Neo Rauch

© Neo Rauch / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo by Uwe Walter, courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin & David Zwirner, New York

Neo Rauch, "Vater [Father]" (2007)

© Neo Rauch / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo by Uwe Walter, courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin & David Zwirner, New York

Neo Rauch, "Die Fuge [The Fugue]" (2007)

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The pictures grew—as other groups of pictures have done before them—out of the floor of my studio, as if it was a Witch's Circle [of toadstools], and they were made without any preconceptions to limit what they might be. That's because there were practical considerations in this particular case, namely, the size of the gallery, that were so constraining that imposing any further limitations to fit in with a deliberate concept would have blocked my artistic "transmitter."

As a painter you have always seemed to me to act as an assembler of images taken from a vast range of sources. Do you think that this has parallels with the assembling of a museum collection?

Yes, it's possible that the way that I conjure up images is rather like putting together a museum case that's both thematically linked and deeply felt. The invented character of both the picture and the museum collection stems from a balance between what is authentic and what is unchanging. Neither the picture nor the museum should suggest the appearances of the real world. They should overwhelm the spectator on a more basic level. Everything depends on the selection and the arrangement of the collected items.

Have you made particular references to the Met's collection in these new pictures? Or to museums in general?

When I first agreed to do the Met exhibition, I thought about a way of working that would be about the nature of a museum. But straight away I realized that I was much more interested in those "visions from the Witches Circle" in my studio than I was in coming up with things in a purely thematic way. Calling them "visions" reflects my personality—they precede inspiration and spring from the moment when internal images appear at the prompting of intellectual decisions. I have no choice but to accept everything that I discover in this way.

Translated from the German by Iris Piers and Robert Ayers