Tom Wesselmann
It was just kind of in the air at the time. I had a one-man show at the Tanager in '61. I was still involved with some idea of painterliness.
It was all coming together in about 1962, I guess. More and more, I mean, because you had Lichtenstein coming on the scene, and Warhol and Rosenquist. Things were kind of clean and slick.
I'd never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people's work since I didn't care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings.
I used collage primarily because I was impatient and secondarily because I didn't have any point of view to paint the things myself and I felt very unskilled-I'd never done this before.
I didn't want to deal in poetry. I got rid of that after a few months.