Perhaps the first photograph ever taken, Niépce's view of the rooftops over Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, was a truly pure photograph. The second one he took, he was already comparing nature to the first photograph he had taken.

The great challenge is how to make smart, intelligent art that can speak to everybody.

A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a little bit more intention, you see it.

Illusions as bad as mine make people aware of the fallacies of visual information and the pleasure to be derived from such fallacies.

In the back of every painting there's an entire universe that makes it possible for the painting to be there: an army of conservators, technicians, people who maintain these things, the market.

I think I'm an ambitious artist but you have to understand the measure of your influence on people. You're not going to change people's lives with your art. What you do is you give them a little pat so that you change the course of the direction that they're going.

I think pure light has something to do with actually seeing everything at once. It's kind of a nirvana of sorts.