I have had enormous enthusiasm for particular artists, certainly.
And in many cases, they have been artists who lived in a completely different century from me.
I like what Picasso said one day. He said,
"Some young people seem to me older than some artists who've been dead for several centuries."
[Laughs] That was very good.
Some of these artists who've been dead for several centuries, their work seems
Entirely apropos to your own concerns right now. And so you seek them out.
You seek their work out. And I have traveled very long distances to see exhibitions by Claude Lorrain,
Or by Jacob Van Ruisdael, and Constable, and various people.
Turner, I sort of avoided, didn't think he was any good at all,
Then, one day I was trying to paint smoke and steam coming out of a factory in Pittsburg.
And I thought, "Oh my god, that guy Turner was an absolute master of these vapors, vapor."
Constable said that there were some beautiful Turners and they looked like they were
Made of tinted steam, that's just right. That's exactly right.
I don't know the techniques of the Ruisdael painting.
I could no more paint a Ruisdael painting than a man on the moon.
I know nothing about glazing, I don't use glazing at all.
I am what I call a direct painter - I put lumps of paint straight down on the canvas.
If they don't work, I take it off and I try a different lump.
I don't let it dry and put another layer over, and let that dry, and then another layer.
You know, I don't work that way.
So, I don't have any sentimentality about those painters, I don't think.
It's that they would seem useful to me, and provocative to me.
They were like challenges to me. Can you, can you do this that well?
So, I can't access those painters technically,
But I can access them through various things that their paintings do.