To Believe, One Must Have Lost God.

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.

It Can Be A Work By Mondrian, A Piece Of Music By Schönberg Or Mozart, A Painting By Leonardo, Barnett Newman Or Also Jackson Pollock. That's Beautiful To Me. But Also Nature. A Person Can Be Beautiful As Well. And Beauty Is Also Defined As 'untouched'. Indeed, That's An Ideal: That We Humans Are Untouched And Therefore Beautiful.

Family Photos, Pictures Of Groups, Those Are Truely Wonderful. And They Are Just As Good As The Old Masters, Just As Rich And Just As Beautifully Composed (what Does That Mean Anyway).

Painting Is Consequently An Almost Blind, Desperate Effort, Like That Of A Person Abandoned, Helpless, In Totally Incomprehensible Surroundings.

I Wanted To Say Something Different: The Pictures Are Also A Leave-taking, In Several Respects. Factually: These Specific Persons Are Dead; As A General Statement, Death Is Leave-taking. And Then Ideologically: A Leave-taking From A Specific Doctrine Of Salvation And, Beyond That, From The Illusion That Unacceptable Circumstances Of Life Can Be Changed By This Conventional Expedient Of Violent Struggle.