GERHARD RICHTER

A father draws boundaries and calls a halt, whenever necessary. As I didn't have that, I was able to stay childishly naive that much longer - so I did what I liked, because there was nobody stopping me, even when I got it wrong.

I have painted my family so frequently because they are the one who really affect me the most.

Without form, communication stops... without form, you have everybody burbling on to themselves, whenever and however, things that no one else can understand and - rightly - no one else is interested in.

I don't believe in God.

Now that we do not have priests and philosophers any more, artists are the most important people in the world.

I don't dare to think my paintings are great. I can't understand the arrogance of someone saying, 'I have created a big, important work.'

Art should be serious, not a joke. I don't like to laugh about art.

I go to the studio every day, but I don't paint every day. I love playing with my architectural models. I love making plans. I could spend my life arranging things.

When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.

I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.

I have always been structured. What has changed is the proportions. Now it is eight hours of paperwork and one of painting.

Chance determines our lives in important ways.

Gray is the color... the most important of all... absent of opinion, nothing, neither/nor.

I can't paint as well as Vermeer.

I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes or variations that lead to mastery... I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty. Other qualities may be more conducive to achievement, publicity, success; but they are all outworn - as outworn as ideologies, opinions, concepts and names for things.

I do see myself as the heir to a vast, great, rich culture of painting - of art in general - which we have lost, but which places obligations on us.

Every museum is full of nice things. That's the opposite of before. It was important things or serious things. Now we have interesting things.

Weeks go by, and I don't paint until finally I can't stand it any longer. I get fed up. I almost don't want to talk about it, because I don't want to become self-conscious about it, but perhaps I create these little crises as a kind of a secret strategy to push myself.

Good art in general aspires to something, as a good painting aspires to something, almost spiritual or holy.

I am ridiculously old-fashioned.

Politicians are nauseating by definition... They can produce nothing, neither a loaf of bread nor a table nor a picture; and this inability to create value, this total inferiority, makes them jealous, vengeful, insolent and a menace to life and limb.

I don't think I can do this - painting under observation. It's the worst thing there is, worse than being in the hospital.

I believe in painting and I believe in eating too. What can we do? We have to eat, we have to paint, we have to live. Of course, there are different ways to survive. But it's my best option.

It's our culture, Christian history, that's what formed me. Even as an atheist, I believe. We're just built that way.

We've lost these qualities, these abilities to do something by hand. Some illustrators have it still, but it's just not art. We have photography. We have cameras and computers that do it better and faster.