It's That Same Quality I've Been Talking

I Think Everybody Starts Out By Seeing A Few Works Of Art And Wanting To Do Something Like Them. You Want To Understand What You See, What Is There, And You Try To Make A Picture Out Of It. Later You Realize That You Can't Represent Reality At All - That What You Make Represents Nothing But Itself, And Therefore Is Itself Reality.

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.

The Photograph Is The Most Perfect Picture. It Does Not Change; It Is Absolute, And Therefore Autonomous, Unconditional, Devoid Of Style. Both In Its Way Of Informing, And In What It Informs Of, It Is My Source.

I Am Thankful That The Church Exists, Thankful That It Has Done Such Great Things, Giving Us Laws, For Instance - 'thou Shalt' And 'thou Shalt Not', And Established Goodness And Evil. That's What All Religions Do, And As Soon As We Try To Replace Them, Worldly Religions Like Fascism And Communism Take Over.

Pictures Are The Idea In Visual Or Pictorial Form; And The Idea Has To Be Legible, Both In The Individual Picture And In The Collective Context - Which Presupposes, Of Course, That Words Are Used To Convey Information About The Idea And The Context. However, None Of This Means That Pictures Function As Illustrations Of An Idea: Ultimately, They Are The Idea. Nor Is The Verbal Formulation Of The Idea A Translation Of The Visual: It Simply Bears A Certain Resemblance To The Meaning Of The Idea. It Is An Interpretation, Literally A Reflection.