“A lot of people have this idea of art as being this sort of pure thing that happens to gifted people that have a different kind of imagination from the rest of society. Those people also love to project the idea of pure motivation on those artists and so if they do anything to try and sell it, that sort of muddies the waters and makes it less pure. in order to be the most powerful political artist or artist in general you have to be able to make a living from making your art so you can dedicate all your time to it.
For me, it even goes beyond that. In having a commercial side to what I do, well beyond just having to make a living it goes to capitalism being the language that Americans most speak and understand. So, if something is valuable to people then they want to acquire it and they’ll spend money to do it. (…) I immediately said this has to effect people that normally don’t engage with art. It needs to work commercially because that means its effected those people.”