you're allowed to do that, when the priest asks people to make personal intentions. I thought about it. I actually asked Saint Joseph, who was a carpenter and sort of the patron saint of workmen and laborers, a very patient man, I asked him if he could help me, to show me what it might look like after all these various and sundry preconceptions by just about everybody. I didn't get the last word out of my mouth when he showed me the whole vision right in front of my eyes. There it was, all I had to do was draw it out. I could remember it in detail. Right now I can remember all the detail, it was such a strong vision. It came like a light.

SMITH: Had you had other visions before that you used in your artistic work?

WAGNER: Not very many in my life, no. Not really. Some, but nothing that I was really conjuring up, that I asked for like that.

SMITH: So then you drew out the plan for The Interior Castle. Let's discuss The Interior Castle and its various levels, how you chose to represent each of the levels.

WAGNER: Well, actually, what I did was I actually manifested Saint Teresa of Avila's interior castle, the book she wrote, one of the great books, called El Libre de Siete Moradas in Spanish, which was her greatest piece of work, a scholarly piece known all over the world by all academics. So manifesting it into all this-- Because after all, the interior castle, who is it? It is every single person in the world; we're all the interior castle. It's how far we progress within ourselves in prayer and get closer to God, into the light. So it had seven mansions, or seven levels, of progress, the seven moradas, or seven rooms. The first, outside of the castle, was a moat. She always talked about it as filled with snakes and vermin and stench from foul sulfur odors and gasses. Creatures devouring-- Things that come out of the mud and pull a soul under so it has no progress in the world, it doesn't have time for progress or prayer. Now, those snakes and all those vermin and all those animals and creatures, if you actually get down to it, they're anxiety, they're hate, they're lust, they're jealousy, they're greed, they're viciousness. They're all of the things that keep you from progressing, from even getting inside of the castle because-- The first door there is very open to anyone who wants to go through the door into the castle itself. The first level is dark, very little light, so you're just crippling your way through the door. There are two toads that guard the door, as she says, that try to keep you from entering. When you actually get inside of the castle, it's so dark, and it's red and yellow and orange, the color. It is the Desert of Aridity, as she calls it. There's a hole in that desert with a well, and the well is so deep that you have to take a arduous descent down into the bottom of this well to get a drop of water. Water doesn't flow there; that's the holy water, the spirit. Actually, what you're doing in there, you're being sidetracked. Because in this room there are approximately, oh, maybe several hundred rooms that spread out around the first room, almost an infinity of rooms that will distract you and take you off on all of these different tangents out of the castle through the rooms rather than to rise upward. So you're always-- A lateral thing is happening. At the same time, you're not really seeing anything of the beauty of the castle because you're so busy still working and hating and doing these things that you haven't really gotten into it yet, what it's about. So if one has enough persistence, one can make it to the second level. But the second level is not much better than the first level, because all these people are in an illusion that they're gaining and making progress. There's all sorts of things in there that can bother you. The serpents are still there, and you get carried away with raptures, circumlocutions, and all of these things that are very damaging. You can lose yourself right there. You can also look down through that level to where you were wanting to say, "I don't want to be in this level, I want to go back down to where I came from. I know those people, but I'm not sure I know these people up here, and I don't know myself here. I better join them where I'm comfortable." That level has a windlass to draw the water up, much easier at this moment. That's where the devil sits with a file, as she says. He works with a noiseless file to cut down the pillar of charity. If he can catch you in this second room, he'll dance around hell 68,000 times holding his tail, for one soul, to take him back down to the bottom and outside in the moat again. The third level is when you go upward out of the sky above you, which is nothing but a mirror of where you are and where you've been. So getting through the third level is a very tough one. Once you get through there, then you've passed the real dangerous point, the danger point of being taken back down again. But the third level is the biggest room in the castle. It's filled with people, and it's a very comfortable place to be. It has gardens and a viaduct that carries the water with people who clean the viaduct. But actually, it's a very horrible place to be, too, because it is not where you want to be. It's not what Teresa's teaching, she's teaching contemplative prayer. So these people that are in this big room are, for the most part, most of the Catholic church. It's comfortable, they do the right things, the proper order of dress, they do all these things. But they are quite critical at times of others, and this is-- They get jarred up; if some emotional thing happens to them, they come apart. But all in all, they're all good people, and they all love the Lord, but they haven't found out how to really get to him yet, because only in the third room does the light start to come through. So there's this big cloud in the top of the third room called the Cloud of Unknowing. If a person does not go through the Cloud of Unknowing, they will stay in the third room forever; they'll never get out of that room. There are still serpents in that room, not many, but a few; they can bite you. But the water runs free through the viaduct, and there's flowers and gardens and everything is quite beautiful. Romantic and charming. But that isn't it, the Lord is looking for more than that. You have to go through the Cloud of Unknowing into the Cloud of Forgetting until you reach the other side in the fourth room, where it is the death of the old man and the birth of the new. She compares the actual soul to the cocoon and the chrysalis. I have used all these symbols all the way through this piece, like making my own monsters at the bottom, my own snakes, my own creatures, giving them funny names, and slime and mud, and the next room being that muddy room inside with the little people all working and struggling, not paying attention. In the next room I have the devil sawing down the pillar of charity, and I have all of these symbols that she was writing about in her book. Then I have the third room with all the people very comfortable, hundreds of people in gardens and paths. Nobody's off the paths, nobody is making any waves, everything is just in order. It's an ordered garden. So I reach that fourth room, and I've got the cocoon in a garden that has nothing. It's just beautiful, with colors that change as you look through the windows, and then you go around and you see the chrysalis on another bush. And then the water has two fonts: One font doesn't do anything, it just stands there with water in it; the other font is filling all the time. That's the soul. The more the soul takes in, the more the water expands, and the more that comes into him. This is just water, again, she's talking about. Teresa was a water lover. It's like the mother and the child. The child cannot grow if it is not nursed by the mother; it has to have the mother's milk. So the mother is in there nursing a child in this light. This room is quiet and still, because she says we talk too much to the Lord, and we don't listen. Silence is the most important thing; stop talking and listen to what he tells you. Don't ask him all the time, let him tell you what he's telling you. If you ask him something, he will tell you, but don't keep asking so he can't have a chance. This is contemplative prayer. And this is where she was. She was an advanced woman of her time, four hundred years ago. Quite a radical among the church. A lot of them thought she was crazy and a flibbertigibbet and a gadabout and all these things. She was a powerful woman who had this concept that was given to her by the Lord. She wrote it all in six weeks, the whole interior castle, which is a masterpiece. Well, then we move up to the fifth room, which has the butterfly. The soul is a white butterfly so enamored by the love that he has been given--or she, you never call the soul he, it's always a she--that she has been given, that she's just suspended in space in this garden where the two rivers meet at a lake, very good water. Also in that room is the devil, who comes as the angel of light. Because at this moment, the soul is so vulnerable as to either rise up to the light of the Lord or to be taken back down into the bottom outside into the pit. This is the last chance the devil has of catching that character, that soul, before it goes to the next level, which is the sixth level, where Teresa spent so much of her time. I have the symbols there of all of the persecutors around the building. I have the soul, the butterfly again, still emerging. I have Teresa, herself, an image of her in the transverberation, where she received the arrow in her heart by the Lord, the flaming arrow, like the Bellini sculpture, the same idea, you know, great sculpture of Bellini. That plus the ocean. She said a great floodgate opened one time to her in a vision, and all the water ran in so big that the soul felt like a tiny ship balanced on the top of the wave. So I have the tiny ship balanced on top of the waves. I have the Holy Spirit coming down in that room.

SMITH: How did you choose to represent the Holy Spirit?

WAGNER: With the dove. I have the Son, Jesus, there because the Son-- She says, "Good Jesus will take me to the Father, so let him do it." So I have the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit there-- I have the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Father is in the next level up. That's where the light is, where the tabernacle is for the blessed sacrament, in the tower. There's a light up there, and that light rains right down through the center of the whole castle through the top four levels. The closer you get to the Lord, the brighter the light. And that's the Trinity. That is in the center because everyone has the Trinity within them; down through the center of them there's the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit within them internally. Between the sixth and the seventh mansion I have two candles, the white candle and the gold candle. This is the betrothal between the soul and the Lord. They're entwined, and they can come apart and they're lighted, or they can come together and they're lighted. This is a symbol of the betrothal between the soul and the Lord. Under the monstrance in the top of the tower where the blessed sacrament is, I have the butterfly. The soul has died, given up. The marriage between the soul and the Lord has been consummated in that seventh mansion, so it's not necessary for-- It gives up and becomes with the Lord, married to the Lord. As far as the outer configuration of the castle, it had fourteen sides, which was a double seven, because of the seven mansions. I had seven with seven spindles and seven flying buttresses of gold sending down the energies down through the spirals into the moat to try and create energy to take the people into the castle. Because a pure man, one of the scroungiest bums crawling in the street, you would think the last person that could even get up and do anything-- The Lord has a whistle. It's like a whistle for dogs, you know, when you can't hear it, and he can whistle, and that poor man can go straight from the bottom of the moat right to the Lord's room that quick. And he can be sent back down just that quick. It's within the person.

SMITH: In terms of the visual manifestation, was each level-- Like the ocean and the flood, that's one image within that level, the fifth level, right?

WAGNER: All levels have water except the top.

SMITH: Right. What I'm getting at is, how were you-- The ocean, flooding the room is such a universal kind of image, it overpowers the other images. There's a temporal aspect to what she's writing about. How do you combine these different images into a thing that you see all at once?

WAGNER: You mean physically?

SMITH: Yeah, physically.

WAGNER: I have it right there in the piece. I have this Holy Spirit, of course, flying, and the butterflies flying. Jesus is standing on the water. Teresa is on the water because she could levitate, she could be anyplace.

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: And the ship, the tiny ship, is balanced between two points of a big wave. The amount of water was given: it started small, as a drop down in the well, and the more you progressed, the more the water comes to you and flows. That's the Holy Spirit, and that's the holy water. It is a symbol of taking in. Like some people accept the Catholic church or any church or any religion in a thimble. Others accept it in a cup, others in a barrel, and others in a water tank, and others, the whole ocean; it's limitless. So the ocean is sort of limitless. What she actually used in her book for the last water that I substituted there because I couldn't make it work was rain, downpours of rain from the heavens. But I used light, which is still the light of the Holy Spirit.

SMITH: Connected with this on the upper levels, the sixth and seventh levels in particular, where you're dealing with an intense spiritual experience, wasn't it difficult to visualize something that is maybe inherently not visual, that's very interior?

WAGNER: Well, I'll tell you right now, the seventh level wasn't bad; I could get that one. But on the fifth and the sixth ones I was lost for a while. But I had plenty of time, because after all, I was so familiar with the moat and the first level and the second level that I could work on that for three or four months enjoying all the demons and monsters before I ever had to worry about getting to that level. By the time I'd been through that much, I didn't worry about anything on this castle. Teresa was working with me all the time. I would want to go to the beach, and I'd feel this tugging, "No, you're not going to the beach, you're going to work." I devoted every day of the year to building that piece. I could never get away, even for-- Well, if I wanted to get something for the castle it was all right. The lens I had to get, a round lens with a convex lens to fit into the monstrance for the Host. I didn't know where I was going to pick that up. I went to a jewelry store down on Lake [Avenue] and Del Mar [Boulevard] on the corner. I said, "I've built this monstrance myself." I said, "Do you have a lens that would fit into this piece?" "I'll see." So he took his calipers and measured it off. He went back and he pushed it in, click, and that was it. I said, "Will it ever come out?" He said, "Never. It will always be there". I said, "What do I owe you?" "Owe me? Do you think I'm crazy? I wouldn't take money for anything like this. This is something that is a very special piece of art, beautiful piece. How could I ask money for such a wonderful thing as this?" He was an Armenian. That was the end of that. I needed a tube one time to carry light from the seventh mansion down to the third mansion. It came down through the center. It needed the edges polished so it would transmit the light with intensity to the bottom. It was a plastic tube three inches in diameter. I called up this company down here on Foothill [Boulevard] and told them what I had and that I needed it polished up to transmit-- "Oh, we burnish those things. You come on down, we'll take care of it for you." "What's the charge?" "It'll be about fifteen dollars for the job." I said okay. I went down on a Monday morning and I didn't have my checkbook with me. Oh, I did have a checkbook, that's right, I didn't have any cash. They took it in; they came back. "I didn't bring my money, can I cash a check?" "What for?" "To pay for this thing." "Oh no, don't bother. It's free. Take it." Endless things like that happened during this whole project. When I needed something, I was always guided to it immediately. Somehow I was taken there. Places I'd never been before, I found myself wandering around in finding exactly what I wanted for this project. Completely guided to it. I didn't have to-- Everything fell into place. The only thing I had a difficult time with were the twist-turnings that came up the outside. I remember I wanted to get these things, and they don't make them anymore, you know, the spiral twists. They were very difficult to find. I happened to be in the Pasadena farmer's market, and I saw a friend of mine I hadn't seen in twenty-five years. The last time I saw him, he had tried to commit suicide. He crawled down the mountain on Topanga Canyon to the highway and flagged a ride to the hospital with a bullet hole through him. Well, anyway, I hadn't seen him in all these years, and he was there. He lives in La Cañada[-Flintridge]. "Howard," I said. "Well, Gordon, where you been?" He said, "You still making art?" I said, "Oh, sure." I said, "Well, what are you doing, Howard?" "Oh, I'm making furniture and refinishing it." "Oh, wonderful, you're just the man I'm looking for. Where can I get some of the twist-turned spindles?" He says, "Well, they don't make them anymore, but I'll look it up and see what I can find." Two days later he says, "There's a man out in the San Fernando Valley, in Sherman Oaks, who has all of that sort of thing. He's a private company; you can't just walk in and buy it from him, you have to have a reason. For goodness sake, Gordon, don't tell him you're an artist or he'll throw you out the front door. Tell him anything but that. Tell him you're a designer, or furniture designer, a decorator, and you're trying to get these. You want to make maybe a hundred of these things or a thousand of them, and you need the material for that. Don't ever mention that you're an artist." So I got out there, I made an appointment and I came out. I found exactly what I was looking for in the catalog, just right, you know, three-quarters of an inch in diameter. He said, "How much do you need of this?" I said, "Well, I need about twenty-one feet." He said, "Well, they don't come in twenty-one foot lengths. I don't think you can get it that way. They come in ten-foot lengths, so you'd have to get about forty feet, work it out for ten-foot lengths. You'd have to buy extra." So I said, "All right, whatever you say." "What kind of business did you say you were in?" I said, "Liturgical art." "What the hell is that?" he says. "That got something to do with the church?" I said, "Yeah, I guess so; you might call it that." "I'm going to tell you something, son," he calls me-- I'm thirty years older than he is--"if you ever come in here again and buy anything from me, I'm going to throw you out the door. I've already written this out, so I have to do it, but don't ever come back." I said thank you and left. It took two months to receive this from Grand Rapids, Michigan. When the bill came, it was $112 for the spindles alone, but I did get them. There was a man in Topanga, he wanted to make them for me, thirty inches long for $80 apiece. So, you see, I did make out a little better. He was going to carve them for me, because they're so hard to get. So anyway, we got that. All those things were helping. Getting through the fifth and sixth rooms, what am I going to do? I'm blocked here now; I'm getting up there. I can get through all this bottom, all this debris, all these monsters, all these people and all these straight people with their fountains and their pretty gardens, but what do I do when I get to this part? That's what the people say, "What do I do when I reach the third room? How do I break through the Cloud of Unknowing?" That's what I had to learn. I learned something about contemplative prayer by actually reading about what Teresa's talking about. I knew enough about meditation from my early years in Buddhism and yoga and Taoism, so it came naturally for me to be able to do this and to quiet my mind and to stop thinking, as she said; think less and love more, that's the way she put it. Instead of going out there and oohing and aahing and rapturing and going on, give charity to somebody; help some poor person. That is the best meditation in the world, helping somebody, charity. So I just let myself go; I didn't worry about those rooms. I needed all these flowers and plants and things like that. I found that one of the greatest places for that sort of thing is right here in our hometown. Old Stat's down there, where I could get artificial branches and the feeling of the gardens and things to put into it, miniature.

SMITH: Are there any found objects? Did you use any found objects in The Interior Castle?

WAGNER: No, not found in the sense of found; I bought objects. Like all of the souls, all of the little people, which were-- Two hundred and fifty of them are in The Interior Castle. I bought them all in one big bag of people down at the Whistle Stop. They were for railroad stations and trains. They're all the color white, and I kept them that way because I wanted them to be white souls, souls all white like the lambs, the lambs or the sheep of the flock, I made a lot of my own objects for it. I made all the monsters, made that sort of thing.

SMITH: What about the representation of the devil?

WAGNER: I made the devil.

SMITH: How did you arrive at the imagery for the devil?

WAGNER: Well, it was easy, because I knew a lot about him. I just made a devil. It was a beautiful devil with the long wings and sitting on his tail in this room of mirrors where it goes on to infinity. He comes and goes with a file in his hand to file down that pillar of charity that the interior castle was built on, faith, hope and charity, golden columns like caissons on a building. He's filing down that one. It was easy to make the devil, one of the-- So simple. Then Virginia, my wife, she made the angel. She made little figures of Saint Teresa of Avila, and she made them all: the first one, where she's praying; the second level, where she's defying the devil with the cross; the third room, she says, "Hey, you guys, there's more," and then she's got the book, "go up to the fourth mansion"; she's telling them there's more. There's nobody in the fourth room, just a butterfly-- I mean, just the cocoon and the chrysalis and the mother and child, but not Teresa. In the fifth room, the angel of light is there--Virginia made the angel of light--and Teresa's also there helping a child. In the sixth room, she's in transverberation, that's all.

SMITH: The use of the toy figures gives a kind of childlike quality to the piece, not childish but childlike. Was that something that you were aiming for? Was that a goal, the simplicity?

WAGNER: Well, they're not really childlike, the ones I got. They're not cute, they're actually real people, like these kind of people. They look like people, they don't look like funny creatures or animals, but actual, real people. They're similar to the kind of people I've used in Firaskew, not funny ones. No, they're very beautiful little German figures. Authenticity. If you want to get into the childlike quality, heavens, Teresa of Avila was probably one of the most childlike people you would ever meet, as a power. After all, "the Lord says, 'Think like a child." That's one of his major expressions, think as a child, accept things as a child. But childlike, I don't think I tried to do anything cute in this castle, nothing. I wasn't interested in that. I wasn't interested at all in injecting any of my own self into it at all. I was completely detached from the whole creation. It was just a matter of Saint Joseph's vision, her writing, and the best way I could relate to that was through the images that I could write down and build and put together within that symbolism to make it work as a whole. That is the way that it came out. I wasn't trying to do anything that wasn't-- Nothing was added to it.

SMITH: Did you study some of the earlier religious artists, like Giotto or Simone Martini, or those medieval paintings, early renaissance paintings with multiple stories within them?

WAGNER: Well, I used to enjoy looking at them in Europe, the Italians and the Flemish especially, like [Hans] Memling and [Roger] van der Weyden and [Lucas] van Leyden and [Hubert and Jan] van Eyck and the great Flemish painter [Robert] Campin. I just looked at them and enjoyed the surrealism that they had within them. Most of them were quite surreal, the Flemish especially, in their early religious paintings. A tremendous amount of surrealism in them. I used to walk into churches, and I always enjoyed the old church art of the medieval period, and that sort of relationship, and renaissance. I liked all the periods of that art, but I wasn't trying to make that art. Even in this piece, I wasn't trying to make that kind of art. It was a matter of it just formed itself from the way I was given the vision. I knew it was right, because I wanted to relate not as a ball of mirrors, not as-- Well, anyway. I didn't want to relate it to any of the images that had been given to me by other people that I didn't feel really knew what Teresa was all about. I really felt that I had to do this, because she was a sixteenth-century Spanish woman living in a medieval city, and I wanted it to feel like it was walled and strong and beautiful and elegant and of that kind of architecture. When Joseph showed it to me that way, I was so happy with the way it was going to be.

SMITH: Where has the castle been exhibited?

WAGNER: Well, it's been to about every monastery of the Carmelites in California. After all. Saint Teresa of Avila was a Carmelite. In 1982 it was shown-- It had its first showing at Saint Teresa of Avila Monastery down here in Alhambra on Alhambra Road. It's a cloister. They had it for two weeks within the cloister and I talked to all of the cloistered nuns. There I talked to them behind the-- just talked to them through the closure, through the grill. We took it from there to San Francisco, took it to [the Monastery of] Cristo Rey in San Francisco, the Carmelite monastery. I was allowed to go into the monastery there with the sisters of the cloister. Nobody gets in, but they said, "Gordon, you're a workman, like an electrician or a plumber." So they let me come in. I sat down with all the sisters in a circle, and we talked about the castle. I left it there for about three weeks. The archbishop was there, he saw it. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, she saw it. Everybody saw it. Then I took it over to the Pope Pius XII Room under the Saint Ignatius de Loyola Church at USF [University of San Francisco] and showed it to about 150 people, mostly poets and artists and writers of North Beach, a lot of beat guys and a lot of people I'd known in San Francisco, and three priests and about six ladies that were just there, and a lot of psychologists, and [Lawrence] Fixel and all that group of people came. It was a wonderful evening.

1.25. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE TWO, MARCH 21, 1987

WAGNER: Mount Carmel in Oakville, that's a monastery for men, Carmelite. It's a wonderful place up on a mountain right by Oakville. If you know where Oakville is, it's north of Napa, the wine country. It was there for about a week, and then we took it down to the Carmelite cloister of Marinwood, north of San Rafael. I gave three or four talks there. I gave talks in all these places. Then we brought it from there, from San Rafael, we took it down to Santa Clara to the cloister there, which is one of the big ones. These are all Carmelites. From that point we took it down to Monterey, out where the Monastery Beach is, that cloister where my friend Barry Masteller, and I were talking to these ladies, and they wanted to have it for about two weeks. So I said, "Where do you want it?" They said, "Come on." So Barry and I were carrying it through the cloister, back through all these sisters. So I've been in quite a few cloisters that not even priests can get into. In fact, I was in the one there where the priest thanked me for helping him or he would never have gotten into the place. Virginia couldn't go in, no laity are allowed. So it was an experience. Then we've had it all around here. We've had it at Sacred Heart retreat house. We talked in all the parishes. Saint Philip's, we had it right in the church there with three hundred people. We've had it just about every place. Now it's been in Duarte, at the Santa Teresita Carmelite Hospital for the last ten months. Next month we're going to take it out of there and we're giving a talk on April 26 at the Saint Ignatius Loyola Church in Highland Park at six in the evening. From there I don't know what will happen to it. Virginia wrote the book about it, and she did a very good job of putting the book together. It's called The Castle of the Seven Dwelling Places. Everytime we take it someplace, we sell more books. That's the way we kind of get paid for our time. But the Carmelites paid us; they would give us a couple hundred dollars to bring it, and they'd buy the books, and they'd get people to buy the books. The best story of all that I can remember was in San Francisco at Saint Ignatius Loyola. There was a priest there from the Richmond District, the Saint Monica Church on Geary [Boulevard], Monsignor Daniel Cahill. He got up after the whole thing was over and told all my friends, he said, "You know, I'd like to tell all you people, if I could get something across to my people in my parish like Gordon does to you, I'd be the happiest man in the world. I love this man," and he threw his arms around me. He is the father confessor and celebrates the mass for Mother Teresa of Calcutta's nuns on Church Street in San Francisco, and he's telling me this. A man with that much humility belongs in the seventh room. When we got back from Oakville, he said, "Gordon, I've got a surprise for you." I said, "What's that?" He said, "Well, you come on over." We came over and he hands me a check for a thousand dollars. He'd made it out himself. He said, "It's not from me, but it's from an anonymous person who heard your talk at Saint Ignatius Loyola and thought that you would like to have this to carry on with your work." A thousand bucks, just handed it to us like that. Those kinds of things were always happening to us while we were traveling around with it. We spent about almost six months traveling with it.

SMITH: I asked you earlier if you were a religious artist, and you said no. But surely-- Well, The Interior Castle is a work of religious art, right?

WAGNER: Yeah, definitely. Well, I never would classify myself as a religious artist, but everybody else thought I did religious things, you know, in my own symbols and images in my assemblage work, you know, objects and things. But I never really classified myself as anything in the religious art.

SMITH: Have you done anything else besides The Interior Castle that is explicitly devotional?

WAGNER: Early works, yeah, I think so. I did that one on the crucifix with the spikes all around it; the Santo, I call it. Some other little boxes and niches and things, special things that I've given to Virginia as a present, like the Niño de Prague and one to Saint Christopher. Some of those things. But it's not great art; I'm no master in art.

SMITH: The image of the ascent, that is something that appears in other works of yours, the symbol of the ascent.

WAGNER: The ascent, yeah. Well, I think I've always had a tendency to have things going upward. Very much of my work has been that way in the past. Centering, the centering, going up into the light. I think that all started way back with the American Indian, going up, uplift from the center from the earth up into the light. And through the meditation, through the kundalini and through the Taoist, through all of the different meditations, that's the centering that goes up through the spine, right? Actually, if you took The Interior Castle and put it into seven different levels, you have the seven different chakras of the body, right? You have the chakras. They're the same vibrations and energies to get to the light. So you could use the castle as the human form, which we are using. because it's every person. It's the development stages, every chakra, or his prayer, or whatnot to get to the illumination, or God, within them or the God within the Christian world. It's all part of the same. There's a parallel.

SMITH: The Interior Castle is the symbol of rebirth of the soul, and you mentioned earlier that the period after you went to Europe was a period of struggle and rebirth for you. Was that struggle projected into The Interior Castle?

WAGNER: I think I'd already been through that rebirth. You know, we can die several times in our lives and be reborn again. Fortunately, if we are artists, we have that privilege because that's the only way we keep going, or we would die of boredom. These little rebirths that get you going again for another five years are so nice to have, otherwise you are just sitting in a stale situation with the same thing all the time. It's nice to turn yourself around and shake yourself all up and get rid of all the old habits and patterns and start out with some other idea.

SMITH: There's another thing I wanted to ask you about, which is, you mentioned that Teresa says, "Let the Lord tell you."

WAGNER: Yeah.

SMITH: And contemplative prayer. How does contemplative prayer relate to dreams? Is there a relationship? Does the--the Lord tell you things through your dreams?

WAGNER: Not really, no. Although I'm sure that the Lord is in your dreams, definitely. If you have a mind and a heart and a body, purified and clean from all of the contamination of the everyday world, and you're thinking about the Lord, I think there's a possibility that He can come to you in your dreams as well as at any minute. Because when I start to work, the first thing I say is, "Holy Spirit, come to me. Help me today. I don't know what's going to happen, but let's have fun together." That's the way I talk to him. We'll see what's going to come. Sometimes nothing comes, and then all of a sudden while I'm walking someplace, he lets me have it, there it is.

SMITH: I guess what I'm probing for is the relationship of surrealism to your conception of the religious state and divine communication. Is there a relationship?

WAGNER: Between surrealism--

SMITH: Between surrealism and religion.

WAGNER: Well, in one way there is, yeah, there is a relationship. I think that the Gospel and especially the Old Testament we use is probably one of the most surreal stories-- No surrealist ever wrote any stories like that. Pretty far out.

SMITH: You mean like Joshua stopping the sun?

WAGNER: Oh, everything like that, rivers and the Red Sea opening up, constant. Blowing with mud and He created a man. All these things are very, very, very surreal. They're not real to the average, logical mind, or rational mind, right? Anymore than they can accept God in the tabernacle of the church as a living person with real eyes and everything. The Catholic church only does that, no other church does that. He's there. He's not a symbol of there; He is there. Well, it's pretty hard for a lot of rational people to get through this. Even priests have a difficult time with it, so don't-- But that's surreal because it's irrational, and when something is irrational it's surreal, you know. You either believe it or you don't believe it. You have faith or you don't have faith. Or a blind faith or a real faith. It's all stages of whether you can accept it. Some days you can accept it, the next day you can't. It doesn't matter. You grow, and the Lord will test you. He will do all sorts of things to block you, to get in your way, to tie you up, to give you some humility and love, love of others. So if you're going into the basic surrealist-- Every single surrealist of those early days, it's funny, but as much as they were protesting it, they were all Catholic, and they all died Catholics, and they were all buried as Catholics although they rebelled within it, which is a natural thing to do. We naturally rebel. There is no one-- That's the thing I like about the Catholic church, there is nobody in the Catholic church that is pure, there is nobody that is not a sinner. That's what I've had to go through with my director, my spiritual director. He told me you can't run a church without sinners anymore than you can run a hospital without sick people. These other churches, some of them have the idea that they don't sin. They don't worry about confession; they don't do anything like this because they don't sin, they're perfectly fine people, you see. So we accept all those things: we accept sin, and we accept love and we-- When you have that, no matter how strong the person might be, like [André] Breton and [Erik] Satie and [Yves] Tanguy and everybody else, when they died, they all took extreme unction, they were all buried and had the last rites. Although they talked against the church, they went through it. They bought it because it was such a powerful thing within their own minds and their psychological workings. Then the conflict between this art that was trying to put it down and everything else, their own insides were torn up by it. And the ambivalence of this thing-- So that made them very strong, because they had faith, actually a blind faith underneath. They weren't going very far, but they still had a faith to do what they had to do. That gave them courage to do it, to be surrealists, where if they hadn't had both of those things, they would have stopped, you see. So I think in a movement like that you have to have a lot of guts and a lot of faith, because when everybody is against you-- Just like the Catholic church, you've got to have a lot of guts, a lot of faith to belong to the Catholic church, because everybody hates you. That's the way life is. That's what Christ says, "Everybody is going to hate you and hate me." That's what He's taught, and we're used to it. We know that's the way it is. So you don't go around hitting your brother, you go around loving your brother. When he smashes you in the head, you just smile and say, "That's all right, thank you." That takes guts. And that's where surrealism was.

SMITH: After you finished The Interior Castle, what did you move onto then? Were you doing any other works while you were working on The Interior Castle?

WAGNER: No, nothing. For that whole year, I was just right on it. No, I had finished the acrylics and the boxes for my playing card series, so being interested in building castles, I built the playing card castle. The Suit of Pluses. That took a year to build after The Interior Castle.

SMITH: That's a big constructed piece as well, an assemblage, a constructed assemblage?

WAGNER: It's a castle. It has a similar feeling to Firaskew and The Interior Castle, only it's a card castle all by itself. It stands about forty-eight inches high and eighteen inches square. It's all full of illusions and mirrors and rooms, and it takes in the whole suit of pluses.

SMITH: With that you completed your playing card series?

WAGNER: That completed my playing card series, and I've never shown it. It's called "The Fool," that's the title of the exhibition if it ever comes about, "The Joker."

SMITH: Of all four suits?

WAGNER: Right. I've proposed it to a couple of places, and they're interested, but they never get together, you never hear from them. I'm sure it will happen one day in the near future, maybe in a year or two.

SMITH: Then what did you work on?

WAGNER: What year would we be talking about?

SMITH: 'Eighty-three, I think.

WAGNER: 'Eighty-three.

SMITH: You certainly-- A lot of your pun boxes were done--

WAGNER: Well, they were before.

SMITH: Well, Draw Up a Chair is '83.

WAGNER: No, these little ones here, the black and whites, they were before the castle. Draw Up a Chair and some of those things came after The Interior Castle. I was working on those also during my playing card castle. These little ones. Arcane and this one. And this Draw Up a Chair was actually built at the same time as the first room over on the corner, that building, in Firaskew. Because in the bottom room of that building is a "Draw Up a Chair," and that's a spin-off from this box. So the two related at that moment. I built those in San Pedro, in Tony Portillo's house and studio in '83, the summer, when I was staying down there for the summer.

SMITH: When did you do the Marine series?

WAGNER: I've been working on the Marine series, I guess, for years. Whenever a good one comes up I keep adding to them. I'd like to really have a show sometime, the whole set of them. Probably, I started the first of the Marine series in 1975 with The Prairie Schooner sinking on the prairie, on the desert. A sixteen-mast schooner.

SMITH: And then there's The Room.

WAGNER: The Room is more recent, that was 1985. It's falling off [the picture frame]. I've done quite a few since that time.

SMITH: Is that symbolist art?

WAGNER: The symbolists? I don't think so, do you? I wouldn't call it symbolism. I think it's more surreal than symbolist, because the juxtaposition-- The room with its ship falling out of the painting that's tipped on its side and letting the water run out of it is not exactly symbolist. Do you think so?

SMITH: Well, it can be read from a symbolistic viewpoint.

WAGNER: Yeah, but it has no underlying meaning, though, except that I've been into people's houses in my life with rooms like that, with cards thrown down and beer cans and whatnot and things on the floor, trophies.

SMITH: The ship doesn't have a specific symbolic meaning for you, then?

WAGNER: I don't think it does. It probably does in all of them, basically, because I love ships. There's something about them. I'm always putting them into strange juxtapositions where they don't belong or doing things that they wouldn't have to normally be doing. I've always been a lover of ships. I'm a shipwatcher, a professional shipwatcher. I could watch them for years; I never get tired of going to the harbor and sitting down by the water and just watching them go by. It's a very contemplative thing.

SMITH: In Christian art, the ship is one of the symbols for the soul.

WAGNER: That's right, hangs in the church, a bark or sometimes a full-size ship.

SMITH: But in your case, in these works, you're not--

WAGNER: I never thought of them from that aspect until I got into Christianity, being a fallen-away pagan, you know, six years or something. I'd seen them in churches, but I never connected them to anything. I thought they just didn't know what to do with them, so they hung them up on the ceiling. [laughter] Some of them in Sweden are incredible, whole galleons and barks and hanging down from the church, the beams, on chains. Incredible.

SMITH: Let's move on to another subject, which is your getting involved with Angel's Gate Cultural Center. When did you start working with Angel's Gate?

WAGNER: Nineteen eighty-two.

SMITH: Had it already been formed, organized?

WAGNER: I was one of the first artists invited to submit some sort of a proposal to be there, to have a space to teach, only. That was through Honor Kirk, who was the director at the time, who's now the director of the Aquarius Gallery in Cambria Pines--Cambria, I guess they call it. She phoned me up and asked me if I would be interested in this. Another friend of mine I'd known a long time, Nick Kappes, who is a photographer, he told me about it a year before it happened. He said, "We're going to try and do something like they did in Fort Mason with the old military barracks and kind of develop it from that aspect." Fort Mason in San Francisco. So I said, "Well, it sounds interesting." "Well," he said, "Just make out a proposal, whatever it is you would like to do." Just teaching at that time. So I made out a proposal to teach senior citizens. I always thought that the senior citizens should have more of a chance than they do to express themselves, in more ways than just piddling around with cutting out flowers and making crafts and being passed off as old people without any imagination, just dumped in a little class to make pretty little things. I thought that I could probably bring out something of the senior citizen that they really wanted to tell me. Because every one of them had a story inside of them to relate, and I was going to work it out through their dreams, and through their poetry, and through writing, and through building things, and through drawing and painting, and go beyond the artsy-craftsy senior citizens programs set up in seniors centers for funny little old people who have nothing to do with themselves. I thought that would be a good program, so I wrote it all out that way. And nothing happened. I went down there, and there wasn't a soul for the class. Not one senior citizen came. There was no one. [laughter] It was as dead as a mackerel. So that class never manifested into anything. That was the end of that. I was teaching at that time in the Palos Verdes Community Arts Center. I had students there, around ten students, faithful students, in assemblage. There was a little bit of tension going on up there among people at that particular moment. I always had to fight to get a class there, because if you didn't have the students, you didn't have the class. I got sort of tired of-- One woman by the name of Pamela French was my faithful getter of the students. Everytime I'd have a class, she'd have to go out and call them all and work at it and get them to come. So I got pretty fed up with that way of teaching, so I decided to try it at Angel's Gate. I said, "Well, there's a big space there and we can work. Why don't we try it and see what happens, see if we can't get something going?" So they all came, the whole group, and they loved it up there. The atmosphere was better, and we had a big, big room where we could really work and do things. The people there were all very cooperative, and it was a community. We had our own gallery going; it was a small gallery at that time. We had different exhibitions by different artists, but in a different way at that time. Honor Kirk was the sort of a director who, you never knew exactly what she was doing. She meant well. She was a painter herself. Finally, the whole thing came to the point where Honor left. She was offered a house in Cambria, so she moved from Portuguese Bend, where she lived, and she turned it over to Bobbie [Roberta M.] Miller, who's the current director. Well, Bobbie didn't want the job. She was a painter and she just wanted to paint, but she said she would try and see what she could do to help. Everything that Bobbie did, well, people started to be irritated by what she was doing, because she was trying to change things around slowly to make an art center out of it. A lot of the people were very disappointed that were the original group that were working there, because she was saying things to them that could bother them, you know.

SMITH: Bother them personally or bother them over the issues?

WAGNER: Yeah, personally, over the issues.

SMITH: Well, what were the issues that people were arguing about?

WAGNER: Well, they had a lot of problems there because there was a young group that had a different idea of how Angel's Gate should be run than the way Bobbie was running it. They broke off and formed an art association, which to me is death. Any art association, as far as I'm concerned, just the word "art association" is death to me. It's a bad word.

SMITH: By "young group" you mean people in their twenties?

WAGNER: Yeah, that had recently come to Angel's Gate. They knew everything there was to know; they were very arrogant.

SMITH: Art school graduates?

WAGNER: They were college graduates. There were actors and there were actresses and painters and potters and people of that nature. They were doing all sorts of things that Bobbie didn't like, the way they were operating.

SMITH: Like what?

WAGNER: Underground things, underhanded things, behind her back. Talking against her, and that sort of thing. They took it up with the city council in San Pedro. They went to Flores, Joan [Milke] Flores, and created a lot of problems. They convinced Joan Flores that Bobbie wasn't doing a good job. I called up Joan Flores, and I said, "What's the trouble here anyway?" She said, "Well, Bobbie Miller has got to get her act together. She's too emotional. We're not going to renew your contract on that land unless you get something together up there." The way it was, the land was leased for three years without paying anything, but it was just the idea they'd give us the land for three more years that belonged to the parks department, the actual land. But Bobbie's smarter than all that, and she's a real fighter. She found out that it didn't belong to the parks department, it actually belongs to the [United States] Department of Interior. So she started working with the Department of Interior and found out all these things. They said, "No matter what happens, you're going to stay here. You're doing a remarkable job."

SMITH: Well, were there differences over the kinds of classes that should be taught?

WAGNER: No, never anything over classes. No, nothing like that.

SMITH: Differences over the kinds of programs that would be presented?

WAGNER: No, personalities over the theater, for instance. They had live theater, and the actors and the dancers, they created all sorts of ego problems, narcissistic ego problems that occur with dancers and actors. It's just their temperament to do that. If they can't get the money they want or the way they want it, they complain and rebel, and they quit. All these great boring type of people who are not doing that much, you know what I'm talking about? They think they're really important. This center was not based on that sort of personality. It was a place for artists to come and work and have a place to work and teach and help the community. It was built for the community to have classes, free classes, for children and for grownups and for anybody who wanted to come to extend their expression. It wasn't set up on a program to set it up as a commercial theater and organize it in that direction. This was the way it was going. The board of directors and Bobbie, they all had a fight with this big group, I remember. It was a lot of nasty words thrown around in the meeting. Finally, they all left, they disappeared, that whole group. We got back to normal again, back to where we're going. Currently, we have about fifty-five studios working with artists, dancers, writers, poets, music, and a gallery that is a community gallery. It is not a cultural center gallery, it's a community gallery.

SMITH: What do you mean?

WAGNER: Well, there's a difference. A community gallery is like in a university or-- San Pedro has no other community gallery, it is the only community gallery within that part of town. There isn't any other place, so that gallery is-- It has now built itself up to the point where it's recognized as a community gallery. If you said art association, they will not list you in any newspaper; or a culture center, you will not get a listing in any paper. But if you're a community art gallery, then you're listed. That's for Art News, Art Week and the [Los Angeles] Times, or any other paper. Then they cover you. As soon as the words "community gallery" come on it, then you're covered.

SMITH: I don't see what the difference is in terms of the meaning between a cultural center and a community art gallery.

WAGNER: They have a cultural center, but they have a community art gallery within the cultural center. That is separate. Here is a community gallery, but the art center is all around it-- the cultural center. That took time; it took a lot of history to put together slides and backgrounds and clippings to send to these people, to the California Arts Council, to make them realize that we do have an important community gallery and that it's the only community art gallery in the whole south end of Los Angeles. There's no other one. There's college galleries, but there's not another community gallery. So that's very important.

SMITH: You teach classes there still. What are you teaching?

WAGNER: I teach assemblage. It wasn't until, oh, three years ago that they asked me if I would like to have a studio to work in. So they gave me the studio. If you work and teach in the studio, you get it absolutely free.

SMITH: Do you get paid for teaching?

WAGNER: Yeah, that's true, I do. I get paid for teaching and I have a free studio.

SMITH: Are you involved in the decision making at Angel's Gate?

WAGNER: I'm on the board of directors at present; I've just come on it. I have always been involved in the decision making, because Bobbie always comes to me with what do I think of this? or what should we do about that? Especially on exhibitions and gallery operations, because at one time I was sort of in charge of hanging all the exhibitions and putting them together for Angel's Gate. Paul Bouchard, myself, and Lieve Jerger, who is a Belgian lacemaker, a little blonde over there, and a few others, we kind of took care of that, to curate exhibitions and try to get high-quality work from the very beginning. We never let it go into the amateur state. Then they did have a curator. Penny [Penelope] Cornwall, who was a paid curator, for a while. They had to let her go because the funding wasn't enough for her. Well, now they have no curator, but there are shows coming up where they will be having a curator again. There are several good shows coming up in the future, one with Ed Lau and his group is next. Then there's going to be a photography and poets show, "Poets Who Make Art." There's one coming up in 1988 which will be a California impressionists, abstract impressionists, of the fifties, the forties and fifties, which will be just on Southern California artists. Some of the old ones will be in that show, like Phil Dike and-- I guess we'll have to include Millard Sheets. [laughter] Roger [Edward] Kuntz and a lot of the ones who were around for a long time. [James] Strombotny.

SMITH: Has Angel's Gate done historical shows like that before?

WAGNER: You mean as a retro--

SMITH: Well, not retrospective.

WAGNER: Sort of a documentary of certain periods?

SMITH: Right.

WAGNER: No, we've never tried it. It was my idea. I presented it to them. Arnold Schiffrin will be the curator of the exhibition. He knows a lot about gathering things from museums from that period, and he already has practically the whole exhibition together. They want to do a catalog through the Arts Council.

SMITH: Will any of your pieces be in it?

WAGNER: No, I don't think so. I could have them in. They want me to be in it, but I don't think I want to be in it. Maybe. [laughter]

SMITH: You also recently curated a show at Barnsdall [Junior Art Center], the "Toying Around" show. What was the concept behind that?

WAGNER: Well, actually, it was the lady who-- It was very interesting, because Harriet Miller was the one I was working with, she was my director at the Palos Verdes Community Arts Center when I left and took everything to Angel's Gate. I didn't think I'd ever see her again. We got along all right. She was a nice lady, I guess. I liked her at that time, but she had a lot of strange ideas. She was always nice to me. I will never quite understand how she could be living in a condominium that is on top of the house where I was born in Redondo Beach. So she became the director of the Barnsdall Junior Art Center. When I was asked to teach at Barnsdall Junior Art Center, she was kind of surprised to see me there in the beginning. But I was there one summer, and then a couple of more times, and then she called me one day and said, "Marty Walsch has left the center. Would you curate an exhibition for me called, 'Toying Around'?" I said, "Well, what do you think we should do?" "'Toying Around,' we want to do something funny, something really amusing." And she said, "Marty Walsch has some of the artists already, but maybe you could get a few more." So I called all the artists that she had, and I found out who they were, Dave [David] Quick and Jim [James] Jenkins and some of those people. Then I called up Garner, Phil Garner, and a few of these kind of characters. We put this show together and it was-- I wanted to make it feel like it was a funhouse or a place of Joy, like when I was a kid, a penny-arcade-like feeling, with moving kinetic sculpture, and painting the whole place like all skies, and little doors you walk through, and the walls all cockeyed like an old funhouse. I wanted to give that feeling that you're kind of toying around in there.

SMITH: All assemblages in that show pretty much?

WAGNER: Yeah, they were all three-dimensional art, kinetic and otherwise, static. Some of them were quite humorous, I thought. A lot of humor. It had the largest attendance of any exhibition that they'd ever had at Barnsdall Junior Art Center. They were coming in droves. We got a very good review on it in the Times.

1.26. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE, MARCH 23, 1987

SMITH: Well, we ended last time with The Interior Castle [also known as The Castle of the Seven Dwelling Places] and some of the boxes, completing the playing cards series and some of the boxes that you did after The Interior Castle. What were your next projects in '84, '85, '86?

WAGNER: That's when I started one of my major works, sort of an epic piece.

SMITH: Which is?

WAGNER: It's called Firaskew, not knowing what that word means except that it came in my dreams.

SMITH: The sound, the word itself, or the image?

WAGNER: The actual word, just in my dreams. Many different dreams of Firaskew would take me to these lonely places and cities of my inner traveling, night journeys. There was always a sign that pointed the way, either on a beer can or on a marker on the road or on a cliff, an arrow pointed: "Firaskew." I would get there and it always turned into some fantastic city. Sometimes I'd go by train, sometimes I'd go by car, sometimes streetcar, walking, automobiles, through deserts. All sorts of ways I got to Firaskew, different kinds of vehicles.

SMITH: Does the name have any particular meaning?

WAGNER: It has no meaning whatsoever except what it says on the sign in my dreams. I looked it up and tried to find out a derivation, and there's nothing.

SMITH: No relationship to--

WAGNER: No relationship to anything that I know of, unless it's fear and askew, but that doesn't really make it to me. It's just a word that came. People say, "What does it mean?" Well, it doesn't mean anything.

SMITH: The Firaskew that you've constructed is an amusement park. Is that all there is to Firaskew? Isn't it a larger place than that?

WAGNER: Well, this particular construction of Firaskew not only goes to the dream, but it goes to my childhood, my boyhood, when I was quite involved in and loved the old amusement parks. Even today, if I am anyplace that I see an amusement --not like Magic Mountain or anything, I mean old ones, old roller coasters, old buildings, weathered, along the sea preferably. There's a certain wonderful mystery that happens to piers along the sea, full of goodies like that, mists and fogs, the white iron against the gray sea. There's something beautiful about it. So this actual construction was things that I remembered from my childhood, some of the things that really were outstanding in my mind. I adapted those into the piece. I can always remember walking down the strand when I was a boy of about six or seven years old. Moonstone Beach in Redondo [Beach]. I used to go down there on Sundays with all the rest of us. We had bottles and we'd fill the bottles up with moonstones and wait for the tourists to come down in the afternoon on the streetcar. In those days it was called the "green cars." The balloon trip went from Los Angeles down through the beaches and over to San Pedro and Long Beach and back up to L.A. again as a loop. We would sell moonstones for five cents apiece to the tourists and make a pretty good day at that. That Moonstone Beach strand that we walked on, I used to love it, right on the sea. You went under the old white structures of the roller coaster, and underneath that was the curio shop. I always looked in the windows, and I loved to see all these things they had, stones and polished gems and chips and models and shells. They always fascinated me when I was a kid. I remember I always was very fascinated by maritime museums, where they had ships and ship parts and models, all of these sort of things of the sea. I thought it would be necessary to have my own maritime museum in the piece. The one thing that I remember very clearly, and I used to laugh because we used to go on it all the time, was the Tunnel of Love, where the swan came down the chute of water, and you went into this-- Usually, if you could find a nice girlfriend to take with you, you might even be brave enough to hold her hand, you know, in these dark chasms. They were sort of a romantic place. They didn't smell very good, the water was kind of stagnant in there, but you got used to it. It was dark, and the swans were big white swans that were pulled by a conveyor through the water down through the paths. So I incorporated the Tunnel of Love in this piece, starting in one building over there, under the farmer's daughter's card room, and moving around through the whole interior of this Firaskew in chasms where the people are waving at you from time to time as they go by through the maritime museum and down the hall of the curio store. Another thing that I can remember very deep in my memories was the house of mirrors. People are in there all tangled up in the glass, confused, not knowing which way to go, banging into the walls. Some people were panicking, other people to the point of exhaustion, others were laughing and hoping they'd find the right way out. Up on the roof of the house of mirrors was the laughing girl, who was a woman who sat there all day and went ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. You looked down below, and you saw all these products of what she was laughing at floundering around in this house of mirrors. It was all exposed to the public on the outside so you could see what was there and you could watch them. It was an interesting aquarium of people. So the house of mirrors is the one on the other side over there. There were always ballrooms for dancing. The place where I used to dance was the Hut in Hermosa [Beach] and the Mandarin Ballroom in Redondo and the Casino Gardens in Ocean Park. All of that. So I have a ballroom up on the penthouse, but I have a ball team in it instead of a dance pavilion.

SMITH: A baseball team.

WAGNER: A ball team, yeah, in the ballroom.

SMITH: Does Firaskew-- Since it comes out of dreams, is there a particular message? Is there a dream message that's involved in this construction?

WAGNER: I think the message that I'm trying to convey here is that practically every human being loves the structures of older buildings. There are so many of them that have been removed, it's almost impossible to find any like this. They love the romantic side of it. All these great amusement piers in the country, in Europe, they were all designed like palaces of gaiety and a place for joy and laughter and happiness. They were never built for sadness or morbidity. They knew nothing about electronics or plastics, so everything was sort of created as an art form; the paintings, the buildings, were almost like American folk art.

SMITH: When you were in England, did you go to Brighton Pier?

WAGNER: I loved Brighton Pier.

SMITH: How did it compare to Hermosa, to what you grew up with?

WAGNER: To Redondo?

SMITH: To Redondo, yes.

WAGNER: A different kind of elegance.

SMITH: In what way?

WAGNER: Well, it's very Victorian, the Brighton Pier, elegant. It was all made of steel, the ironwork and the filigree, and not wood, like our piers were. They had steel pilings and ornate curlicued pier railings. It was a different feeling. I remember one time being told that the Brighton Pier, the Palace Pier, it was called-- There were two piers in Brighton, the West Pier and the Palace Pier. The West Pier, when I was visiting there, was closed during the winter, but the Palace was open. So I decided to-- I didn't really want to go on it because I thought it might damage my imagery and all the love I had for piers, and it might destroy some kind of an inner feeling I had for this sort of architecture and this kind of condition. I liked to look at it from a distance, but not get too close to it, because sometimes when one becomes too familiar with something the whole romance is gone. So I went on the pier, but I went for a particular reason. I went to see some boxes that a man built. They were boxes that wound up, they were kinetic boxes, and if you put in a shilling, it would do things. All sorts of comical boxes. Some of them weren't so comical, really, they were rather morbid, like the guillotine and the swinging blade and the hangman. But there were others that were more humorous. So I decided I'd like to go on this pier to see those at the end. So I took a very long morning and just took my time and built up all sorts of anxieties about it, and I even stopped for coffee. When I finally arrived at the end of the pier, I walked all the way around this end, because it's a huge beautiful facade: archways and columns, white and gray, standing out there against the sea. It was such a strong inner thing coming into me that I just sat down for about half an hour just to absorb it all. All these old piers and all these memories and all these times of my youth all came back through me, sitting on this bench. There was an outside theater on the back of the pier and I sat down. The wind was blowing so cold, I was almost rigid. So I took my time and walked around, and I saw the fortune-tellers, and I saw the cockles and whelks. But they were closed, everything was closed. I went into the pub, and I said, well, this is open, one thing I can-- I sat down and I had a beer. I was sitting there and the gentleman across the way from me told the barmaid, [with British accent] "Give John the Baptist another drink." I didn't pay much attention, then all of a sudden I realized he was talking about me. "What brings you here today, John?" I said, "Well, I came out here to look for those boxes that wind up." He said, "That's too bad, I just put them away for the winter. They're all stored." He had an assistant with him: "That right, mate?" And the assistant bowed and nodded his head. So I missed them. He said, "You come back in the summer, I'll have them." So I did, I went back in the summer. He told me that some rich collector, lady from New York bought the whole set of them for a million dollars, so I never saw them. But I really never regret going on the Palace Pier, because the imagery was so wonderful. It went right back to my youth. I felt that I was there, walking through the old board walls and the holes in the fences. Those old piers were built-- I was so used to stain boards and, like, stains on the walls, and here they were partially painted, and it was peeling off. One Englishman was sitting on the pier there. I said, "This is a very interesting pier, isn't it?" And he said, "I don't know about that. I think it needs a little paint. Seems to be sort of chipped. I don't know, it's a good pier to fish off of." I figured, well, that kind of a place is for people like me, who love that particular nostalgia of that moment, and then the rest is for people who like to buy snow cones and whelks and cockles, ride the Dodge 'em cars, get their fortunes told, I suppose. And then there are those kind of people who just like the pier to fish off of. Really, the Redondo Pier was to fish off of, too, so it had both things, a fishing part and an amusement part. The old pier was built like European architecture, you see.

SMITH: In Redondo.

WAGNER: In Redondo. The buildings were-- They weren't built like now, it was all built like the old European architecture. Not like POP; they really cheapened that one, putting in all that sort of Disneyland feeling to it, the Pacific Ocean Park. The original Ocean Park Pier was a great pier, and it had-- I loved it. The Venice Pier was a beautiful pier, there were lots of things going on on the Venice Pier. The funhouse was one of the big events, twenty-five cents all day.

SMITH: In terms of Firaskew, have your English drawings, your Under the Crown series, your playing card series, your experiences at Brighton, have they been fed into this at all?

WAGNER: I would say so, in quite a few places. Especially in the railroad station over here. It's like Waterloo Station, or some of the great railway stations in England where they go forever in both directions, like Waterloo Station, Marylebone, Paddington, they're big stations. King's Cross. This station is very important to me, because I'm a very, very ardent lover of old railroads and the sounds of trains in the night. Although these trains within this piece are back to my squiggle trains again, like through my early boxes of my train dreams. I've incorporated these squiggle trains, the horse-locomotive, inside the railroad station. If you notice, the trains are part horse and part locomotive, some of those images from previous dreams, from the seventies. A lot of the architecture is, I would say, British, Victorian, in concept without really working at it or trying to make a model of a Victorian building. But the feeling of the towers and the roofs and things, the window details and the wood on the sides and the old planks, it is British in a lot of ways. And also, it is British because I used bricks, you know, minibricks in the railroad stations and up in the details in the buildings, I leave a place for just bricks.

SMITH: Many of the objects are things that you bought or found. When do you decide to build something and when do you decide to use something that you can get at a store?

WAGNER: When I can find something for-- When I'm working with railroads, for instance, I make my own locomotives and make all of the station parts, all of the platforms and the stairs and all of that. But people, tiny people, they have them in railroad model shops--like the Whistle Stop down here, where you can buy them, little people that fit the gauges of the railways that you want. That's why I might use them in the railroad stations, people waiting for trains.

SMITH: Then you have the Dungeons and Dragons toys that you--

WAGNER: Yeah, those are things I found somewhere. I don't know exactly where I found those, but I found them one day on the street, just thrown away. I thought they would be wonderful to adopt to the corners and towers of old buildings, like figures, you know, like many buildings have sculpture up on the top of them, you know.

SMITH: The windows on the chapel, did you draw those yourself?

WAGNER: Yes. The stained glass windows, yeah, I did those.

SMITH: From your own design, or are they stenciled off of--

WAGNER: They were kind of a composite, a little of each so they would fit into the windows.

SMITH: Then you've also used trompe l'oeil within the piece. Is there a particular function for the trompe l'oeil in this?

WAGNER: Yeah, I think so. I enjoy trompe l'oeil, especially here in the church, where you are looking down the aisle of the church on the top of the pool hall. Incidentally, the pool hall has sharks swimming around in the swimming pool. They're the pool sharks. The pool room is above the railroad station, and on top of the pool hall is the church. In the very back of the church, over the altar, there is Mary. But Mary is very deep, and people say they look around the back, there's no Mary, she's not there. It's a nice illusion. She's way over in another tower, above the curio store on the ship that's going down in the whirlpool there. Through the window here, there's a ship going down a whirlpool. Look straight in, straight in this window. I like that idea of making them wonder exactly where it's coming from. Then I have one here in the curio store where you are looking down the hall of the curio store and the swans from the Tunnel of Love are coming at you way down the hall. And the dog in front. Go around and look in the Tunnel of Love, and down that hallway you see a dog. So those kinds of things twisted around a little bit so people wonder what's going on. Then I like to do things like the ship here, on top of the marine museum, actually going through the building from one side to the other with the engine in the room inside.

SMITH: Are there going to be any sequels to Firaskew or additions to it?

WAGNER: It's possible, it's possible. I may do another one one day. When I get the-- I didn't think I'd ever do this one. I started it in San Pedro with one building, the one with the man with the pencil, holding the pencil on the drawing that says, "Draw up a chair." Up above it is a man riding on a rabbit, a cowboy on a rabbit, called "How To Be a Rabbit Puncher." That was the first building, and I didn't think maybe I would ever get to doing another one of these things. Then I made a sketch one day, and I got it and said, "This is going to take me a long time to do this thing." So I just started and took my time, and I built one building at a time. I had a general idea how it was all going together from the concept of the drawing, just to sketch it, but I didn't know when or how it would go together exactly, just the ideas and picking out a few things, like railroad stations, squiggle trains, the marine museum, the curio store, the hall of mirrors, and that sort of thing. To get the feeling that I had when I used-- These are all symbols of what I remember on the pier when I was a boy. A lot of the fantasy that appears here is also coming out of the dream.

SMITH: Again, the miniaturization is very important to the effect. Could you make this larger? A very common thing now is the building of environments, so one could imagine this being built on a larger scale that people could go into it.

WAGNER: I could build these things as high as the high rises downtown, if you wanted them built that way. They could take these things and make huge cities out of them. Sure, it could be done. Full-size locomotives, full-size boats, people walking all along the pier; it wouldn't be any problem. I wouldn't want to do it, but if somebody wanted to build it, it would be a wonderful project.

SMITH: So if you could build something that people could move into, an environmental thing, you would do that, then.

WAGNER: Yeah, sure.

SMITH: When you do a piece like this, a construction like this, it raises the question, what is it for? In the sense that when you do your assemblages and your boxes, they can go to galleries and they get sold, they hang in somebody's house or they hang in a museum. What happens with a piece like this? Is there a market for a piece like this?

WAGNER: I have no idea. I had never thought about it. But I'm sure that if some museum wanted to buy it, they could make a nice space for it and put it in a glass case where you could walk around it. It could be done just as easily as showing something else.

SMITH: But if you put it in a glass case, you would miss three-quarters of the effects, wouldn't you?

WAGNER: I don't think so, not if it was close. I think you could still catch most of it. I think so. But I never worried about what to do with it. Because I never think about any of that; I never built anything for what's going to happen to it. My whole philosophy is I build things for the joy and love of what's happening at that moment. What happens afterward I'm detached from. What's going to happen to anything? What's going to happen to The Interior Castle? What's going to happen to my playing card castle [The Suit of Pluses]? They're not commercial ventures, you know. They're not like prints or paintings.

SMITH: In an earlier interview with you that was done in the newspaper, you make a distinction between collective dreams and archetypal dreams. I was wondering if you could-- Do you remember that? That was in the sixties, in a newspaper in Oregon. Do you remember making that distinction?

WAGNER: Well, actually, I think what I'm saying is that archetypal dreams are things that are related directly to me in my own direction and what I'm up to right now. It's giving me a message through the labyrinths of where I am in my work. I use a lot of archetypal images throughout all of my work.

SMITH: What do you mean by archetypal?

WAGNER: Well, repetition. A roller coaster is an archetypal symbol. My trains are archetypal symbols. My walls and textures of buildings and my arches and checkerboards, all those things are my archetypal symbols. But if I see a bunch of people standing on the back of a Mack Bulldog truck wondering where to go, or being unloaded off a ship with a lot of cows, or a lot of people involved in a dream that I don't even--that doesn't even belong to me, I'm sure, I call that collective dreaming. It's not part of my archetypal images at all. It has nothing to do with me. It's like a newsreel. I'm looking at somebody else's dream. I belong to the Society for the Restoration of Lost Dreams, where we're allowed to buy, sell, lease, mail back to people, dreams. Or we can collect dreams, like lucid dreams, archetypal dreams, collective dreams, wet dreams, any kind of dreams. We can buy and sell those dreams, or we can just mail them off. I'm a P.H.D., Professional Head Dreamer, in the Society for the Restoration of Lost Dreams. Lukman Glasgow, he's actually the executive administrator. D. Ream is the president. The last big meeting we had was about ten years ago in Eagle Rock, under the rock. We had the society of lost dreams, and Kenneth [J.] Atchity-- A whole lot of us belong to the organization. Our secretary was a big chimpanzee, who was typing the whole time at the table. [laughter] So when I say "collective dreams," I always feel they don't belong to me, in my way of putting them.

SMITH: How do they get into your head? Is it from watching television or what?

WAGNER: How it got there?

SMITH: Yeah, how it got there.

WAGNER: I have no idea. A lot of my dreams are like watching television or watching the news or something. They're cut, sharp, direct dreams that come right through to me with a story or a visual approach that I can use in my work, you know.

SMITH: Could you tell me about your involvement with Dreamworks periodical?

WAGNER: The magazine?

SMITH: Yeah.

WAGNER: Well, it started in 1978 with Kenneth Atchity at Occidental College and Marsha Kinder, USC [University of Southern California] now.

SMITH: She was at Occidental.

WAGNER: I had known these people through the California Quarterly, which was a poetry magazine that came out that Atchity was the editor of. He'd use some of my works in there, poems and pictures of boxes and things. So Marsha called me up and said they were going to do a dream journal, and she wondered if I would be interested in submitting some dreams. So she came over to my house in Silver Lake, and I read her about five dreams. She said, "That's all I need to know. Let's take them all right now." So that's when it started. My dreams were published; the first dreams that were published were the railroad dreams, my squiggle train dream. Then I became a member of the advisory board and still am a member.

SMITH: Do you attend meetings?

WAGNER: There isn't any meeting.

SMITH: Do they submit material for you to review?

WAGNER: Yeah, I do too. If I find someone that I really want to submit, that I like their dreams or whatever they're doing, well, I send it to either Ken Atchity or to Marsha Kinder. The last one I sent in was a dream called the "Laughing Girl," with a drawing from a Mexican series in the cemetery from one of my nightmares. Well, I got a letter from Ken Atchity saying that he wanted to publish it, but he thought he would need a commentary on the dream, because how could I write-- He would like to know the dream rather than how I created the story around the dream. So I wrote back to him and said that I didn't create the story around the dream, it was actual recall. All I did was get up in the morning and write down exactly what happened in the dream without any altering of the dream. Well, while I'm calling him, writing him that letter, I get another letter from Marsha Kinder at USC saying she wanted to publish the "Laughing Girl" at the same time in Dreamworks, so both of them grabbed it. It was passed on to her, apparently. And I said, "Yeah, but they want a commentary." She said, "Gordon, you don't need a commentary. When you write dreams, they're direct experiences, there's no reason for you to have a commentary." Well, I did write a commentary, and the commentary's a very good one. But it had to do with-- After I had the dream, then I went back and wrote the commentary related to the different archetypal images, again, that had appeared in my life to make that dream possible, you see. Roller coasters and the penny arcade and the house of mirrors and the celluloid windmills and all those things that I --and death, they were all there, my life was all in that dream. So that's what I mean by a pure dream that ties together where you are; it's not about some remote people over here that could be in somebody else's dream.

SMITH: Do archetypal dreams have a religious connotation?

WAGNER: Most of mine don't. No, I don't think so. Well, I imagine if you were a good psychologist, you could probably make one out of it, but I can't. A lot of my dreams are to defeat--were actually defeating my fear of death, you know. They were helping me to destroy that fear. Through those dreams, and then those dreams were actually manifested. By doing that I got rid of that fear.

SMITH: I wanted to ask you a very broad question, which is, do you feel there's an artists' community in Southern California?

WAGNER: Well, if you call-- How many square miles is Los Angeles?

SMITH: Five hundred, or thereabouts, more or less.

WAGNER: Well, if it's classified as five hundred square miles, there's an artists' community, yeah, because everybody is so far apart, you know. There's communities in each town; like there's a community in San Pedro, there's a community in Pasadena, there's one in Santa Monica, Venice. But these communities very seldom ever see each other unless it's in an exhibition together. You never know what the other artist is doing. Our city is not built for Sohos and places of that nature, where all the artists hang out. In fact, I think it would be very difficult to establish an artists' community in Los Angeles at the present time, due to the fact that wherever artists go and get set up as a community, the land developers move in, triple their rent and kick them out. What they've already done, they improve a little bit more and raise their rents up. Artists really don't have much chance in city at all of ever finding a community. It's very difficult for an artist to live here. I don't know how they do it. I don't know how half of them can afford these expensive lofts, unless they've got some sort of a stipend somewhere and still work as artists. Unless they just have that and do other work, do things on weekends, teaching and things of that nature. I wish we did have an artists' community-- I wish we could find one where we could have a whole complex instead of senior citizens' complexes, an artists' complex, like in New York, in Westbeth, where you pay according to your income, that's the way the rentals go. If they had that sort of thing here, I would certainly be one of the first to belong to their organization. And, you know, a central meeting place. Angel's Gate has that sort of thing in San Pedro.

A TEI Project

Interview of Gordon Wagner

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE, APRIL 19, 1986

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO, APRIL 19, 1986

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE, MAY 17, 1986

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO, MAY 17, 1986

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE, AUGUST 22, 1986

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO, AUGUST 22, 1986

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE, JANUARY 10, 1987

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO, JANUARY 10, 1987

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE, JANUARY 10, 1987

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO, JANUARY 10, 1987

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE, JANUARY 18, 1987

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO, JANUARY 18, 1987

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 7, 1987

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO, FEBRUARY 7, 1987

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 7, 1987

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 14, 1987

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO, FEBRUARY 14, 1987

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 21, 1987

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO, FEBRUARY 21, 1987

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE, FEBRUARY 28, 1987

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO, FEBRUARY 28, 1987

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE, MARCH 7, 1987

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO, MARCH 7, 1987

1.24. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE, MARCH 21, 1987

1.25. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE TWO, MARCH 21, 1987

1.26. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE, MARCH 23, 1987