Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared there will always be confusion and hate wars and class antagonisms.
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
When money and hype recede from the art world one thing I won't miss will be what curator Francesco Bonami calls the 'Eventocracy.' All this flashy 'art-fair art' and those highly produced space-eating spectacles and installations wow you for a minute until you move on to the next adrenaline event.
It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946 when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art.
I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art poems schools theology displacing all that exists or that has been produced anywhere in the past under opposite influences.
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
Until the Eighties Oslo was a rather boring town but it's changed a lot and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water's edge.
Italy is full of historical buildings. And Europe holds a great history of philosophy from Greece until today. I read all those books and see these buildings and I think of where I stand when I design my architecture.
I didn't make my first solo record until 1981 so I don't have any 60's or 70's recordings but I am working on a large boxed set called DUST to be released next year the 20th anniversary of my first solo record.