When I Look Back On

It Was Not Possible For Us To Produce The Same Optimism And The Same Kind Of Humour Or Irony. Actually, It Was Not Irony. Lichtenstein Is Not Ironic But He Does Have A Special Kind Of Humour. That's How I Could Describe It: Humour And Optimism. For Polke And Me, Everything Was More Fragmented. But How It Was Broken Up Is Hard To Describe.

But My Motivation Was More A Matter Of Wanting To Create Order - To Keep Track Of Things. All Those Boxes Full Of Photographs And Sketches Weigh You Down, Because They Have Something Unfinished, Incomplete, About Them. So It's Better To Present The Usable Material In An Orderly Fashion And Throw The Other Stuff Away. That's How The Atlas Came To Be, And I Exhibited It A Few Times.

All Photographs Are Far More Important Than Any Painting.

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).

Contact With Like-minded Painters - A Group Means A Great Deal To Me: Nothing Comes In Isolation. We Have Worked Out Our Ideas Largely By Talking Them Through. Shutting Myself Away In The Country, For Instance, Would Do Nothing For Me. One Depends On One's Surroundings. And So The Exchange With Other Artists - And Especially The Collaboration With Lueg And Polke - Matters A Lot To Me: It Is Part Of The Input That I Need.