Classical Art

The idea of classical art, in making it, is that this object, this vessel, is really, in a sense, just a container for meaning. If I pour some meaning into it, in my studio... on the basis of that meaning, I'm able to move it from my studio all the way over to my gallery and nothing of consequence is changed. Now, that's pretty interesting. Don't you think? That this thing, I can move from one set of circumstances, one set of environments, one set of conditions... It can go to a completely different set of conditions and nothing of consequence is lost. The idea of being able to transcend that distance. Now, if I were able to take and put enough meaning into this... so something really of some great significance... I could maybe even attempt to take it from my middle of nowhere, growing up in L.A., to New York... all the way to New York and they would understand it. [...] If I fill it up enough and the meaning becomes a real consequence, I might even be able to transcend my generation. Or maybe I could move it from L.A. to India, and since it's so essentially human, so critical, it would mean the same thing to them, and they would understand it. That's a really pretty idea. And when you look at the history of classical art: that kind of level of content, that kind of level of seriousness, that kind of subject matter, it was very important to the paintings. And it has since got to the point where the kind of high ideal is the transcendence of time, that, i.e., art is timeless.