I used to jokingly say, "I don't teach art. I'm an art doctor." Students come to me and say, "My art's sick," and we help them make it well.

Look at the subject as if you have never seen it before. Examine it from every side. Draw its outline with your eyes or in the air with your hands, and saturate yourself with it.

If you're smart, you abandon the things that didn't work out so well, and you enlarge upon the things that seem to be successful.

I could never figure out why photography and art had separate histories. So I decided to explore both.

The idea of vaudeville clowns and court jesters is always to show the flaw, to point out what's not working and why it's not coherent.

There's no such thing as a bad photograph.

I was getting tired of hearing the complaint, "My kid could do this," and "We don't get it. What's modern art? Blah, blah, blah." And I wondered what would really happen if you gave people what they wanted, something they always look at.