There was a big drive when I was at art school to make you aware of the economy of meaning - after all this was still during the tail end of minimalism. Being responsible for everything you put in your picture and being able to defend it. Keeping everything clear around you so you know what is operating. To open the wound and keep it clean.

The 1990s after the reign of terror of academic vandalism will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning value beauty pleasure and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience.

I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week and no matter what kind of mood I'm in no matter how bad the art is I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good.

After its hothouse incubation in the seventies appropriation breathed important new life into art. This life flowered spectacularly over the decades - even if it's now close to aesthetic kudzu.

Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning).

I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'

I didn't grow up thinking of movies as film or art but as movies something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art or his art or the artist part of him than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

After a few months in my parents' basement I took an apartment near the state university where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.