84
PARTISAN REVIEW
Rauschenberg show, but it began as a group show. At first onl y one
Rauschenberg wo uld appear, and then , every Olher day I would take
o ut a pa inLing of somebody else's and put in ano ther Rauschenberg .
so tha t in about ten days a ll th e Olh er paintings were evi cted , and
there was onl y Rauschenberg; and th en the show fini shed in th e same
way; he was replaced littl e by littl e by other pa intings.
Diamon stein:
Was th a t the first process a rt ?
Castelli:
It was the first thing I did tha t seemed a lillie bizarre.
It
was in
the style o f H appenings, I would say. But to come back
to
Lichten–
stein , who plays a ro le here, I put one of Roy's pa intings in tha t
show a t the beginning, and it was on tha t occasion tha t Ra uschen–
berg saw a Lichtenstein painting for the ftrsttime. He was incredibl y
taken aback and didn 't kn ow wha t
to
do with it. H e sa id, wha t is
tha t, I rea ll y don 't understand , and the next day he came up and sa id,
I rea ll y thought abo ut it and I think I understand it, and I do like it
very mu ch .
Diamonstein:
How would yo u describe th e Pop Art mo vement, Roy?
And who made the movement? Did you ever expect the press
to
react
to the arti sti c advenLures o f tha t g ro up in the way tha t they d id ?
L ichtenstein:
No, I wouldn 't have imagined an ythin g like tha t.
I ...vas
brought up in an era when very few serious Ameri can a rti sts had an y
success with their a rt, and I was teaching a nd painting, and I
expected to continue tha t way. So, I had no expecta tion tha t
something like tha t wo uld happen . In fact I thought nobod y would
like the wo rk. The onl y ga ll ery th a t I thought wo uld look at the
wo rk a t a ll was Leo' s o r possibl y Green gall ery . Mos t ga ll eri es,
advanced ga ll eri es, seemed committed
to
Abstract Express ioni sm . I
a lso didn 't realize that o ther arti sts were doing a simil a r kind o f
work.
Diamonstein:
Who helped it coa lesce into a movement. and who made
it?
Lichtenstein:
I think it began wh en Leo (th ere were a lso, o f course,
Iva n Karp, Il eana Sonnabend , and Dick Bell amy) saw within a three
week period three a rti sts doing somewha t simila r things. Leo's
descr iption o f me bringin g my work to the ga ll ery for the fir st time is
abo ut ri ght. I left the pa intings at the gall ery and came back three
weeks la ter and saw Warhol's wo rk and heard about Rosenqui st's . I
think this was seen to be a mo vemenL by Leo, and there were o ther
a rti sts invo lved too : Oldenburg, Dine, Wesselman , and Sega l
LO
name some.
Diamonstein:
Do you think the kind of a rt we' re ta lking about can still
be ca ll ed Pop An ?
