Intertitle: Art and Violence

Robert Longo: …and I was younger— That thing, that quote, ​“I make art for brave eyes,” usu­al­ly fol­lowed with the state­ment, ​“I want to make art that changes the world.” I caught an enor­mous amount of crap for that, you know. It’s like real­ly weird. It’s like soci­ety basi­cal­ly wants artists to kind of be a cer­tain, you know… It’s real­ly dif­fi­cult being an artist when you real­ize your income is basi­cal­ly based on excess cash of the wealthy, you know. It’s a… I mean, I’m very for­tu­nate that I can do what I do. I mean, it’s like a… But, I think art changes the worl— Art has and will change the world in its visu­al mech­a­nisms of how you see the world. I mean, it just hap­pens that way. It just…it just… It influ­ences design, influ­ences fash­ion, it influ­ences even to a cer­tain point pol­i­tics at times. 

I think that for me what I’ve tried to do over the years is… I had the real­ly for­tu­nate oppor­tu­ni­ty to have my Men in the Cities images actu­al­ly kind of become icon­ic. At the same time, it’s a bit of a curse. Because then I spend the rest of my life run­ning away from this stuff. When these Men in the Cities draw­ings were showed at The Met dur­ing this big pic­tures exhi­bi­tion, they were shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they were hung in the lob­by. And they’re big drawings—they’re like eight by five feet, and they’re hang­ing up, and… I was there with my son and his friend, they were like 13 years old at the time. And his friend says to me, ​“Did you get the idea for those draw­ings from the iPod ad?” Which had been out, you know—

And I said, ​“No, those draw­ings are like thir­ty years old,” you know. To real­ize that the work had got­ten so icon­ic that its author­ship did­n’t exist any­more… Do you know what I mean? There are bands using the— If I look on the Internet, I can find bands using my images and stuff like that with­out any cred­it for it. And at first I got kind of out­raged by it, then I real­ized this is an incred­i­ble com­pli­ment. But the same time it’s like I’m the guy that made those goofy-looking fig­ures, you know. 

So, style has always been a prob­lem­at­ic thing to me, because the thing about telling—trying to deal with truth as an artist is you have… You can fash­ion the truth, or you could try to tell the truth. You know. I think I hope I’m try­ing to tell the truth, and in that sense styl­is­ti­cal­ly I’ve tried to avoid a style that is rec­og­niz­able as a kind of like…that what Men in the Cities encap­su­lat­ed. And I think that like, all these black and white draw­ings are basi­cal­ly reflec­tive of the land­scape of the world we live in. I think that my black and white draw­ings are… They exist some­where between tra­di­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion and mod­ernist abstraction—it’s almost like I trans­late pho­tographs or some­thing. I mean, we still see the world in pho­tographs, in that sense. And I think black and white is actu­al­ly high­ly abstract in that sense. 

But in that sense I mean… Someone jok­ing­ly said to me, they said that, ​“Your ego must be so out of con­trol now because you think you’re try­ing to like own all the black and white images in the world.” It’s like when­ev­er you see a black and white image, you’re sup­posed to think of my work. And I find it real­ly flat­ter­ing that he had made that con­nec­tion, but I can’t tell you the end­less times that some­one says, ​“Oh, I saw this pic­ture in the news­pa­per. It looked just like your work.” But it’s actu­al­ly the oth­er way around. My work is inspired by what I see. 

Intertitle: Violence of the Real

Longo: I’ve always thought the work has a kin­da… It some­how has to bal­ance itself between like, you know… It has that schizoid thing in between like, you know, falling off the precipice you know, to obliv­ion and hope. And like, the guns are a sim­ple exam­ple of that. 

My old­est son at the time was real­ly… He was play­ing bas­ket­ball on West Third— We used to play bas­ket­ball togeth­er on West Fourth St. in the cages. That after­noon he went with­out me. He was 13 I think at the time. And he was real­ly inter­est­ed in hip hop music and the whole… We had just moved here from Europe, okay. And he was just excit­ed about being in New York and stuff like that. 

And he comes home and he says like, ​“Oh my god, I can’t believe what just hap­pened.” It was a fight in the cages, and it was between a white kid and a black kid. And the white kid bust­ed a bot­tle and was gonna cut him. And then this lit­tle kid reached into a gym bag, anoth­er kid reached into—and pulled out a gun. And every­body screamed, ​‘Gun!’ ” And this image of like when you drop a peb­ble in water and the kind of rip­ples— It’s like every­one ran away and went down the sub­way, dis­ap­peared. And this lit­tle kid put the gun back in his bag and he just walked real­ly slow­ly into the subway. 

And I real­ized my kid was excit­ed. He thought this was like the great­est thing he had seen. And it was like I’m going oh my fuck­ing god. My kids live in this fuck­ing crazy city? And it was all of a sud­den this point say­ing ​“go that way.” And I start­ed to research guns. Got in con­tact with the FBI. And the FBI…I actu­al­ly asked them ques­tions, they’re actu­al­ly quite help­ful. I got a list of the most pop­u­lar hand­guns in the United States. I got a list of how many peo­ple died that year of hand­guns. And I had to go through a kind of ille­gal way to get the guns to pho­to­graph them? It was a whole com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry which I’d rather not go into. Because I could­n’t get guns myself, because I had no license. 

So, what was inter­est­ing about mak­ing the draw­ings of the guns is I was­n’t there to say they’re good or bad, you know. I was more like, the idea of I’m gonna rip them— I’m going to take this issue that’s both­er­ing me and rip it out of the cul­ture and stick it in front of you and say, ​“What do you think?” What do you think about these things?”

And it was iron­ic that at the time, one of the draw­ings, the Museum of Modern Art want­ed to buy. And they took it up to the Modern, the cura­tors all want­ed it, but the board of directors—the head of the board direc­tors was a woman, I think her name is Agnes Gunn (which is kind of ironic). 

What had just hap­pened that week when they were review­ing buy­ing the gun, this man had shot a bunch of peo­ple on the Long Island Railroad, and they decid­ed not to buy the gun. That’s exact­ly why they should have bought the gun! Do you know what I mean? It’s like, it’s an issue. It’s an issue that you have to deal with and not hide it. Okay, well maybe not. 

So, I thought this was a real­ly inter­est­ing exam­ple of like how I’m not say­ing they’re good or bad. I’m ask­ing you, ​“This is some­thing that’s putting pres­sure on me to think about, what do you think about it?” in that sense. And I think in that sense as an artist…I don’t like art that tells me about how crazy I am or neu­rot— I mean, we’re all fucked up. I mean, it’s like…it’s not worth it in that sense. I mean, I think we’re sup­posed to be…as artists we’re sup­posed to be anten­nas, and we’re sup­posed to somehow… 

It’s like when you walk down the street, and I remem­ber when I was a kid walk­ing down the street… I was with my friend and I saw this tree. And in the tree I swore I saw Jimi Hendrix’ head. And I said, ​“Look! There’s Jimi Hendrix in the tree.” 

And he said, ​“I don’t see it.” 

I said, ​“Well look. Look over there, you can see the nose…” 

And he goes, ​“I see it! I see it.” 

That’s what being an artist is like. It’s like say­ing like, ​“Look. Do you see this?” you know? And maybe some peo­ple see it, some peo­ple don’t. 

Intertitle: Against the Banal

Longo: I think a lot of times peo­ple like to look down at art, you know? What’s inter­est­ing about some­body like Jeff Koons, is quite bril­liant about Jeff Koons is this idea of banal­i­ty, is that peo­ple like to look down at things rather than at things, or look up at things. I think that’s one rea­son why the Americans elect­ed George Bush. I mean, they want­ed… You had a choice of a smart per­son and a stu­pid per­son. Both times, Gore and John Kerry. And the American peo­ple chose the stu­pid guy because they did­n’t want a pres­i­dent that was smarter than them, you know. 

So any­way, I want­ed to make work that was aggres­sive to the view­er, for sure, in that sense. And I thought par­tic­u­lar­ly Reagan at the time, after all the kind of wishy-washy moral free-for-all of like the 70s and hip­pies and stuff like that, that kind of fail­ure to cer­tain extent, Reagan being elect­ed kind of drew a line in the sand and all of a sud­den you had to take a stance as to where you were on things like that. 

I also did­n’t like a lot of the art that was being made at that time. A lot of it was just kind of like messy expres­sion­is­tic art. And I thought a lot of that art was about what art was. And I think myself and most of the oth­er artists that I was hang­ing around with want­ed to make art that was what art could be. It was like what art was, and I was inter­est­ed in what art could become, in that sense I mean. 

Intertitle: Moments of Impact

I like vio­lence. I don’t like vio­lence that hurts some­one, I like the moment of impact, of smash­ing some­thing. I like punch­ing a punch­ing bag. I like the moment of impact. I have a young— My youngest son who’s 16, and we were talk­ing about this actu­al­ly this morn­ing. We were jok­ing about like how… Wouldn’t it be great if you could get to go into like, you, know Bloomingdale’s for one hour with a steel pipe and do what­ev­er you want. Just smash the whole place up. I mean, there’s some­thing inter­est­ing in that moment of high impact that I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by. And I think that my ear­ly work Men in the Cities is real­ly about that moment of impact. It’s about that split mil­lisec­ond of that moment of when it hap­pens, and I think that’s some­thing I’ve really…I’ve always been some­what inter­est­ed. I mean, as I’ve got­ten old­er obvi­ous­ly it’s changed and mutat­ed. I’m a par­ent and I’m deal­ing with respon­si­bil­i­ties and stuff like that. But I still very much have it. 

I think also it prob­a­bly comes from my eth­nic back­ground. I’m Italian. My par­ents screamed and yelled and you know… I mean, I mar­ried a German and a real big dif­fer­ence in our fam­i­ly is like you know, we live in a house that has three sto­ries, and when the phone rings on the ground floor and its for my kid on the top floor, I scream up and tell him you know, ​“Come down and get the phone!” Whereas my wife will actu­al­ly go up the stairs and tell him he has a phone call.

Intertitle: Psychotic Impulses

I did­n’t want to tell you what this image was. I did­n’t want to say the guy’s dying. I did­n’t want to tell you he was danc­ing. I did­n’t want to tell you he was hav­ing an orgasm. I did­n’t want to tell you what was hap­pen­ing. I want­ed you to make the deci­sion as to what was hap­pen­ing in that pic­ture. And that’s kind of always been some­what of a posi­tion that I’ve tried to take with the work where I don’t feel like…I don’t want to preach, I think, or lec­ture, or… My work can be bom­bas­tic at times but it’s still I think try­ing to keep a bor­der­line on the edge of what the posi­tion is. I want you to make the deci­sion. And I think that in that sense it tells a lot about the view­er and reflect­ing of it.

Men in the Cities is also about psy­chot­ic impuls­es. It’s about that space of time that exists between when you reach for a cup of cof­fee, it’s between that thought of think­ing about reach­ing for the cup of cof­fee and actu­al­ly grab­bing. It’s that space in between. I was a real big fan of Robert Smithson, who dealt with the idea of entropy. And I want­ed to kind of go against that idea and try to take a tiny moment of time and turn it into for­ev­er as well, in that sense.

But also, they go back… I think that mak­ing art to me has always been about, if you remem­ber those old radios where you actu­al­ly would phys­i­cal­ly tune in a sta­tion? You could feel the sta­tion come in, like if you went one way or anoth­er you’d lose it. I think it’s about a bal­ance between some­thing that’s very very per­son­al, and some­thing that’s very much in the world. So, in that sense these draw­ings and all my work have kind of exist­ed in this kind of range where I can find the point that I think is real­ly per­son­al, and I can also find it in the world.

The Men in the Cities draw­ings were evolved out of watch­ing Sam Peckinpah movies. The way peo­ple died in movies was a rad­i­cal break in… Like, James Cagney would get shot and he would just kind of fall down, where­as in a Sam Peckinpah movie, the guy’s chest would explode and he’d go through the wall. 

When I was a kid we used to play this game call ​“who could fall dead the best,” where one guy would pre­tend to have a gun and all the kids would run at you and you would shoot them. And who­ev­er died the best got to be the guy with the gun again. But at the same time I was real­ly inter­est­ed in the vio­lence that actu­al­ly exist­ed in the world. I mean, it was iron­ic that… I think artists tend to have a Cassandra curse? You know, we could see the future but we can’t do a whole lot about it. It was real­ly inter­est­ing when I… I was prob­a­bly maybe a year into the Men in the Cities draw­ings when Reagan was—the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Reagan. And there were all these pho­tographs of these guys, the Secret Service guys get­ting shot. They all end­ed up look­ing like the draw­ings, you know. 

But in that sense it also had a lot to do with the way peo­ple were danc­ing at the punk clubs at that time. Like I said, there was a bal­ance between the social and the per­son­al that’s always been real­ly impor­tant to me. 

Intertitle: 9‍/‍11

What did—9‍/‍11 have an affect on me? I mean, that’s just a real­ly big ques­tion, I mean. The thing that— I live in Brooklyn. And I work here in Manhattan. I usu­al­ly go every— Almost four or five days a week I play bas­ket­ball in the morn­ing with a bunch of guys. It’s on the top floor of a Jewish syn­a­gogue, the gym is. And I could see the World Trade Centers when it happened. 

And… When I saw that smoke com­ing out of the tow­ers and stuff like that, it was this very clear moment when we were real­iz­ing that my world was rad­i­cal­ly going to be altered for the rest of my life. I did­n’t know how it had hap­pened, but the image that I saw was the World Trade Centers and this huge black cloud stream­ing across the hori­zon, the sky, for miles. And I remem­ber going home and watch­ing it on TV. Very bad recep­tion, the TV, because we had an anten­na. We did­n’t have cable at the time.

And a…a whole series of things occurred. I mean, one thing that’s the most inter­est­ing thing that I real­ized recent­ly about that, it hit me because after doing these draw­ings of Mecca and the burqas and things like that, is that 9‍/‍11 was like, the great­est crash course in edu­ca­tion in Islam for the Western world. It was like, I knew noth­ing about Islam. I knew they wore these real­ly weird things, and they wor­shiped Muhammad, but I did­n’t know any­thing about the reli­gion. And because of 9‍/‍11, myself and many oth­er peo­ple that I know now I have become quite edu­cat­ed in what Islam is. So it was like this real­ly weird form of like okay…here’s a quick [makes smash­ing sound] crash course—you got­ta know who these peo­ple are.

But at the same time, 9‍/‍11 was… As an Americ—America is like a… There’s a great book called Dangerous Nation. America is not this shin­ing light on the top of the hill any­more. Or, I don’t think it ever real­ly was. But America is dif­fer­ent than the rest of the coun­tries in the world because it’s the only coun­try I think that’s based upon the idea of team sport. Other coun­tries are based on race, reli­gion, tribe. The United States is the only coun­try in the world that’s based on the idea of a team. Because there’s all these diverse dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and we all work togeth­er for a goal.

The prob­lem is that America, because it is a team, its main objec­tive is to win. And every­one in America’s incred­i­bly com­pet­i­tive. And win­ning is this kind of…schism that exists that basi­cal­ly will ulti­mate­ly destroy us. 

So what hap­pened with 9‍/‍11 was…dare I say, this incred­i­bly bril­liant act of ter­ror­ism hap­pened, by using our own air­planes to fly into the build­ings To have these incred­i­ble mon­u­ments of American cap­i­tal­ism fall down. That it was like knock­ing out the front teeth of the big bul­ly. It was such an out— Americans were so out­raged by it, that some­one did that. It was as if— The reac­tion was like that anoth­er team had scored the goal that we thought actu­al­ly was a shit­ty team. And now we got­ta win the game, and we got­ta real­ly… So for every one that died at 9‍/‍11 you know, 10,000 have to die of you guys. 

But we did­n’t know who those guys were. I mean, it was like this total igno­rant reac­tion to not try­ing to com­pre­hend how much anger and hate and pain the United States makes in the world…to cause peo­ple to do this. It was like there was no attempt to try to under­stand it, which is real­ly kind of a fright­en­ing thing. 

At the same time, the aes­thet­ics of it were quite extra­or­di­nary. I mean, the images that came out of it. I mean, those guys falling out of the build­ings… I mean, I can’t begin to tell you how many peo­ple sent me pho­tographs say­ing, ​“Oh, does­n’t this look like your draw­ings!” I mean, it’s like, well…

But the thing that was inter­est­ing is I was draw­ing these waves at the time. And the waves had slow­ly mutat­ed and were start­ed to look more and more like fire and smoke and stuff like that. And peo­ple were send­ing me images of 9‍‍/11 for smoke. And one image came out—I print­ed it out of the com­put­er, that I want­ed. I thought I could fuse some of this smoke and clouds into the waves. It was the image of the tow­ers falling down and the smoke. But when it came out, it came out upside down so it was the smoke and the tow­ers. And my reac­tion was oh my god, this looks just like an atom­ic bomb. 

And I grew up look­ing at Life mag­a­zine. And I did­n’t real­ly start read­ing until I was thir­ty, I was dyslex­ic and stuff like that. So pic­ture mag­a­zines are real­ly impor­tant me—National Geographic, stuff like that. And I saved a lot of these Life mag­a­zines. I took them home, and I was look­ing at them, at the atom­ic bomb tests and things like that. And my youngest son was maybe six or sev­en at the time, and I said, ​“What do you think this is?” this atom­ic bomb. And he said, ​“It’s a hur­ri­canes, it’s a tor­na­do.” And I had just been doing these waves which was like pow­er as an issue in rela­tion­ship to the force of nature. And see­ing an atom­ic bomb was like all of a sud­den real­iz­ing it was man try­ing to be God. 

And I was think­ing about Bush at the time and his reac­tion to the whole 9‍/‍11 thing, and I real­ized that my chil­dren actu­al­ly may have to live in a world where these things will be used. And I find a lot times in my work that some­times the sign­posts are right there; they say ​“go that way.” And I stopped doing the waves and I start­ed doing the atom­ic bombs.

And I think those are all con­se­quences of this whole— I mean, I real­ize on a dai­ly basis the con­se­quences that 9‍/‍11 imple­ments on one’s life. You think about it all the time. I mean, you trav­el. You know, mak­ing art, how much— Like when I made the burqas, am I offend­ing peo­ple? It just becomes a whole issue of the whole kind of feel­ing of like, how to walk— It’s like walk­ing on thin ice sometimes. 

Intertitle: The Haunting

The struc­ture of the piece I can’t quite…explain how it hap­pened. But what I want­ed to have hap­pen— I’m very aware of the reflec­tions that occur because of the glass in my work. I’m very aware that you see your­self, or you see oth­er draw­ings in the work. I mean, I’m not igno­rant of that. And and I use that. I don’t know if in Nice, if you real­ized it, you could see like, in the shark’s mouth you could see the plane crash­ing. Or you could see dif­fer­ent things that were— The reflec­tions real­ly worked with each other.

So I want­ed that piece to have it so that when you stood in front of that peace, the air­planes were crash­ing into you. Because it was that big black sec­tion, and basi­cal­ly one kin­da goes into your head and the oth­er one kin­da goes into your heart if you like, my height, in that sense. So when you stand in front of it you see your­self in that mid­dle sec­tion, that black mid­dle section. 

Intertitle: Heritage

Ironically about work­ing in black and white for me is that I real­ize the impact of like, jour­nal­is­tic pho­tog­ra­phy had had on me when I was grow­ing up. I remem­ber Life mag­a­zine like, the col­or pho­tographs were usu­al­ly of Marilyn Monroe, or celebri­ties, or you know, the king’s house or some­thing like that. And then the black and white pho­tographs were like of Vietnam, or the earth­quake, or you know, pros­ti­tutes in Calcutta. And it was, all of a sud­den I start­ed real­iz­ing that black and white I asso­ci­at­ed with the truth. And col­or, I did­n’t believe. And somehow… 

So by turn­ing these images into black and white I was try­ing to like basi­cal­ly try to see them in terms of my own work, and to see what they taught me. And draw­ing them was real­ly inter­est­ing because it was like wait, I actu­al­ly got to alter his­to­ry. Like, if I did­n’t like the Guernica exact­ly the way that one sec­tion over here—I could actu­al­ly make it dark­er. I mean, not to com­pare myself any­way to any of these artists by any chance, but it was… It was more like a revis­it­ing of my own edu­ca­tion, in that sense. 

And the fact that those images have any kind of the­mat­ic ele­ment is also edu­ca­tion­al in rela­tion­ship, for me, to my own work. I mean, I love Caravaggio… And it was real­ly inter­est­ing the paint­ings that I like of Caravaggio tend to be the more aggres­sive ones like The Taking of Christ. 

Intertitle: Competition Nation

What’s inter­est­ing about American sports is that American sports is almost like a kind of like…a kind of tem­plate of American his­to­ry. Baseball was the first sport invent­ed in America. It’s an agricultural-based sport. It starts in the sum­mer, you know, and it goes into the fall. Which is basi­cal­ly kind of like the agri­cul­tur­al peri­od of time, when the har­vest­ing and the plant­i­ng… It has no time­frame. It’s sup­posed to be nine innings, but if the score is tied, it can go on for­ev­er. It could be like a hun­dred innings. There’s no timeframe.

It’s an agrar­i­an sport in that sense. There are dis­tances to how long the bases are, but how big this field is can be as—there’s no rules to how big a field is. It’s a team of indi­vid­u­als— Even though it’s a lot of peo­ple work­ing togeth­er, it’s a sport that occurs, and when the event hap­pens, it’s always an indi­vid­ual— Like, the guy throws a ball, a guy hits the ball, the guy catch­es the b— It’s a focused individual. 

Now comes the indus­tri­al age… Also what’s inter­est­ing about American sports is each jump in American sports cor­re­sponds to when there is a war. The American Civil War…after the American Civil War, baseball—had start­ed slight­ly before the Civil War, it kind of like explod­ed after­wards. American foot­ball hap­pens after the American Civil War, dur­ing the begin­ning of the indus­tri­al age. And what hap­pened is sports in America was the way that you know, American sol­diers, American boys and young men who went away to war, after they came back they still want­ed to have that atmos­phere. I mean, there’s some­thing quite unique about the cama­raderie of play­ing on a sports team or being in a mil­i­tary unit, that you have this kind of arti­fi­cial sense of friend­ship, and bond— Like, ​“I’ll die for you. I got your back.” And then, after the sea­son’s over…you know, you nev­er talk to the guy some­times, you know what I mean? 

So, the thing is that foot­ball becomes like the beginning—it also becomes like, the indus­tri­al age. It’s like, in base­ball every­one has to be able do every every­thing. Everyone has to catch, hit, throw. In foot­ball, every­one has a spe­cial­ized job. This is the guy who throws the ball; this is the guy who runs the ball; this is the guy who blocks; all these very spe­cial­ized posi­tions. They even have rules where you can’t… Like, line­men can’t touch the foot­ball, you know what I mean? Only these cer­tain guys can touch it. The foot­ball fields have to be an exact size. There’s a clock. The game has to end at a cer­tain time. 

American sports don’t have ties, you know what I mean. Someone has to win. And American sports start to esca­late once trans­porta­tion got around. So then rival­ries did­n’t— Like in soc­cer or in Europe, where rival­ries were like the towns next door to each oth­er. Also, now you had rival­ries that went all over the United States, in that sense. So foot­ball becomes the begin­ning of the indus­tri­al age, where all of us work togeth­er, as a fac­to­ry or as a team, to win. You know? 

And then the idea of war­fare becomes more ampli­fied in foot­ball because now you have the bomb… You have the ground game… It just becomes all metaphor­i­cal towards war. I mean, the Romans used glad­i­a­to­r­i­al games to keep the pop­u­lace in a fren­zy of war. It kept the blood­lust always there, so that you know— You go to the Coliseum, watch a bunch of peo­ple kill e—okay, by the way next week we got to go and kill all these like, bar­bar­ians. So sports in America keeps us in this kind of con­stant per­pet­u­al state of war. 

Intertitle: Veiled Art

My wife in a burqa was real­ly inter­est­ing. My wife’s an actress. She’s a real­ly great actress­es. She’s far bet­ter at what she does than what I do, but. But she has incred­i­ble eyes. We were at the Louvre in Paris, and we’re going in, and stand­ing next to us, I look down there are these like, these incred­i­ble high heel shoes. And as I kind of fol­low this up, I real­ize there’s these young girls com­plete­ly dressed in like Chanel, decked to—just incred­i­ble. And then as I get all the way up I real­ize they’re wear­ing burqas. They’re wear­ing these black veils. And their eye make­up is like incred­i­ble, you know. I mean, it was quite beau­ti­ful and sexy. 

And I said to my wife, ​“So what do you think of that?” And she says, ​“You know, some­times I real­ly wish I could wear one of those.” She says it’s real­ly great to be able…“not have to wor­ry about my hair, not have to wor­ry about my make­up, just put a lit­tle eye make­up on, you know. Even the whole thing, it would be great. That way I don’t have to wor­ry about my clothes and—” 

It seemed like…something that, the West seems so shock­ing seemed actu­al­ly quite prac­ti­cal, you know, in a weird way. She said, ​“That way men star­ing at me,” she said, ​“I would­n’t have to wor­ry about that, you know, if they were look­ing at my boobs or whatever.”

And it was like, the dif­fer­ence, the line, between those two things seemed extra­or­di­nary to me. So I want­ed to do some­thing about this kind of image because I also love this image of the mask. I had used it before— Airplane pilots wear those weird kind of masks that cov­er their whole face except their eyes before they put the hel­mets on and stuff like that. I used it in a pic­ture a long time ago called Tongue to the Heart where I want­ed to look like— I used my eyes in a mask and I want­ed to look like an air­plane pilot that was going like so fast he was gonna see God or some­thing like that. 

But I think that the idea that on one hand it had this kind of like inter­est­ing idea of prac­ti­cal­i­ty, and the oth­er hand it had this real­ly fright­en­ing oppres­sive ele­ment to it. And I asked my wife to do a— I pho­tographed her and took a num­ber of dif­fer­ent expres­sions. Her eyes angry, sad… And then we found burqas on the Internet. The Internet has been an incred­i­ble tool for me because now I just like…I want a sub­ject mat­ter of some­thing, and I look on the Internet and… Like [Q?], my assis­tant, is like this expert on the Internet. He knows— He can go to Chinese Internet, he can go to like—he goes to all dif­fer­ent places. And we took burqas and we took them off, and we put them on, and we manip­u­lat­ed it all. So in that sense I— I also like that they’re so big. They’re like eight feet tall by six feet wide, that when you stand in front of them you see your­self in front of them.