I guess you'd call me an independent, since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves, no matter what the party labe...
I was always taught to let the obstacles be your guide because they lead you to places that you wouldn't have gone on your own. Instead of going through a rock, you go around it, creating a path.
Take a relief. You draw it, you carve it out. Later you build it up from a flat surface. There is no other way to do a sculpture - you either add or you subtract.
Comedians take a neat situation and turn it into a mess. And in my books I do the same thing, but it's the other way around. I like to mess around with mess. A mess is only a mess because someone tells you it is.
It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.
It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation—of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things—the thought of God comes into one's mind.
And just as there was something of every Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh so there is something of Ho Chi Minh in almost every present-day Vietnamese, so strong is his imprint on the Vietnamese nation.
I want to make beautiful paintings. But I don't make beautiful paintings by putting beautiful paint on a canvas with a beautiful motif. It just doesn't work. I expect my paintings to be strong and surprising.
I actually think that 'States of Union' will be a lifelong endeavor for me. It won't take up all my energy as it has in recent years, but I imagine that I will always continue to add to the body of work - the project of documentation will never be en...
It's very intense to go back to the past and revive work that I've already experienced and moved forward from. It's like seeing an old girlfriend - awkward at times, nostalgic at times and downright maddening and embarrassing.
I like to use my hands and make things... It might seem pretty stupid or pointless but that doesn't matter... some of the most interesting work is the stuff that starts like that - out of a raw need for activity.
I've always had the idea that multi-millionaire rock stars should work harder than anyone because they have the ability to do it. Look at an artist like Andy Warhol. He never stopped working, even after he didn't need to work again.
Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I'll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that's never-ending.
Often I think changes within my work have been seen as sudden changes or sharp changes, but for me they're not that sudden. They have been there in the studio, but not so much in public.
The older painting - well, it does have an effect all at once, I suppose, but it's of a lesser intensity than a lot of the American work in the last ten or fifteen years.
You work with people who are obsessive about shopping, obsessive about owning things and buying things, like this purchase is going to make them happy. And you want to say to them, 'You know, no amount of real estate is gonna fill that void.'
There are those photographers who have made a whole career doing commercial work but have never had a museum show, and then there are others who've only had museum shows but couldn't survive for five seconds in the real world of photography. But I've...
I'm working in this very complex set of issues having to do with who we are as a species and how much we can do to the Earth before it starts to buckle under. My work can easily read as an indictment, but I don't see it as that simple a problem.
Technically, I have not changed very much. Ask my assistants. They'll tell you, I am the easiest photographer to work with. I don't have heavy equipment. I work out of one bag.
A few days of idleness have completely sickened me, and given me what is called the blue-devils so severely, that I feel that the sooner I go to work and drive them off, the better.
Since 1970, I've been using text and ephemera as well as photographs in order to tell stories of one kind or another. There's a thread that runs through all the work that is to do with bearing witness. The photographs are about asking questions, thou...
