My first inspirations, first starting, was that I thought I could devise a new space, from painting outdoor billboards in Times Square. And that was, as a kid I was subject to Rinso White commercials, early television commercials, our commercial society, which was quite unlike Russia, for instance. And I thought — my job was to paint big pictures of movie stars, and to paint objects to sell, and if I could paint them really well, the company would sell them, and if I didn’t, I’d get fired. I had to paint beer to look beautiful. I had to paint beautiful beer, beautiful shirts, beautiful everything. So a salesman would come in and say, “That beer’s got too much hops in it. Tell that kid to change it. Gotta change it.” So that only meant me making a slightly different color yellow, and repainting the whole damn thing slightly. So I’d take that beer with too much hops in it, that color, which was only yellow, I’d take that home with me. And I’d take Franco-American spaghetti orange, I’d take that home. Which was like red dye number 2 and yellow. I’d take that home and I’d make abstract paintings out of these. And then I thought, “Hey, I’ll use imagery, magnified imagery that spilled out of the picture plane, and I’d set it up so the closest thing you would see would be recognized last, because it would be too personal, and it would irritate people. So that’s how my so-called “Pop Art” paintings started. And I really used generic things, unlike say, Andy Warhol, who used Campbell’s Soup. I painted spaghetti, I painted soup, I painted hot dogs, jeans, I painted cars, all kinds of things, really generically. I didn’t care about the labels.