I moved to New York in the 1970s and started writing when I was at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.
One of the glories and terrors of working in public is that you do see if your output means anything to anyone.
SPIT ALL OVER SOMEONE WITH A MOUTHFUL OF MILK IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT SOMETHING ABOUT THEIR PERSONALITY FAST.
Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.
To do a drawing for a painting most often means doing something very sketchy and schematic and then later making it polished.
Dancers use their bodies in extraordinary ways, so we are chronically pre-arthritic, because of how we use our muscles and our bones.
I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.
Whenever you finish an artwork and the viewer comes and views it, at that moment you've given up control.
I'm sick of the foodies who need every morsel that goes into their mouth to be a Picasso painting, a Giacometti sculpture, a Proust novel, evoking the world with each crumb.
I wish there was a painter who could paint as well as Ted Williams could hit.
For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive.
When the painting is hanging on your wall for a long time, you don't notice it. You get tired of it, even if it's a Picasso. When the next generation inherits the painting, they sell it. I don't want to be sold.
McMurphy: We're just having a little party. Orderly Turkle: Party my ass, this ain't no nightclub!
On the little money I had collected I lived in Berlin very cheaply, ate very cheaply. And already in 1920 I saved the first salaries I received to go to Munich.
I lost my daughter at 21. I had to give her up because I was broke, no place to take her, no money to take her. That was very traumatic.
Because I'm not doing it for the money, I'm doing it because I feel like that story needs to be told or clarified, or something needs to be shown about that.
I don't think money can help you become a better painter, for sure. You can have all the studios you want; it won't help you make a better painting.
I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.
An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.
I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.
Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.
