Art Shows Us How To See Things

Almost Every Work Of Art Is An Analogy. When I Make A Representation Of Something, This Too Is An Analogy To What Exists; I Make An Effort To Get A Grip On The Thing By Depicting It. I Prefer To Steer Clear Of Anything Aesthetic, So As Not To Set Obstacles In My Own Way And Not To Have The Problem Of People Saying: 'ah, Yes, That's How He Sees The World, That's His Interpretation.'

I Remember That I Felt I Had To Avoid All These Sensational Photos, The Hanged Woman, The Man Who Shot Himself, And So Forth. I Collected A Great Deal Of Material, Including A Number Of Banal, Irrelevant Photos, And Then In The Course Of My Work I Came Back To The Very Pictures I Had Actually Wanted To Avoid, Which Summed Up The Various Stories.

Composition Is A Side Issue. Its Role In My Selection Of Photographs Is A Negative One At Best. By Which I Mean That The Fascination Of A Photograph Is Not In Its Eccentric Composition But In What It Has To Say: Its Information Content. And, On The Other Hand, Composition Always Also Has Its Own Fortuitous Rightness.

I Never Worked At Painting As If It Were A Job; It Was Always Out Of Interest Or For Fun, A Desire To Try Something.

As A Matter Of Fact, It Was Only Through The Dealer Fred Jahn That I Succeeded In Overcoming My Reservation About The Works On Paper And Exhibiting Them. Added To This, Of Course, Was The Fact That After Ten Years I Could See The Watercolours In A Different Light, And In Conjunction With Pictures Painted Afterwards, They Had At Least Become More Comprehensible To Me.