Can a great artist be mean-spirited, grasping, harsh to his FAMILY, violent in his emotions, vindictive in his hatreds, an all-purpose SCOUNDREL? If our test cases are the likes of Wagner, Picasso, and, let me say, Dickens, the answer is a resounding YES.

For me, ACTING is all about the aesthetic. I just WANT to keep honing my craft. Not that I'm taking myself too seriously, but every artist should CONSIDER himself Picasso. OTHERWISE, you're doing yourself an INJUSTICE.

I WOULD LIKE to KNOW what politicians eat on the CAMPAIGN TRAIL, what Picasso ate in his pink period, what Walt Whitman ate while writing the verse that defined America, what mid-westerners bring to potlucks, what is served at company banquets, what is in a Sunday dinner these days, and what workers bring for lunch.

When Picasso painted in Paris, was he a Spanish or a French painter? It does not matter, he was Picasso, WHATEVER the influences surrounding him. He simply chose Paris because it was the IDEAL place for him to sell his CREATION.

There is a constant EBB and flow in art HISTORICAL reputations. The REPUTATION of even the GREATEST FIGURES like Picasso are in flux.

Now people look at 'The SCREAM' or Van Gogh's 'Irises' or a PICASSO and SEE its new content: money. Auction houses INHERENTLY equate capital with VALUE.

When I was 13 years old, I went to visit my aunt and uncle in Washington, D.C., and they just deposited me at the NATIONAL Gallery. I WOULD go from Rembrandt to Picasso - I REMEMBER that experience so vividly.

You don't BUY a PICASSO because you LOVE the FRAME.

If I COULD have any artist's work on my sitting ROOM wall it would probably be by VAN GOGH or Picasso.

When the painting is hanging on your wall for a LONG time, you don't notice it. You get TIRED of it, EVEN if it's a PICASSO. When the NEXT generation inherits the painting, they sell it. I don't want to be sold.

Art is about imagination. When you LOOK at a picture from Salvador Dali, that's about imagination. When you look at PICASSO, that's about imagination. Doing STUFF from your HEART.

I LOOK at people like Picasso and DA Vinci and Escher and Miles DAVIS, and they'll write or paint that one definitive masterpiece of maybe 50 that they have that's really trying to go OUTSIDE the box, trying to do something that's TOUGH. And then when you accomplish it, you look back and go, 'Yeeaaaah - masterpiece.'

When cubism began to take a social form, Metzinger was especially TALKED about. He explained cubism, while Picasso NEVER explained anything. It took a few years to see that not TALKING was better than talking too much.

The cubism of Braque or Picasso, the dissonant compositions of Schoenberg or Stravinsky, the free-flowing and OFTEN erotic CHOREOGRAPHY of Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky - these were acts of rebellion against the certainties and TRADITIONS of the old world.

I went to the BIG Picasso retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, and I think I went to an Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, too. My mother was very good at taking me to things LIKE that. We LIVED in READING, but we went on these cultural trips to LONDON.