Art Should Be Serious, Not

Suddenly, I Saw It In A New Way, As A Picture That Offered Me A New View, Free Of All The Conventional Criteria I Had Always Associated With Art. It Had No Style, No Composition, No Judgment. It Freed Me From Personal Experience. For The First Time, There Was Nothing To It: It Was Pure Picture. That's Why I Wanted To Have It, To Show It - Not Use It As A Means To Painting But Use Painting As A Means To Photography.

If, While I'm Painting, I Distort Or Destroy A Motif, It Is Not A Planned Or Conscious Act, But Rather It Has A Different Justification: I See The Motif, The Way I Painted It, Is Somehow Ugly Or Unbearable. Then I Try To Follow My Feelings And Make It Attractive. And That Means A Process Of Painting, Changing Or Destroying - For However Long It Takes - Until I Think It Has Improved. And I Don't Demand An Explanation From Myself As To Why This Is So.

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.

What Counts Isn't Being Able To Do A Thing, It's Seeing What It Is. Seeing Is The Decisive Act, And Ultimately It Places The Maker And The Viewer On The Same Level.

In The Beginning I Tried To Accommodate Everything There That Was Somewhere Between Art And Garbage And That Somehow Seemed Important To Me And A Pity To Throw Away. After A While, Some Sheets In The Atlas Acquired Another Value, After All - That Is, It Seemed To Me That They Could Stand On Their Own Terms, Not Only Under The Protection Of The Atlas.