Ludovico Einaudi Quotes

The cubism of Braque or Picasso, the dissonant compositions of Schoenberg or Stravinsky, the free-flowing and often erotic choreography of Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky - these were acts of rebellion against the certainties and traditions of the old world.

I remember my mother taking me to see the Picasso show in the 1940s, and I was impressed by the life and vibrancy of it all. It was a bit too avant-garde for most Londoners at the time, but since then, the city has become a centre for modern culture.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

Contemporary art will help me to modernise our society.

In the mid- to late '60s to the mid-'70s, when I was a student, there was a major change in the thinking about what art can be and how art is made.

Leger was not only the first artist I ever met but also the first pop artist, and he blew our minds.

From 1940 to the present, the art world - and particularly Los Angeles - has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.

I spent all of my childhood at a performance art camp. Putting on plays, it was more like commedia dell'arte. It wasn't career-oriented in any way. It was more fun and therapeutic, so I never really thought of it as something I would end up doing. I was more convinced I was going to be a painter.

Warhol had a huge effect on me. It wasn't that I sought it out. It was more of a natural evolution.

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.

I think I come from a time when all the artists I grew up with and I loved always used to try and push the boundaries, and there doesn't seem so much of that, really.

'No Hands' art goes straight back to Warhol. He was the first to use elves.

The 1970s seemed particularly playful. People were trying to make work that couldn't be sold.

Everybody has called Pop Art 'American' painting, but it's actually industrial painting.

The Seventies seemed like this really open time. There were a lot of strong women characters deciding what kind of artists they wanted to be.

I was 15 years old in 1972, and yeah, when the 1970s broke, I was out there. Everything was kinda swirling around me - the music, women, cars, the culture.

Warhol was proof that you can be revolutionary without being militant.

Warhol had resonance because it was high art and low art. And you could argue about it endlessly.

I am more interested in revolutionary beauty than in the great beauty, to be honest. Italian cinema is now mostly a bureau for tourism. We have given up that revolution of the contemporary.

Modernism was born in part out of the need to find fresh ways of expression, to describe a new world that was unlike anything that had gone before.

I am just an artiste, and I like to explore new avenues.

Many say that no real avant-garde - which I'll define as a combative group of free-thinking artists - can exist anymore. The media's reach is too vast. New artists and movements get snatched up too quickly.

I thought the 60s in London was normal, so when it stopped it was a shock.

In a lot of ways, I wouldn't be an artist in another time. I need to exist in a time where high and low art mix easily.

Culture in America and everywhere else comes from the suffering, from those who don't want the old ways. They want to bring in the new, whether it's the ballet, when it started, or Shakespeare.