You can take an object and simply put anything you want in that object, and I accessed that partly through Freudian ideas.

Ox-Bow was a very free place, very open. You could do whatever you wanted to do.

I had no idea what art was. There was one art class in high school, but it didn't make a big impression on me. Then I went to college and thought I'd become a writer.

Actually, New York is great for playing around. I made a lot of studies for New York-a big vacuum cleaner lying on the Battery in Manhattan.

It was easy to get a job at the Cedar Bar because people came and went, but I didn't like the atmosphere. Instead, I got a job at Cooper Union Library. I stayed at Cooper Union for seven years; it was my salvation. While I worked there, I also read books of every kind.

Art is a technique of communication. The image is the most complete technique of all communication.

My rule was not to paint things as they were. I wasn't copying; I was remaking them as my own.