Art, film, fashion, music are all going on and interacting simultaneously. And L.A. is very receptive to that fusion.

I didn't know how to run a business. I was a terrible gallerist, the worst in history, possibly.

When you go out skating with your friends, you need one friend who knows how to take a good picture. Without the picture, there is no proof that you pulled the trick.

Celebrity has become, for better or worse, an art form. An artist can use themselves as a medium to become a celebrity as a walking work of art.

I started getting really curious about art. I read about the Dadaists and the Futurists and the Constructivists - those kind of movements which were reflecting the angst of the people of their times. Their work was trying to lead a movement. I began thinking about what was happening, with painting on the streets and painting on the trains as being similar but also coming from a real, pure space. It wasn't being created by academies. It was a spontaneous combustion of ideas that just happened.

Overall, I think any opportunity to expose people to art on a mass level - to have some kid in Oklahoma say to his mother, "I want to be an artist" - is a good thing.

From 1940 to the present, the art world and particularly Los Angeles, has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.