Art Bastard

Woman on PA: Ladies and gentlemen,

there is a Brooklyn-bound focal' train one station away.

I moved from New York when I was about 12.

But the city really has been the, um,

I guess, the early inspiration for a lot of my art.

And the first thing, of course, in the city

was that, of course, everything was tall, everything...

So my... My first impulse was

to get on top of a building,

you know, to... Oh, can I get to the roof?

It was just a constant wonderland.

Well, obviously that's what... I paint what is around me.

Yeah, well, I did...

Joan Cenedella: I think I was

very worried about your schooling.

I mean, I think I really cared about that.

I also think that I felt competitive with you.

I... you know, I felt that

mother liked you better than she liked me.

All of that stuff.

Well, I just think during your whole childhood,

I was very admiring of you as an artist.

I mean, I understood something about...

Even... even I worried about how you were gonna

get through with things or read books or...

Bob: There was no time

that I remember not wanting to be an artist.

As far back as four or five years old,

I remember looking at "Moby dick,"

illustrated by Rockwell Kent.

And I could look at those pictures and thinking,

gee, I want to be able to do something like that.

Jess Korman: I have a wonderful little

etching of Bob's of two people,

obviously a married couple

sitting across a table from each other

and just staring daggers.

I mean, they're probably screaming at each other.

And the name of it is "flowers."

It's funny, it's funny, and it's real, and it's...

I was sitting at the top of the stairs

in a house in Wilton, Connecticut,

and my mother and father were having an argument,

which was nothing unusual.

And, he wanted...

To take my sisters and me to New York.

My mother said to him,

"well, you're not gonna take Bobby.

He isn't even yours."

So, I find this out at six, and at six, you're not...

You... you know, you block it.

But I had this recurring dream, you know, for years,

and it would come back to me.

So, as you grow up, you're like... you say,

"wow, I'd better watch out in this family."

It's like, "I'm not really one of them."

I thought, growing up, that my deficiency as

a student came from being switched

from being left-handed to right-hand.

Then I couldn't read, and then I had dyslexia.

It was... it was a nightmare for me,

all the way through school, absolute nightmare.

Art, from day one for me,

was the special part of life,

the... the part of life that was above the gutter.

Everything about New York fascinated me.

Every Clay was a experience that you would enjoy.

And, you... It was a learning.

I mean, you could learn so much just by, um,

walking around the city, by going, you know, not...

You didn't have... You had...

Neighborhoods had different kinds of food.

You go down to 42nd street, which was so fantastic.

It had the penny arcades.

In the old clays, had a peep show...

Who might be some hookers.

Stephen Geller: Bob is a denizen of New York.

He revels in, uh, in the New York scene,

and the different ethnic diversity.

A New York sense of humor...

The culture of New York.

And, I think it's had

a tremendous influence on his art.

Bob: I think that my art

has a lot to do with, uh, the energy of the city.

And, so, the city was reality.

Man: Are you a member

of the communist party,

or have you ever been a member of the communist party?

Bob: I grew up in a household

fairly well-off until 1950,

uh, I don't know, 1953, or...

Somewhere around there.

My father was the head of the radio writers guild

and Helen Hayes would only use his scripts.

So, we were doing pretty well.

Senator: I have offered to go before

any committee, do anything you ask,

if I can just get you to come down here and take the oath

so we can get the answers to some questions.

Now, you're not... you're not fooling anyone at all.

- Man: Senator... - Senator: I'm sure of that.

Bob: He was asked, "are you now,

or have you ever been a member of the communist party?"

And he basically said,

"that's none of your goddamn business.

I'm an American. I don't have to tell you this."

My father was blacklisted.

He never was a communist, but that's not the issue.

And because of that,

we went into poverty, almost immediately.

So, I grew up in a house where...

The... the strong... The issue was principle.

It was about...

You talk about justice, human rights,

about community, all of that,

and I think that was very, very strong in our family.

The other thing is... I always felt very secure

about the fact, hey, that he would never be

on the wrong side of a... Right.

Of an issue, and... From my point of view.

And. Uh... But, he..

And, also, I felt that he was not, um...

Devious, or... He was very...

He was who he was.

As a father, he was like growing up

with Hamlet or something, you know,

indecisive, couldn't handle money.

Even when he had money, we were always having to...

Shell in to keep things going.

His mother, my grandmother,

sent me, over the years, $2 bills.

I had a collection of them, on my wall.

I was very proud of these things.

I mean, when I say a collection,

I mean I had like maybe $500 worth of $2 bills.

There's a story of, he was away at camp,

Bob was away at camp. And he came home,

and his collection of $2 bills

that he had saved assiduously for a long time,

that he had tacked up on the wall, had been taken.

And I'm looking at my... Through, into my room,

and there were no $2 bills.

He went in, and he took all the $2 bills off the wall.

He took Bob's money and never paid it back.

It's devastating if you're, like, 14 years old

and you've now amassed this whole thing.

But, then again, I suppose somewhere in my head,

I said, "oh, yeah, but that came from his mother."

Bob's concern about injustice, here and there...

Comes out in his work.

There's a painting he did called "give to Cenedella,"

which is his father collecting money

in a street fair in his undershorts.

Bob: The first "saleable" item

I created was called the "I like Ludwig" button,

and it was in competition with the "I love Elvis."

I never responded to Elvis Presley.

It just didn't ring with me.

Beethoven, you know, that's what I listened to.

And I had a perfect audience.

The button became a national seller.

They wrote about it first in the "new yorker,"

and then in places around the country and so on.

I sold thousands of these buttons.

So, I... I put myself through the art students league

with the money I made from the Ludwig buttons.

I really didn't know what the league was about

other than it was an art school,

and that they didn't require me

to have a high school diploma.

I walk into the room, and I see all these

other students with pads.

I had a little pad,

and I had a pencil.

I was probably the youngest one. I was 17.

And they were 50-year-old, or 60-year-old.

And all of a sudden, this man walks in

with a gray suit, vest,

white shirt, black, polished shoes.

He went around the room.

I remember, he came to me.

He said I need a bigger pad, I need charcoal, not a pencil.

And he told me just to make as big a drawing

as I could on this pad, which I did.

And then, when he took off his jacket,

and rolled up his sleeves, ready to work.

But that was very serious.

I had no idea.

Certainly didn't know who George Grosz was.

I felt an authority was there.

I felt the presence of someone who was confident.

When I left, I thought,

Hey, I think maybe I had a great Clay.

Maybe... I'll be back tomorrow."

This painting is called "the fight."

I've always like the way the painting was planned out,

with a circle around the fighters, and, uh...

This was outside, when I lived on west 86th street.

It... it had a very New York moment.