There should be something revelatory about art. It should be totally creative and open doors for new thoughts and experiences.
Art is like a lover whom you run away from but who comes back and picks you up.
What's really good about the word 'art' is that 'art' is a word like 'love,' or 'god,' or whatever. It transcends so many things.
Most people don't do something seminal. I've done it twice: with my tent and my bed. Picasso did it with Cubism.
When it comes to words I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique.
I've worked really hard. I've made three pieces of seminal art in my life. If I died tomorrow, I'd be remembered for making them. There are a lot of artists who, no matter how hard they work in their lives, will never make anything seminal.
There are things going on in galleries recently that have shocked me. What I'm going to say is really controversial, but what I find the most provocative is the commerciality of art in general. And the fact that a lot of people have forgotten what the meaning of art is and what the intention behind it is.
Being an artist and having to be responsible for the art that you make is really quite challenging, and as you get older it becomes more and more difficult.
Criticism on my works is like this: you've worked hard all of your life, you went to Oxford, and you've done this and that, and you're an art critic. Your job is to unravel the "secret" or whatever, and you come across an entity like me. It's going to piss you off. Because there's no great secret, what you see is what you get, and anyone can understand what I'm doing. So, it's almost like I make this critic-person redundant, just by my attitude, and they resent me for that.
Strolling on the plateau of life, desperate for the mountain, I never thought that I would get this far. It's only art that has carried me through, given me faith in my own existence. But now I am approaching a point in my life where I desire more.
For me, being an artist with a high profile is a good thing for art.
I've been slagged off completely by the art world and I don't know whether fancy being slagged off by the literary world as well. It's just too much.
My influences were from Europe from between 1900 and 1945. My favorite artists were Egon Schiele or Edvard Munch. I wasn't interested in contemporary art at all.
I'm a terrible cook, but if I could cook, I would see that in art as well, it's how much creative energy you put into something.
There is no comparison between him and me; he developed a whole new way of making art and he's clearly in a league of his own. It would be like making comparisons with Warhol.
