Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I just love what art can do and what it means for us; that it can cross barriers. It can speak to us across space and time and culture.
Historically a publicly unaccepted but incredibly rich culture, queer love was only able to exist privately for a long time, expressed in society through coded art forms.
It's kind of not about the quality of the art, as much as this is what I love doing and I'd have a worse time doing anything else. That's kind of as far as I think in terms of philosophy.
Eroticism is born at a time in civilisation when sexual instinct becomes deanimalised and enriched with contributions from art and from literature. A world of theatricality emerges around the act of love.
I love biographies. I read Patti Smith's 'Just Kids.' I'm into that time frame in New York, the '70s and '80s. In art school, I read 'Close to the Knives,' the autobiography of the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz.
I've always loved to paint - I was studying to do an art degree when I was approached to become a model - and I've being doing some design work as well. I also love just having a quiet time, sitting in my little library at home in Brooklyn and reading or watching documentaries or listening to music.
From Borges, those wonderful gaucho stories from which I learned that you can be specific as to a time and place and culture and still have the work resonate with the universal themes of love, honor, duty, betrayal, etc. From Amiri Baraka, I learned that all art is political, although I don't write political plays.
Believe me, I love commerce as much as the rest of the readers of 'Businessweek.' But in art, you have to be true to yourself and your musical vision. People have known me well for a long time, so if I was chasing a trend and doing something that wasn't authentic to who I am, they would know it in just a few seconds.
I felt most beautiful on the red carpet in Givenchy's sheer lace dress at a dinner hosted by Givenchy in honor of Marina Abramovich at the closing of her Museum of Modern Art retrospective, 'The Artist is Present', in 2010. It was the first time I had been dressed for an event, and everybody just fell in love with the dress.