Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it.

I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal.

My struggle has been to return painting to the tangible object, which is like returning the personality to touching and feeling the world around it, to offset the tendency to vagueness and abstraction. To remind people of practical activity, to suggest the sense and not to escape from the senses.

It's got the context of a very good architect [Renzo Piano, who designed the expansion] and an excellent museum. You couldn't ask for more.

I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete.

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.