The work of art is a scream of freedom.
It appears to be monumental only because it's art.
Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to '95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it's not written by an art historian.
People think our work is monumental because it's art, but human beings do much bigger things: they build giant airports, highways for thousands of miles, much, much bigger than what we create.
Therefore we have to go over the fact that all human beings are afraid by what is new. It is our work to convince them that they will enjoy it, and even if they don't, to allow us just for 14 days to create that work of art.
We have created indoor installations inside museums, like the Wrapped Floor at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1968, and not monumental at all by any standards.
Often the art in New York is related to the buildings, to grandiose things.
We are probably the only artists in the world who have a 2,000-page book on a work of art that doesn't exist. But in this way, these projects reveal their identity through this whole process. When I'm starting, I only have the slightest idea of how t...
We tell them that we believe it will be beautiful because that is our specialty, we only create joy and beauty. We have never done a sad work. Through the drawings, we hope a majority will be able to visualize it.
And for me, the real world involves everything: risk, danger, beauty, energy, all we meet with in the real world.
Our work is a scream of freedom.
The freedom of every artist is essential.
To keep that absolute freedom we cannot be obliged to anyone.
We wish to work in total freedom.
New York is our home.
I escaped from my home country, Bulgaria, to Czechoslovakia and then to the West.
But now, today, we don't know if Over the River is truly the next project to be realized, because something very nice happened to our life in November in New York.
And for every project, because it takes years, you can see the early drawings and collages as just a simple, vague idea, and through the years and through the negotiations of getting the permit, you see that every detail is now clarified.
And the most unusual and surrealistic place in New York City is Central Park.
Because we do not sell photographs, we have no royalties on books, posters, postcards.
