Some excerpts from interviews, conversations, correspondence, and the diaries
I am a sculptor. "Artist", that's what everyone calls themselves today.
The result of my seeing, thinking and creating consists essentially of lines, surfaces and shapes. This corresponds to my talent, my education and my passion. As I express myself by means of sculpture and graphics, I have nothing to add verbally to my work – no explanations, no descriptions, at most incidental, anecdotal. If I had considered the language of words and concepts to be more suitable for me, I would not have become a sculptor.
It's a good thing that in the early days I wasn't aware of the wealth of content that fits into one sculpture. I would have kept my hands off the clay.
My paternal friend and supporter Bernhard Borst advised me at a young age to call myself Martin Mayer-Thieme, that is including my mother's surname. But my name has never interested me much.
A good sculpture must be an invention in its idea.
It's amazing how people look under the skin of my sculptures, detect content that I only consider in passing, if at all. My special intention has always been the belcanto of form.
I have been asked what I was thinking while making the one or the other sculpture. I think these questions cannot be answered. What I was thinking with a sculpture is present. I have expressed that in the sculpture. There are no riddles to guess like in the case of non-representational objects, which sometimes or in most cases, I would even say, require an explanation. But that is not the case with my sculptures.
To disregard all coincidences, to aim only at the essence, that is probably the real meaning of sculpture: to recognise the whims of nature, to separate coincidence from origin.
A gallerist and good friend of mine told me that my works speak for themselves, from within themselves. And thus they contradict the purpose of vernissages and feuilletons. Nevertheless, I've alway encouraged them, their speaking, their statements.
The names of my sculptures have no meaning at all.
You can't make up a style. It's impossible. The only transformation, if you want to call it a transformation, is that my earlier sculptures were slimmer than my current ones.
I have a very cool relationship to what I do. If you were to start from certain feelings, sentimentalities would creep in that have no place at all in art.
Before you start a sculpture, you have to have an idea. Otherwise we don't need to start a sculpture. Just making a sculpture in order to make a sculpture is not enough. So you have to have a certain idea. In my case, I would like to say that I have a very concrete idea of a sculpture. And from this idea I then try to develop a human being. I use the human being as the base, as an inducemnt, you could say.
In a few sentences I can only say that there has not been and will not be any art in which no process of abstraction is visible. People often think that something which cannot be recognised, which is unrecognisable, is abstract. And that is a mistake. I mean art is about making the essential recognisable. If you want to make the essential recognisable, you have to leave out the unessential. You have to subtract the unessential. And that is already a mental process, a process of abstraction. And that is what actually makes art. That is what determines the degree of art. So this has nothing to do with representational or non-representational. A thoroughly representational sculpture can be as abstract as a non-representational object. But there are, I can't think of any other word, made-up works, or unrecognisable made-up works that are passed off as abstractions but have nothing whatsoever to do with abstraction.
The idea of becoming a sculptor came to me as a child, I may have been four years old, when I saw the equestrian statue of the Great Prince Elector by Andreas Schlüter in Berlin. I stood in front of it like a dwarf, of course, because it is a mighty monument, a mighty equestrian statue. And it impressed me so much that I told myself I wanted to do something like that. And since that time it was clear to me that I wanted to become a sculptor. I didn't know the term sculpture yet. But I just wanted to make figures. I also wanted to make a rider like that. I never made a rider in my life, but since then I just wanted to make figures...
Objective criticism of my work I always take seriously, although I always give preference to my imagination.
I'm flattered that my statues can still get people excited today, in whatever way. [...] I always see that as a sign that my sculptures engage people. [...] It is always a success for the sculptor when his "children" are still being talked about, because that is proof that they are still alive.