Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

I had only planned to strike the gong violently in order to somehow shake people up and make them more aware. I think I succeeded.

I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

If you speak of beauty, you are at once suspected of...kitsch.

Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.

Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

The best way to begin is to say: 'Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at the paintings'.