I'm greedy for life; and I'm greedy as an artist. I'm greedy for what I hope chance can give me far beyond anything that I can calculate logically. And it's partly my greed that has made me what's called live by chance -- greed for food, for drink, for being with the people one likes, for the excitement of things happening. So the same applies to one's work.
A purpose for nothing. So that, in spite of the sense that life is ultimately futile, nevertheless one finds the energy to do something which one believes in. But believes in for nothing — but believes in.
I know it’s a contradiction in terms; it’s nevertheless how it is. Because we are born and we die, but in between we give this purposeless existence a meaning by our drives.I think of life as meaningless; but we give it meaning during our own existence.
We create certain attitudes which give it a meaning while we exist, though they in themselves are meaningless, really.
Interview with David Sylvester
So the negation of the productive act in art, as introduced by Duchamp and revived by Warhol, was never acceptable to you?
No, because the artist's productive act cannot be negated. It's just that it has nothing to do with the talent of 'making by hand', only with the capacity to see and to decide what is to be made visible. How that then gets fabricated has nothing to do with art or with artistic abilities.
Interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, 1986
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder,bloodshed-- they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.
In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce...? The cuckoo clock.
The Third Man
Written and performed by Orson Welles in the Graham Greene, Carol Reed film.
"I don't think we're for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose' but I'm anticipating a good lunch."
taught under the motto 'Play becomes party - party becomes work - work becomes play'.