“There is a famous phrase that divides artists into two categories: revolutionaries and decorators. Well, I didn’t have much of a choice, the world decided for me. I remember my first exhibition in New York, at the Saatchi gallery, for the happening ‘Feed the People. Organize Them.’ I was quite impressed, it was the first time in a long time that a French artist was exhibiting in an important New York gallery. I was also a revolutionary then, and convinced of the revolutionary value of my work. It was a very cold winter in New York, and every morning you found tramps in the streets who had frozen to death; I was convinced that people were going to change their attitude as soon as they saw my work: that they were going to go out into the street and follow exactly the instruction on the television screen. Of course, none of that happened: people came, nodded, exchanged intelligent words, then left.

“I suppose that the revolutionaries are those who are capable of coming to terms with the brutality of the world, and of responding to it with increased brutality. I simply did not have that kind of courage. I was ambitious, however, and it is possible that the decorators are fundamentally more ambitious than the revolutionaries. Before Duchamp, the artist had as his ultimate goal a worldview that was at once personal and accurate, that is to say moving; it was already a huge ambition. Since Duchamp, the artist no longer contents himself with putting forward a worldview, he seeks to create his own world; he is very precisely the rival of God. I am God in my basement. I have chosen to create a small, easy world where you only encounter happiness. I am perfectly conscious of the regressive nature of my work; I know that it can be compared to the attitude of adolescents who, instead of confronting the problems of adolescence, dive headfirst into their stamp collection, their herbarium, or whatever other glittering, limited, multicolored little world they choose. No one will dare say it to my face, I get good reviews in Art Press, as in the majority of the European media; but I could read the contempt in the eyes of the girl who came from the Delegation for Plastic Arts. She was thin, dressed in white leather, with an almost swarthy complexion, very sexual; I understood at once that she considered me to be a little invalid child, and very sick. She was right: I am a tiny little invalid child, very sick, who cannot live. I can’t come to terms with the brutality of this world; I just can’t do it.”