Diller Quotes

While I was still on the WPA I was submitting designs for the Section of Fine Arts competitions which I did on my own time. Burgoyne Diller gave me a mural to do in the Community Building of the Queensbridge Housing Project on Long Island. I worked on the design and cartoons for about a year. Everything was approved and the walls prepared - casein tempera painted on the wall.... [It was] about 1938. Holger Cahill asked me through Diller to do the outdoor facade mural of the WPA Building at the World's Fair. 1 stopped work on the Queens mural and began working on the Fair mural which was finished on schedule in time for the opening of the Fair. (Phillip Guston)

I went to New York in 1936 where I first worked as an assistant to Reginald Marsh as a non-relief artist since I had to await my residency requirement. This was the mural for the Customs House building in New York City. I didn't actually paint on this mural but Marsh asked me to design some lunettes between his panels. Next I went on the WPA mural division. I worked under Burgoyne Diller who was my supervisor, he was, I think, the supervisor of the New York City mural division.

Phillip Guston

[On the question: 'What was your main stylistic influence up to this time']: The Renaissance chiefly - Piero, Mantegna, Uccello - but I was attracted also by the modern idioms - Léger, Picasso - and was close to the abstract painters on the project such as Stuart Davis, Burgoyne Diller, Arshile Gorky, Balcomb Greene, etc. At the time I did the Queens project, there was already a marked change in my work - it was becoming more concerned with cubist concepts of treating space.

Phillip Guston

I've been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled.

Wendy Liebman

I was always a fan of the old-style comics. I loved vaudeville. I loved Milton Berle, Dick Shawn, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles, Charlie Callas, all those guys. Hilarious. I love the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies, and Abbott & Costello. My television influences were 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' 'Benny Hill,' and 'Hee Haw.'

Larry the Cable Guy