I would rather paint the victims than the killers.. .When Warhol painted the killers, I painted the victims. The subjects were of poor people, banal … - Gerhard Richter

The idea that art copies nature is a fatal misconception. Art has always operated against nature and for reason.

I only identified with (Rothko's seriousness, which was absolutely to be admired. At that time, in the 1970's Barnett Newman, with his non-hierarchical structures, his non-relational Color Field painting, seemed more interesting because his work was less pretty.

When we describe a process, or make out an invoice, or photograph a tree, we create models; without them we would know nothing of reality and would be animals. Abstract pictures are fictive models, because they make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we can postulate.