In any country, in any city, there will be political influence on what is said, what kind of images are to be projected and, yes, of course artists can be and are influenced by politicians.
I have always been a coward as a child. I am not very brave. I am very aware of the fact that I am not very gutsy.
I discovered that bone china was a British invention, which had been developed by a pottery sited next to a slaughterhouse - 'bone' china, of course, contains bones, though we are inclined to forget that.
I hate roses. Don't you? It's all right if you can hide them in a cutting garden, but I think a rose garden is the height of ick.
When the movie was done, Number Five was crated up. Eric took him over to Germany; displayed him over there because Germans really liked this movie. It was very popular with them.
I often use hypothetical situations to generate information and imagery for paintings and to create a fictional space where a subject can be put into play.
That's when I feel really excited about a painting. When it starts to feel real, when it feels like it has a personality.
I was born in Argentina, June 13, 1943. I brought up my parents very well, so they let me come to America to study at Princeton University.
You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.
You will have to experiment and try things out for yourself and you will not be sure of what you are doing. That's all right, you are feeling your way into the thing.
You must be absolutely honest and true in the depicting of a totem for meaning is attached to every line. You must be most particular about detail and proportion.
My primary thing is to make a painting, not necessarily to make a painting to sell for gazillions of dollars, but just to make a painting.
I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism.
One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.
I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me.
I like suggesting that 'we are slaves to the objects around us,' that 'plenty should be enough,' or that the 'buyer should beware,' within the context of conventional selling space.
Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.
I have a book of buildings from 25,000 BC. These are huts built out of mammoth bones. These buildings were beautifully made, from the bones of the body into shelter.
The beast for me is greed. Whether you read Dante, Swift, or any of these guys, it always boils down to the same thing: the corruption of the soul.
But if you can find that spot - I suppose it's like running - I used to be a swimmer and swim laps, and you just have to be there with what you're doing.
An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
