"I’ll tell you how I happened to make the blown-up flowers. In the twenties, huge buildings sometimes seemed to be going up overnight in New York. At that time, I saw a painting by Fantin-Latour, a still-life with flowers I found very beautiful, but I realized were I to paint the same flowers so small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I’ll make them big like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled; they’ll have to look at them – and they did."