I think I learned a lot from the works of art, but from the artist, I don’t know, it’s different. From the artist — at first I must say I started to know some artists very late. I can say, certainly not before ’70 — because I remember ’70, ’71, I don’t know, an artist, there was the artist Francois Martin, who is still a friend, and with whom I made many, many different things, asking me to come and see the work of drawings and paintings he did, and that it was the first time I was really meeting an artist and talking with him et cetera.

And of course, now I’ve known many artists. Most of the time the artists are not so much talking, not people of talk, of speech, even less of discourse. ((Bang On A Can, Specific Words)) For example, with Francois Martin or with choreographer Mathilde Monnier, there’s two people with whom I have been more frequently in public, on the public stage. ((Meyer Schapiro)) And all the time they don’t say a word — they said okay — and they said — for example, I remember one thing that was in Spain two years or three years ago. It was with Francois, and at that time we did something together, like an exhibition of painting, and I wrote on the painting. And then it was a sort of public conference. And he just told that there is a — I don’t know, “25 years that we are working together, Jean-Luc is a very close friend to me. I think we are well together to do something, and now I have nothing to say, and Jean-Luc will stay because talking is his job, it’s not mine.” And Mathilde Monnier at another time did almost the same. She said my job is not to talk. ((Goldsmiths))