What did you learn from all this study of art? Did you learn anything about art?
Yeah, I learned three things. First I learned that better art gets made in times of crisis. Art that’s accepted in its time is rarely remembered. The stuff that stands out was made in times of crisis and suffering. And that the lives of most of the artists whose names we know were in rather desperate circumstances almost their entire lives. Conflict is apparently good for art, but bad for artists. The second thing I learned is that art is made by human beings and most of them are trying to communicate things to us that are really important to them. I mean, they’re really trying to tell you something. And you can listen by leaning into a painting or an art thing, whatever it is. That you can lean into it. And that it’s leaning out to you-the artist is inside the painting and they’re trying to reach out at you and … I don’t know how to describe it any better-you can lean into it. And the last thing, the third thing, is that no matter what it is-whether it’s a painting or a sculpture or a photograph-visual art at least-it’s made out four things, just like every poem and every novel is in the dictionary-it’s just arranging the words in a certain order. Because every artwork is made out of color, it’s made out of surface, it’s made out of shape and … I forgot my own formula. Oh, yeah, volume. Whatever it is it’s made out of color, surface, shape, and volume. And, finally, really, whatever you can see is actually made out of light.