I Am Ridiculously Old-fashioned.

That Was A Piece I Did In 1963 With Konrad Lueg In A Department Store, In The Furniture Department. It Was Announced In Some Papers As An Exhibition Opening, But The People Who Came Didn't Know That It Was To Be A Sort Of Happening. I Don't Think It Is Quite Right That It Has Become So Famous Anyhow. It Was Just A Lot Of Fun, And The Word Itself, Capitalist Realism, Hit Just Right. But It Wasn't Such A Big Deal.

I Was A Student, And As Such You Generally Rely On Prior Models Of How To Make Art, But These Were Not Satisfying. Then I Discovered In Photos What Had Been Missing In Paintings; Namely That They Make A Terrific Variety Of Statements And Have Great Substance. That Is What I Wanted To Convey To Paintings And Apply To It.

And Then The Work Bears A Strong Sense Of Leave-taking For Me Personally. It Ends The Work I Began In The 1960s (paintings From Black-and-white Photographs), With A Compressed Summation That Precludes Any Possible Continuation. And So It Is A Leave-taking From Thoughts And Feelings Of My Own On A Very Basic Level. Not That This Is A Deliberate Act, Of Course; It Is A Quasi-automatic Sequence Of Disintegration And Reformation Which I Can Perceive, As Always, Only In Retrospect.

I'm Never Really Sure What That Word Means, But However Inaccurately I Use It, 'classical' Was Always My Ideal, As Long As I Can Remember, And Something Of That Has Always Stayed With Me, To This Day. Of Course, There Were Difficulties, Because In Comparison To My Ideal, I Didn't Even Come Close.

The Reason These Paintings Are Destined For New York Is Not Because I Am Disappointed About A Lack Of German Interest, But Because Moma Asked Me, And Because I Consider It To Be The Best Museum In The World.