QuoteLog

“He told me to picture a world without art — to imagine a life with no music in it, no hot colors, no nonsense, no poetry. He told me to picture a world in which no one was ever shaken, nothing was said that ever challenged anyone, nothing was done that ever disturbed or uplifted a human soul. And that, he told me, is what it means to miss New Orleans.”

“The irony is that at the same time that all these artistic possibilities are opening up, folks are receiving less and less art education in schools.”

“Chaos can be a positive thing. Chaos is inherently part of the creative act. To embrace creativity means you must also embrace chaos. Things don’t happen when everything is neat and ‘just so’. Creativity is all about disruption. The people who tell you that creativity is pain-free are liars. The people who tell you they’ve got a plan are liars. There is no plan. There’s just you, God and the need to invent.”

“Art is man’s nature. Nature is God’s art.”

“I’m in a bad place, nor am I a painter.”

“The crux of the biscuit is: If it entertains you, fine. Enjoy it. If it doesn’t, then blow it out your ass. I do it to amuse myself. If I like it, I release it. If somebody else likes it, that’s a bonus.”

“Stumbling, herd-like headphone-wearers move like herky-jerky Country Bear Jamboree automatons and speak in unnaturally loud voices. Experienced art-goers must employ constant peripheral vision and defensive walking strategies to avoid the land mine danger of the headphoned, whose social skills have been disabled by the voices in their heads.”

“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.”

“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.”

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

“It’s certainly not art, and its educational value is limited. It’s just a mass of hype going around sucking up money.”

“As the community of artists sifts through this brilliant horror and the retaliatory vengeance, we will see a distinct change in the cultural product of our times.”

“Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war against brutality and darkness.”

“John Updike is writing a novel about the art world, and he said that when he heard about the disaster, the work and the entire subject seemed trivial. But then, he said, he realized that continuing to write was ‘my only haven.’ He could lose himself in it. And besides, being a novelist, Mr. Updike said, is ‘my contribution to the civil order.’ “

“Sometimes we can become so frozen by our sense of helplessness. Art allows us a way past our own frozenness. It may give you some way to understand what you’re feeling, that this is a human feeling. Because what we’re feeling is a sense of inhumanness.”

“The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.”

“If you have ever stood in a crowded museum, frustrated to the point of homicide by the crush of people moving between you and the art, you know why one of the great cliches of art -- No. 3: ‘Art brings us closer to our fellow man’ -- is true only in a grim, comical sense.”

“If my husband ever met a woman on the street who looked like one of his paintings, he would faint.”

“We are a nation of business people, and we find art and artists threatening. We will take artists’ concerns seriously only if they don’t cut significantly into the profit of some industry.”

“We are growing further and further away from a society in which making art is a common practice, and this seems to deepen the hold of cliches on our thinking. Proper ladies don’t necessarily have to know how to play the harpsichord; gentlemen don’t toss off sonnets to seal the romantic deal. As we become a society of art consumers, with little real experience with the technical issues of making art, we have less and less of substance to say about it.”

“Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.”

“The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.”

“You’re never too old to create refrigerator art.”

“As an artist you may spend years searching for expression. When you find the medium you truly love, expression finds you.”

“In an atmosphere of liberty, artists and patrons are free to think the unthinkable and create the audacious; they are free to make both horrendous mistakes and glorious celebrations.”

“People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don’t mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.”

“I don’t think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I’ve found to get along with myself.”

“In my studio I’m as happy as a cow in her stall. That’s the only place where everything is all right”

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”

“The important thing is not what the author, or any artist, had in mind to begin with but at what point he decided to stop.”

“The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.”

“Great artists need great clients.”

“The ‘refined’, the ‘rich, the professional do nothing’, the ‘distiller of quintessence’ desire only the peculiar, and sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous is today’s art. And I myself, since the advent of cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my head. The less they understood, the more they have admired me! ... Today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand meaning of the word. ...I am only a public clown, a mountebank. I have understood my time and exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But, at least, and at last, it does have the merit of being honest.”

“I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.”

“Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.”

“During the Renaissance, when they wished to imitate Immortal Greece, they produced Raphael. Ingres wished to imitate Raphael, and became Ingres. Cezanne wished to imitate Poussin, and thus became Cezanne. Dali wanted to imitate Meissonier and THE RESULT WAS DALI. Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”

“Art for art’s sake makes no more sense than gin for gin’s sake.”

“Art for art’s sake, Money for God’s sake.”

“If people only knew as much about painting as I do, they would never buy my pictures.”

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

“I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something more than sit on its ass in a museum.”

“I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost - that is important. If they are art objects at the same time, that’s fine with me.”

“Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn’t stop on the sixth day.”

“Take clear water with grass waving at the bottom. It’s wonderful to look at, but to try to paint it is enough to make one insane.”

“If artists do see fields blue they are deranged, and should go to an asylum. If they only pretend to see them blue, they are criminals and should go to prison.”

“I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”

“Hardening of the categories causes art disease.”