And still more recycling ...



The slashed-up dirty old mucked-up papers lay forgotten in a box until many years later, in 2003, when I was cleaning up my atelier, throwing out accumulations of clutter that pile up in ateliers over the years. Well, I started dumping the worthless papers into the trash pile when - when suddenly! - I saw their backsides for the first time. What a happy surprise to find a hundred or so multicolored surfaces with wondrously wandering lines and shadings, almost crying out to get turned into finished pictures. It was a joyful experience to bring them to life with signal dots (which I've been using in my work since the 1950s), with the ABCs, and with other ubiquitous what-nots to fashion eyes, ears, mouths, noses and - and yes, genitalia. Through a series of coincidences, serendipity and imagination I created - or should I say recreated? - some of the best works Iíve ever made. My titles for these four works are Romantic Poem, Rap Singer mit Freundin, Some Things to Do Your Thing With and Mephisto. The Portrait of the Artist as Clown doesn't really belong here. There's nothing abstract about it, but I did make it with an X-acto-knife.