Now There Are No Priests Or Philosophers

When I First Painted A Number Of Canvases Grey All Over (about Eight Years Ago), I Did So Because I Did Not Know What To Paint, Or What There Might Be To Paint: So Wretched A Start Could Lead To Nothing Meaningful. As Time Went On, However, I Observed Differences Of Quality Among The Grey Surfaces - And Also That These Betrayed Nothing Of The Destructive Motivation That Lay Behind Them. The Pictures Began To Teach Me. By Generalizing A Personal Dilemma, They Resolved It.

Throwaway Snapshots Come Closest To Achieving The State Of Pure Picture.

I Wanted To Make It As Anonymous As A Photo. But It Was Perhaps Also The Wish For Perfection, The Unapproachable, Which Then Means Loss Of Immediacy. Something Is Missing Then, Though; That Is Why I Gave That Up.

I Didn't Actually Know What The Protesters In The West Really Wanted. It Was Fantastic Here, So Much Freedom, And That Was What They Were Calling Musty, Middle-class, And Fascistic, A Bleak Period. Bleak Was What The Gdr Was, And It Alone Had Adopted, Almost Unchanged, Nazi Germany's Methods Of Intimidation And Ideas About Propaganda And The Use Of Force.

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.