Inferior Quotations

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: Water is a fantastic element; it has so many possibilities.

Water: [Gurgling below Hundertwasser.]

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: Water. Rain drops. Tears. Water on the sea, water in the rivers, water in the lakes, water falling from the sky and water falling from the eyes. It is true that water fascinates me. Water is for me a way to escape which is always open. That is why I’m vvorking on the ship. It is called Regentag; that means Rainy Day. And I shall make my home in it, on the water. It is a fine thing leaving the land and taking to the water.

IQ: I’m boiling water for dumplings.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: The first ten years I painted no body wanted my paintings not even as a gift. I tried to give them away but no body wanted them. Art dealers would not give me the time of day. I vvas too strange for them. The couldn’t put a label on me.

But things have changed. Now I cannot paint as many pictures as people want from me.

And that is how I got in to prints: to provide some sthing for people who could not afford paintings. Graduwally more and more people wanted to have them until editions of a hundred were not enough. I had the idea of a huge issue which would take care of a really large number of people. I mean ten thousand prints. For this I revvorked my painting Bleeding Houses. It took me more than two years to create eighty variations of it. I call it now Good Morning City – Bleeding Town. I wanted to show.. that even big city buildings could have a life of their own. The tenants should be allowed to transform the shape and colors of their sterīle gray outside walls. There should be a constant process of change.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: What does a demonstration in the nude to do with architecture. Well, very much, really. A human being has three layers between him and the world. The first layer is his skin. The second layer is his clothing. The third layer is his architecture.

Over the centuries we ’ave perverted and distorted our second and our third layer, our clothing and our architecture to such a degree that they no longer suit our needs.

The straight line leads to the downfall of mankind.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: The spiral. The spiral iss.. the origin of life. The spiral is the essence of ghosts. The spiral signifying our pass to death. The spiral is key to the universe. I believe that the spiral is the symbol for the beginnings of life in general. I mean, if some sthing begins to move then it is always in the form of the spiral. When the inanimate ceases to be inanimate and begins to live, it assumes the form of a spiral. Of course my spiral is not a geometrical spiral. My spiral is a biological plant-like spiral. It is not some sthing you can measure. My spiral develops bulges and irregularities an’ obstacles.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: I do not think that I am a revolutionary. A revolutionary is some body who fights. I do not wan’to fight. I just wan’to find a way out for every body, without destroying any thing, to create a kind of evolution which hurts no body, rreally no body at all. Base it on what a’ready exists, and graduwally find a transition to some thing better.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: Vienna has a strange fascination for me: a sort of love-hate. It is difficult to live in Vienna because of the intolerance I encounter there. There they do not like new ideas. They do not like foreigners. They do not like colors at all. They prefer their ordinary things. They like Strauss vvaltzes. They like vviener schnitzel. It is a city with blinkers on. But maybe just because of those hostile surroundings, strange blossoms can grow better than some wher’else. This contrast between culture and its opposite is highly stimulating.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: If a painter is not astonished by what he painted, it is not a good picture. I wan’to be surprised by my own paintings. I wan’to discover my own paintings. I put aside a part of my personality; it comes from some vvhere else. I mean, I switch off my intellect. I let some sthing else take over, some sthing that comes from far away, from far far away. To paint is to release extra-ordinary powers. Because painting gives you chance to invent a language and venture in to distant regions which are long way off. I believe painting takes us deeper than any thing else in to the unknown. And I believe even that painting is a rreligious activity.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: Sculpture needs light, but painting needs colors. A painting can not live without colors. And when it rains the colors come to life. A cloudy day a rainy day is the kind of day I like.

I am happy when it rains. And when it rains my day begins.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: On a rainy day colors begin to gloww. But when the sun appears there iss only light and shade, black and white. Colors are beautiful when it is rainingk, but they vanish vvhen the sun shines. When the sun shines, there’re only contrasts, and that’s not good for a painter. Southern painters like Picasso for example they love the sun. But vvhen you look at their pictures you can see that color is not so important in their pictures, that the outlines and contrasts between black and white are far more important. The farther north you go the more sensitive the painters become. Klee, Edvvard Munch, Turner for example, the colors go deep and rich.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: While I was in Uganda, I got some termite earth. I broke a piece off a termite hill and took it with me. It is a magical color. It is quite different from the colors you can buy.

IQ: I think there’s a good quotation in here but the DVD’s skippy.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: Here on the Giudecca in Venice, vvhere I live, there were no trees at all two years ago. And I was very happy when gardeners arrived and planted trees. A year later I noticed that the bark was being damaged by the people who live here, and who have no idea how important a tree is for all of us, and the trees were starting to die. So I had some special pitch sent from Austria to cover their wounds.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: I fixed up my boat the way I think a house should be. Full of colors. Full of life. Like some body you like.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: I know, I can feel it, that I can’t jump around like other people. I know very well that my health is not the best, that I am rather sickly, quite a weakling in fact. I have to get all my strengths together to do any thing at all. I shouldn’t let my self be diverted from my work, but I can not give up beautiful women. Women are my muses as you might say. Women are like beautiful plants for me.

My relationships with women are not ideal. I regret that. It is not some thing to imitate.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: My mother was born in Vienna. She’ss the only survivor of a very large Jewish family. She happen’ to marry a non-Jew. An’ I was able to protect her until the war was over because I had the.. honor of being half an aryan. She was the only one left of all her family. She went through real mental anguish as you can imagine. I’m her oldest son, her only child. And of course she keeps up withs every thing I do, and she’s in to every thing I do.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: Every person who thinks seriously, and who tries to find a way out, needs to be alone from time to time.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: My difficulties with society are that society doesn’t let me carry out the projects I have. I mean society doesn’t believe that what I say is right. What I say is regarded as ironic or too revolutionary, or too stupid or too improbable. Or society carries out such projects when I have already passed on to some thing else. Thingks I was concerned with ten years ago have become common property.

IQ: Now he’s boiling water.

Looks like he’s got a bowl of watery barley and paprika.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: Of course I would like to put in to effect immediately those sthings for which I have energy available. This is some thing from which all artists suffer, and they often have to do on a small scale thingks they’re not allowed to do on large scale. I mean for example if I want to build a fantastic house withs forests on the roof, no body will let me carry out such a project, because it’s too improbable, because it’sss not modern, and for all sorts of other reasons. I have to paint it in stead of building it. At least I am allowed to do that in our society.

IQ: Dreamy. Hundertwasser naked painting on a rocky shore with Regentag over there in the water.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser: On a vvoyage you live with the horizon. The horizon is some thing you can cling to. In fact, it’s the only reality; every thing else you can make up. In this confused world, man needs only the horizon; he can invent the rest.

IQ: I hear water dripping outside.