Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you—draw and paint your fear and anxiety.
One thing about an artist, it doesn't matter how much your work sells for in your life, it's going to sell for ten times more than that after you're dead, and that's what you have to protect.
I always start with the assumption that everything that happens in the world is actually in the world. It sounds like an obvious thing to say, but it's a very powerful methodological premise.
When someone tells you it’s a grain of sand, there’s a moment where your reality falls apart and you have to reconstruct it. You have to step back and ask what the image is and what it means.
Football has that wonderful gift of being accessible. You don't need much gear, a coach, or a lifeguard. You just need your imagination, strong legs, and a couple of friends, and it's a game.
I have to be pretty inclusive. I have to be pretty much inside of me rather than going out and finding out what people are doing. I don't have the time to. I just listen to my mind, in a way.
You can't love someone unless you are in an equal position with them. A lot of women have to cling to men out of fear or insecurity, and that's not love - basically that's why women hate men.
For me, each nuance of a color is in some way an individual, a being who is not only from the same race as the base color, but who definitely possesses a distinct character and personal soul.
The world feels overwhelming to me on every level. Just the number of organisms that live on this planet. Our politics, our violence, psychology, emotions; there's just a lot going on, right?
Public art existed all along, but ecological art just naturally grew out of my thinking and writings in that area for years. I didn't get involved in it; I started what then became a movement.
You should always have a product that has nothing to do with who you are or what people think about you... so that you never start thinking that your product is you, or your fame or your aura.
There is an appalling amount of mechanical work in the artist's life ... Talent is mysterious, but the qualities that guard, foster, and direct it are not unlike those of a good quartermaster.
Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.
I still can't get over the idea that respectable adults now go to see superhero movies and that such films get reviewed in the 'New Yorker.' Clearly, I am seriously out of step with the times.
Words have life and must be cared for. If they are stolen for ugly uses or careless slang or false promotion work, they need to be brought back to their original meaning - back to their roots.
My father has been a voice of encouragement in times of desperation for so many people. But he died when I was so young that, for me, his music has been a way for me to get to know him better.
I was brought up Catholic, and I felt the power of art from a very young age - seeing the brutality of all those images of flayed apostles and tortured saints was a pretty strong introduction.
Realizing this, I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room's composition.
I just am who I am. And then when people label me eccentric or different, I'm kind of astonished because I think, 'This is completely normal. This is just how I am, it's how I've always been.'
I think the universities as we know them will be dead in a future years. I'd like to see them replaced by something better, instead of something worse, and it's not clear which way it will go.
Art is important because when people start to forget, art reminds them what happened. Like 'Guernica.' People would not remember the tragedy of Guernica today if it were not for that painting.
We normally consider stability to be the constant in life and accidents to be the exception, but it's exactly the opposite. In reality, the accident is the rule and stability is the exception.
The neutrality and clarity of an engineering drawing is a better model for teaching about art than all the uncontrollable drivel about the cabbala and metaphysics and the ecstasy of sainthood.
You breathe in and out; you breathe in and you breathe out, and you live one moment into the next moment, and then time goes by, and you find you're able to put one foot in front of the other.
I want to cover all areas that can be depicted visually. This ranges from fairytales to attempts to enter the abstract and view oneself as a social outcast or someone struggling to stay alive.
Put a colour upon a canvas - it not only colours with that colour the part of the canvas to which the colour has been applied, but it also colours the surrounding space with the complementary.
The model for me is a touchstone, it is a door which I must break open in order to reach the garden in which I am alone and feel good, even the model exists only for what use I can make of it.
I won't do anything bad, and I resent very deeply bad people who haven't got the ability, who try to interfere with the kind of work I'm trying to do because nobody's going to benefit from it.
I feel that I want to use light as this wonderful and magic elixir that we drink as Vitamin D through the skin - and I mean, we are literally light-eaters - to then affect the way that we see.
I would think that to people like my father, and the people of his generation, Popeye is like a male priapist. So if you think in ancient terms, he would have a harem, a symbol of male energy.
Graffiti is like building a career. And there is a dialogue with the other artists out there mostly fellow writers because a lot of people who don't paint just see a blur when they look at it.
Too often, if you look back through the history of representation and you take the work of African-American artists, the work is on such a modest scale that it becomes sort of inconsequential.
Ive zeroed in on what you would call action and excellence... Everybody who does anything to try to succeed has to give the best of themselves, and art has made me pull the best out of myself.
I think that a visual artist's philosophy develops much more freely than a writer's or a thinker's philosophy. It is not so disciplined. The photographer works with both his eyes and his mind.
You think my paintings are calm, like windows in some cathedral? You should look again. I'm the most violent of all the American painters. Behind those colours there hides the final cataclysm.
I would never put a sculpture in front of a painting, so that it is difficult to see the painting. I always place each thing so you can see it isolated. You can focus on every individual work.
I believe in fate. And in the depths of my soul, I am an Orthodox Christian. I think the New Testament is especially important. What Jesus and his disciples preached and did was a great thing.
Inspiration is tough to define, it comes from so many different places. I have multiple exhibitions touring the globe, so I do travel quite a bit and travel is a great way to find inspiration.
If there is anything you can do, it may just be to smile for them. Because when you smile, the world seems just a little kinder. For you to just be yourself is a very important thing, I think.
Of course, the slightest little mistake on the wire will deprive me of my life, so in that sense, yes, it is a dangerous profession. You have to pay attention; if not, you will lose your life.
The studio is an extension of the sandbox and the kindergarten playroom. It has a dynamic unlike any office or factory. It's a room at the service of a dreamer on her way to becoming a master.
One bit in or out of focus makes the difference between our bodies being ourselves and our being part of a group. I want to melt the idea of specificity and blend individuality into the crowd.
I have always been afraid... Always been pretending to follow you closely, alwyas been pretending to sharpen my teeth, when the truth is, I am ... scared to death just treading on your shadow.
I think there's a gradient that goes from science to art and magic is the middle ground. I think that we're all trying to understand and define the world around us but often it's experimental.
I really feel that artists or musicians are controversial people. Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. If people are not doing that, they're not artists - they're artisans.
Only those few who are able to surpass their fear of death completely can fully experience the highest forms of life; not the mundane life of the mortal, but the godly life of the resurrected.
Photography - the new, rapid, concrete reflector of the world - should surely undertake to show the world from all vantage points, and to develop people's capacity to see from all sides. (1928)
If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.
At no point do I wish to be in conflict with any man or masculine thought. It doesn't enter my consciousness. Art is anonymous. It's not competitive with men. It's a complementary contribution.
But I didn't think about this beforehand. I just went ahead and did it, and that's the way it turned out. So I guess there are lots of paradoxes which I'll leave for other people to unscramble.