"MA Do you think flesh has a psychological aspect?
LF Yes I suppose. Painting is always psychological. At least it is to me when it is going well. When it's going poorly, it's nothing. Of course, the process of learning to paint gets you involve with tradition, with prejudice, memory, with all sorts of things, but to have the person there in front of me, to try to understand their presence beyond cliches helps me to get around all those things. I need to be in the room with a person. I don't want them to be passive, if you know what I mean. There has to be a living presence for my paintings to be successful. "
" In the 1930s, while Breton held forth in his Paris cafe, japan, a distinct Asian society in the industrial throes of Westernisation, slid into the abyss of the |"Dark Valley". Japanese society was enveloped in an irrational miasma of terrorism, and a ruthless right-wing militarism that crushed all domestic dissent. Yet one can open a Japanese magazine printed in that period, and what does one see there? Scarcely a hint of the kamikaze mayhem so soon to come-it's all steam irons, hair curlers, and health nostrums, mostly peddled by nicely dressed, iconic pretty girls. Alex Gross knows this; he once put together a handsome book on the subject."