It's too simplistic to advance the notion of the autonomy of art as a reason for turning away from the public. You can have autonomy and simultaneously have connections with the social and political world.

Scientific reality is the modern human condition, and you can see that in the symbolic nature of my work.

I've been such an outsider my whole life.

So we can't go backwards, we can only go where the evolutionary trajectory is taking us and attune our ideas about ourselves and our existence to that course.

Descriptions of my work depress me. They make me feel pinned down.

Large-scale public projects require the agreement of large numbers of people.

I've learned that in order to achieve what I wanted, it made more sense to negotiate than to defend the autonomy of my work by pounding my fist on the table.