I Don't Believe In The Reality Of

I Believe That The Quintessential Task Of Every Painter In Any Time Has Been To Concentrate On The Essential.

These Pictures Possibly Give Rise To Questions Of Political Content Or Historical Truth. Neither Interests Me In This Instance. And Although Even My Motivation For Painting Them Is Probably Of No Significance, I Am Trying To Put A Name To It Here, As An Articulation, Parallel To The Pictures, As It Were, Of My Disquiet And Of My Opinion.

Yes, We Were Amazed When That Happened. It Was A Real Joke To Us. Konrad Lueg And I Did A Happening, And We Used The Phrase Just For The Happening, To Have A Catchy Name For It; And Then It Immediately Got Taken Up And Brought Into Use. There's No Defence Against That - And Really It's No Bad Thing.

Photography Has Almost No Reality; It Is Almost A Hundred Per Cent Picture. And Painting Always Has Reality: You Can Touch The Paint; It Has Presence; But It Always Yields A Picture - No Matter Whether Good Or Bad. That's All The Theory. It's No Good. I Once Took Some Small Photographs And Then Smeared Them With Paint. That Partly Resolved The Problem, And It's Really Good - Better Than Anything I Could Ever Say On The Subject.

The Truth... When They Have A Similar Structure To And Are Organized In As Truthful A Way As Nature. When I Look Out Of The Window, Then Truth For Me Is The Way Nature Shows Itself In Its Various Tones, Colours And Proportions. That's A Truth And Has Its Own Correctness. This Little Slice Of Nature, And In Fact Any Given Piece Of Nature, Represents To Me An Ongoing Challenge, And Is A Model For My Paintings.