Thus it is with all pictures, there are many layers, and with good reason an analysis nearly always deals with the last [layer]. The last layer in a … - Per Kirkeby

I became part of this German wave of new painting and sculpture [ w:Neo-expressionism ], even though I didn’t fit in. Baselitz and the other young German artists, their paintings were demonstrative figuration, while my work was more lyrical and Cubist, based on still life. None of the curators of the exhibitions at the time knew what to do with it. I could see that they almost wished I’d just withdraw. But it’s an outsider position with which I’ve been really comfortable. I was able to extend myself within my own thing, which wasn’t very successful internationally. My work was not punchy enough. I succeeded in constantly evading branding. My history with Fluxus is actually quite funny. I went to New York in 1966 as a relatively young man, wanting to meet all these artists. Denmark was extremely small and stuffy. In high school I had discovered something called Jackson Pollock, and I was furious that no one had told me about this before.. .I was calling around, saying, 'Hello, I’m a Danish artist. I would like to meet you.'

..I also got to meet w:George Maciunas, the father of Fluxus. I wanted to know what this Fluxus was, so I asked him, 'If I put salt in a tea bag and then into hot water, then the salt will dissolve, and when you pull the bag up, there is nothing in it. Is that Fluxus?' 'Let’s make that one right away,' Maciunas replied. And it became a Fluxus object. I told him that I was a painter and that I would keep painting. 'Well,' he said, 'that doesn’t matter, as long as you do it the right way.' Getting to know him, I understood that the right way was with a certain sense of justice.

Painting is laying layer upon layer. Without exception it is fundamental to all painted pictures even if they look as if they were done in one movement. The movement has always crossed its own track somewhere. It is easy to understand that a picture is layer upon layer when it comes to Picabia's puzzle pictures or my own material works, but it is difficult with the 'synchronos'. By the 'synchronous' I mean all those pictures where all the layers aim at the same picture, where the under-painting and following layers – glazed or not – fall on top of each other. The 'unsynchronous' are the ones where each new layer is a new picture. It is like geological strata with cracks and discordances. But each new layer, however furious, is always infected and coloured by the underlying one. Even when it is slates where the previous payer is completely removed physically, wiped off.