Howard hodgkin

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.

In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.