I am in no mood to be deceived any longer by the crafty devil and false character whose greatest pleasure is to take advantage of everyone.
I took all my wax studies and threw them in the fire... that's the way it is when something unpleasant happens to me. I take my hammer and I squash a figure.
Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.
I don't want the viewer to be able to peel away the layers of my painting like the layers of an onion and find that all the blues are on the same level.
I don't care about the Guggenheim. The Guggenheim isn't involved in anything that I am interested in. I don't care about motorcycles and Armani suits.
Any artist who goes to Las Vegas is an idiot as far as I am concerned. Whoever goes to Las Vegas can stay in Las Vegas.
Of all the artists who emerged in the '80s, I think perhaps Cindy Sherman is the most important.
I always figure I have this tree and there's always some green fruit that's not ready to pick or blossoms that are ready to flower; there are always some ready to drop off too.
It's the emotional trigger points that are important to me because I know if I could believe in the characters and try and imagine how they felt then I'd be able to do something quite honest.
But I also wanted to give them an intelligent emotional journey, without having to suspend reality - to be able to look at those characters and see reasons for the relationships and why what happens happens.
Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue - that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man's destruction is finished.
I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.
I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.
I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.
I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me,so natural to my way of being and thinking.
I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.
The conscience of an artist worthy of the name is like an incurable disease which causes him endless torment but occasionally fills him with silent joy.
Every museum is full of nice things. That's the opposite of before. It was important things or serious things. Now we have interesting things.
I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.
When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.
I don't think I can do this - painting under observation. It's the worst thing there is, worse than being in the hospital.
