This Superficial Blurring Has Something To Do

But It Is Also Untrue That I Have Nothing Specific In Mind. As With My Landscapes: I See Countless Landscapes, Photograph Barely 1 In 100,000, And Paint Barely 1 In 100 Of Those That I Photograph. I Am Therefore Seeking Something Quite Specific; From This I Conclude That I Know What I Want.

Form Is All We Have To Help Us Cope With Fundamentally Chaotic Facts And Assaults. Formulating Something Is A Great Start. I Trust Form, Trust My Feeling Or Capacity To Find The Right Form For Something. Even If That Is Only By Being Well Organized. That Too Is Form.

I Began In 1976, With Small Abstract Paintings That Allowed Me To Do What I Had Never Let Myself Do: Put Something Down At Random. And Then, Of Course, I Realized That It Never Can Be Random. It Was All A Way Of Opening A Door For Me. If I Don't Know What's Coming - That Is, If I Have No Hard-and-fast Image, As I Have With A Photographic Original - Then Arbitrary Choice And Chance Play An Important Part.

Well, The Beginning Is Actually Quite Easy, Because I Can Still Be Quite Free About The Way I Handle Things - Colours, Shapes. And So A Picture Emerges That May Look Quite Good For A While, So Airy And Colourful And New. But That Will Only Last For A Day At Most, At Which Point It Starts To Look Cheap And Fake. And Then The Real Work Begins - Changing, Eradicating, Starting Again, And So On, Until It's Done.

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.