You try not to talk about the past too much as an artist. Instead, you focus on the continuity of your work.

This idea of the body as a feast, it stems from Giuseppe Arcimboldo, moves to Viennese artists like Günter Brus, and then you have Salvador Dalí of course, then much later, Marina Abramović and Ulay, with their nude series in Italy. It's an ongoing conversation. There was nothing cruel about Méret's Oppenheim piece.

You try not to talk about the past too much as an artist. Instead, you focus on the continuity of your work.

I met Méret Oppenheim when I was a very young artist just coming to New York. She really liked my early films and showed them in her beautiful old cinema in Bern, Switzerland when I didn't have the money to go back. But, "fear-love," this really means "shy love." It's about holding something back. With Méret, there was nothing oppressive or demonstrative about her affection. It was very soft.

The transformation of the experience: that is pure art.

Méret's Oppenheim art was aesthetically beautiful. Drinking champagne and eating a cherry off some tits, this is no big deal really.

Sometimes I go to sleep thinking, "I don't like this painting." But then I wake up in the morning, look at it again and think, "Actually, that's not so bad."