Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it.

Artists try to ask questions, and within our society, unless there are artists, those questions don't get asked. And everybody blames the market.

Art history is fine. I mean, that's a discipline. Art history is art history, and you start from the beginning and you end up in artist in time. But art is a little bit different. Art is a conversation. And if there's no conversation, what the hell is it about?

There are people who speculate at objects. I don't think that makes them evil or not evil. It doesn't matter; in order to speculate, it has to be made public. Once it's made public, it's functioned is art.

The concept of who your audience is becomes more important than your site. Sometimes you can be commissioned to do a piece in Strasburg, and it works. Sometimes you're commissioned to do a piece somewhere else and it doesn't work, but then it moves to another city, the people embrace it, and becomes part of them. You just misjudged the needs of the people. Art is about giving people material and things to work with to fulfill whatever needs they have.

The art schools seem to be trying to turn people out as "professional." But I don't know what the word "professional" means any longer. "Professional" would be somebody who was trying to push painting to a point that nobody else could do as well as he could. That would be my ideal professional.

I think there should be a reworking of the value structure of art. The value is when the artist makes a first engagement with society. That work has the most value. That is the function of the artist. That result.