Richard Phillips

There was a belief after World War I that painting could be an act of civil revolt. I want this exhibition, 'New Museum,' to be an act of civil disobedience. It's not so much about the New Museum on the Bowery, but the idea of challenging museums as projections of cultural authority. It's painting as insurgency.

The SEALs have a sense of community I've never seen anywhere. Not just the guys but the wives, widows, kids of fallen heroes.

When we can't determine what is art - when you get to that point where we're not sure, that's the greatest likelihood that we're actually experiencing something great. But I think that's what the art world is most afraid of, because you lose that security. Then we don't know how to assign evaluation, whether it's cultural or otherwise.

Art is a thing where, the least likely thing that you think is going to be art, is precisely the thing that is going to be art. And I would even hold that true to a reality television show... maybe the entire overarching process of the show actually exists as an artistic structure.

When you think about Dada and the great moments in Modern Art, it's always the sense of when you're not sure that art is most likely to be occurring.

For me, graffiti and the complexities with which it is either absorbed or expelled from what is going on, is a really good comparison to the way I see my work being similarly expelled or absorbed into different types of discourse.

My work, in a certain way, got started in 1996 when I did an exhibition of thirteen paintings that were solely based on fashion imagery.

Being in that other world of media, TV, Hollywood, it's not a real world. For me going back to work, it was a pleasure to get back to the world I knew. That's the real world. That's normal for me.

I believe it is the responsibility of our government to protect the U.S., including U.S.-flag vessels.

If we strive and continue fighting as best we can, we can overcome a lot of the personal and professional problems that we do have.

Makeup ignites a psychological transformation of both the wearer and the observer. My paintings sought to locate the subject of art within the manipulation of that altered predisposition.