I Am Ridiculously Old-fashioned.

The Grey Is Certainly Inspired By The Photo-paintings, And, Of Course, It's Related To The Fact That I Think Grey Is An Important Colour - The Ideal Colour For Indifference, Fence-sitting, Keeping Quiet, Despair. In Other Words, For States Of Being And Situations That Affect One, And For Which One Would Like To Find A Visual Expression.

It Was Not Possible For Us To Produce The Same Optimism And The Same Kind Of Humour Or Irony. Actually, It Was Not Irony. Lichtenstein Is Not Ironic But He Does Have A Special Kind Of Humour. That's How I Could Describe It: Humour And Optimism. For Polke And Me, Everything Was More Fragmented. But How It Was Broken Up Is Hard To Describe.

When I First Painted A Number Of Canvases Grey All Over (about Eight Years Ago), I Did So Because I Did Not Know What To Paint, Or What There Might Be To Paint: So Wretched A Start Could Lead To Nothing Meaningful. As Time Went On, However, I Observed Differences Of Quality Among The Grey Surfaces - And Also That These Betrayed Nothing Of The Destructive Motivation That Lay Behind Them. The Pictures Began To Teach Me. By Generalizing A Personal Dilemma, They Resolved It.

Throwaway Snapshots Come Closest To Achieving The State Of Pure Picture.

Maybe We Didn't Even Have A Chance. The Message Of American Pop Art Was So Powerful And So Optimistic. But It Was Also Very Limited, And That Led Us To Believe That We Could Somehow Distance Ourselves From It And Communicate A Different Intention.