Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have seen Colonial churches since I was very small, Colonial painting and polychrome sculpture. And that was all I saw. There was not a single modern painting in any museum, not a Picasso, not a Braque, not a Chagall. The museums had Colombian painters from the eighteenth century and, of course, I saw Pre-Columbian art. That was my exposure.
Paintings don't just happen. I am not a proponent of the idea of an artist as someone who kind of magically makes things and has no real control or isn't willfully producing a certain kind of thing. It is labor-intensive, and it is research-intensive. You are making one decision after another, trying to get at something you think is important.
When I know who is speaking, I see that there is a commitment. I need to know there is some commitment. I need to find an author. "I" can also be polyphonic, fictional, inhabited by a multitude of characters, be right or wrong or at fault or corrupted. But that's more "the self" than "me, me, me." It's problematic. There are times to say "we."
But if I did read, say, [Maurice] Merleau-Ponty, for instance, it always seemed to me that the parts that I understood in what he was talking about - and I read him because - well, he wrote a book, well, the Phenomenology of Perception [New York: Humanities Press, 1962]. And it seemed to me that perception had a lot do with how we take in art.
I think there's the apparent lack of subtlety and sort of make-believe anti-sensibility connected with American art. I think this is a style, and it does relate to our culture, and I think it would be anachronistic maybe to pretend to be involved with subtle changes and modulations and things like that, because it's really not part of America.
To me it is no mystery that we can only photograph effectively what we are truly interested in or-maybe more importantly-are grappling with. Often unconsciously. Otherwise the photographs are merely about an idea or a concept-that stuff eventually falls flat for me-there must be something more, some emotional hook for it to really work for me.
Yes, my dolls were the beginning. Obviously there was a convulsive flavor to them because they reflected my anxiety and unhappiness. To an extent they represented an attempt to reject the horrors of adult life as it was in favor of a return to the wonder of childhood, but the eroticism was all-important, they became an erotic liberation for me.
Sketching in general - anywhere, not just in Gitmo, but in life, in the world - is a profoundly disruptive act. Because you're creating something when you're kind of expected to consume or sit passively. I've always sketched things as a way to get into them, whether it was a fancy nightclub or, you know, to have kids think I was cool, whatever.
Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic - the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before... howling - is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble - the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed.
About 1911 I had the idea of making for my son, who had just been born, a blanket composed of bits of fabric like those I had seen in the houses of Russian peasants. When it was finished, the arrangement of the pieces of material seemed to me to evoke cubist conceptions and we then tried to apply the same process to other objects and paintings.
On a very, very basic level, I'm definitely pro market because with the market comes the idea of the individual and the idea of specialisation, and I personally like being an individual and choosing my interactions. I don't see culture moving away from that, like back to a farming society. You couldn't do that with the amount of people we have.
You may hang your walls with tapestry insread of whitewash or paper; or you may cover them with mosaic; or have them frescoed by a great painter: all this is not luxury, if it be done for beauty's sake, and not for show: it does not break our golden rule: Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
Nas is someone who can communicate with the streets and can still keep it real in terms of being human, he doesn't try to be this super perfect person, but has respect for his history and for his ancestors and for spirituality. So Nas always displayed that in his music, while at the same time keeping it hard and something that you can relate to.
These days there are painters that go inside a factory in order to be inspired by the noise of machines, so that it affects their works. Of course, artists need sensibility; sensibility towards their environment and their community, but when they are stirred enough by their experiences in their society they can create their art in small studios.
What I so like about Poussin and Cezanne is their sense of organization. Ilike the way in which they develop space and shape in architecturalcontinuity - the rhythm across their paintings. When I paint a landscape, Iget the greatest pleasure out of composing it. As I paint, I try to work outa visual sonata form or a fugue, with realistic images.
I like a lot of good European films, good - anything really. I'm a big fan of Netflix and I get films from them all the time. If I hear about something that I don't know, that I haven't seen, forgot about, I immediately jot it down and add it to my Netflix list or if there's a film that's available that I haven't seen for many years, I get that.
In the very near future, I guarantee that the pictures you post on social media will affect your credit rating, health and auto insurance policies, and much more. It will all happen automatically. In a very real way, our rights and freedoms will be modulated by our metadata signatures. What's at stake, obviously, is the future of the human race!
Do be true to yourself, whether it's bad doesn't matter. The important thing - you have to copy while you're studying. And culture is - each of us - is like one pearl added to another to make a chain. We each contribute to the other. And that's all right. But once you're on your own, do that which comes from within. And I feel this very strongly.
Even when I became cognizant of this societal problem in this country, I asked my father and my mother if they knew anything that had been passed on to them, about slavery, and my father was very reticent about it. He often said, "No, I don't know anything about it, and it was bad, it was awful and it's over and we want to get on with our lives."
I'm expressing the feelings of mankind today through the Blue Dog. The dog is always having problems of the heart, of growing up, the problems of life. The dog looks at us and asks, 'Why am I here? What am I doing? Where am I going?' Those are the same questions we ask ourselves. People look at the paintings, and the paintings speak back to them.
Painting can also be too earnest at times and that's a drag. You don't want to go in that direction either. It should be holistic. It should represent the whole of your personality, I guess, so if somebody is a sincere painter or an ironic painter, then they're just bullshitting the audience and presenting only an idealized version of themselves.
Computers are so deeply stupid. What bother me most when they talk about technology is they don't realize how much more exciting their minds are. That machine is stupid. And boring. It does just a few things and then it'll crash. People think, 'I am on the Net, I am in touch with the world'. Wrong! The point is how we work, not how machines work.
The voice of painterly integrity spoke to me. And the idea was that one would find this anguish, or whatever, and construct it into images that would appear. You already feel very ill and you're trying to put this riddle together because it is the prescription for health. I believe in art as a spiritual health-giving process, not just some style.
I am so grateful for my physical therapist, Teresa England, who taught me to respect the process of recovery. Healing is sometimes slow, and any pace but fast was alien to me. To me, the idea of patience and gradual progress was a very foreign idea. I truly learned patience from this woman, and how to appreciate the smallest signs of improvement.
Man Ray... loved games and absolutely knew about the camera. It is interesting to note that, although I used him in only about 10 percent of the photographs and videotapes, most people think of him as omnipresent in my work. It irked me sometimes to be known only as the guy with the dog, but on the other hand it was a thrill to have a famous dog.
A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can't stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement... Polka-dots are a way to infinity.
Indie music is 'it' now. It's kind of a revolution to the music: 1980s, 1990s music was getting very sanitized; they were complying with the music industry. Music was getting more and more dead in a way. Now, because of the social climate that's very severe, the artists are compelled to start being real. It's really great that indie music is now.
My artistic practice always involved diversity to the groups of people in which I would find camaraderie, friendship, colleagues, whereas I feel, to be honest, a lot of those circles were just completely white. I think that's something that's unstated or stated with bravado. That is not anywhere near part my experience, especially as a New Yorker.
The colour blue - that is my colour - and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into - not a world of fantasy, it’s not a world of fantasy - but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don’t like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue.
The idea of, say, the compressed space between the floor and the object hanging over it and then the long space between the object and the ceiling was a kind of interesting idea for me - the idea of compressing and expanding. That was an idea that I worked with, which you could only do sculpturally. You can't really do with a painting on the wall.
The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state.
American intelligence and military agencies have a huge footprint in terms of how the world works, but they're largely invisible. I'm interested in exploring those 'geographies' of secrecy from many different angles: political, legal, economic, spatial, etc., because I am fundamentally just interested in how the world works and how societies work.
Time doesn't exist. It doesn't exist in any way. It's more subjective than real. Time doesn't exist. I believe in memory. Memory is the real inspiration. Memory creates time. Memory is pure power. Pure power and pure strength, and pure utilization of space and time (if time is something we can really ever label). But I don't believe in time itself.
I find it very fascinating that one person or a group of people can get together as a choir and come up with a song that ends up inspiring people to create emotions, love and togetherness. Communication, which comes from this idea that sparks off of humanity and becomes something that is cherished and loved by the people, is very fascinating to me.
I would be remiss, as a scientist who studied this, if I didn't mention the following two things: The first is that, most importantly, we need to do, as a society, in this country and globally, whatever we can to reduce population"....."Our whole economic system is based on growth, and growth of our population, and this economic madness has to end.
This is New York. You gotta work from upstairs to downstairs! You gotta work both ends of the street to have a career. Because it's not just fabricating an artwork. Your works have to go out into the world; they have to go to market. This art on the hoof has to be moved; it's got to go to the slaughterhouse at some point. Keep those dogies rollin'!
After you die, your body is just there. Isn't it kind of embarrassing that your body is going to be there and you have no say or control over it? Somebody's going to have to deal with it. I've always respected people who kill themselves and find a way to get rid of the body. Very clean. Lost at sea. I can see why they do that. There's nothing left.
That's how I am and how I've always looked at the world. I understood what the pavilions were before I came to Venice, and I knew that wasn't going to be enough for me. I wanted to extend this conversation into something I call urgency. There is urgency with people in crisis. Some communities - often the black community - just live in this urgency.
Luck plays no role in art world success. It's your own responsibility to create your success, which is a result of making thousands of constant decisions - focused, professional tenacity - day after day of keeping commitments to yourself and to those you make promises to. If you fail, it's all your fault. If you succeed, you deserve all the credit.
I love so many different types of music - hard rock, bebop, jazz fusion, R&B. And I've loved meeting and painting so many amazing artists like Lionel Richie, Ronnie Wood, Sia, Steven Tyler, Swizz Beatz, Taylor Swift, James Moody, The Fifth Dimension, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Michael Jackson. It makes me smile thinking about each one of them.
Let me give you a few simple rules for learning to draw. First, see of what shape the whole thing is. Next, put in the line that marks the movement of the whole. Don't have more than one movement in a figure; you can't patch parts together. Simple lines; then simple values. Establish the fact of the whole. Is it square, oblong, cube, or what is it?
What The Source becomes, in a physical sense, is almost like this particle accelerator. There's all these different, discrete voices and ideas. If you just saw two of them together perhaps it might seem completely diverse and like, "Why do you have these two people together?" But as it grows and as it speeds up, it kind of creates a larger dialogue.
The term Hispanic, coined by technomarketing experts and by the designers of political campaigns, homogenizes our cultural diversity (Chicanos, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans become indistinguishable), avoids our indigenous cultural heritage and links us directly with Spain. Worse yet, it possesses connotations of upward mobility and political obedience.
Hughes: (Talking for Mustang) 'I won't allow you to die under my jurisdiction because it'd be a pain to clean up the mess.' That's what he said. Edward: Fine. Tell him, 'Understood. I'll never die before you, colonel, you @#'$ idiot.' Hughes: Ha ha ha! They say the ruder you are, the luckier you are! In that case, you and Roy are gonna live forever!
I learned a lot about the images of pornography and how much they dealt with close-up, when a person is at their most vulnerable and having to reveal details about themselves. I wanted to combine the eternal in two different manners. There is the biological eternal - here is our species reproducing - and then the transparent, spiritual aspect of it.
When I come across writing that really moves me and inspires me, my reaction is twofold. I want to share it with others and I want to draw something that is worthy of it. I love finding quotes that stop people-that really make them think. And I love the idea that my work, combined with meaningful words, can provide comfort or inspiration to someone.
I don't think that the big crunch should be seen as a menace, but rather as an opportunity. It's one of these times in -history - and we have plenty of examples from the past - where it's possible to really make a difference. And if art is serious about claiming a central role in today's society and culture, this is the best chance it's had in ages.
The sheep-like tendency of human society soon makes inroads on a child's unsophistications, and then popular education completes the dastardly work with its systematic formulas, and away goes the individual, hurtling through space into that hateful oblivion of mediocrity. We are pruned into stumps, one resembling another, without character or grace.
You can always find a way to do something. Now, of course, when I do the action, it's an action that inspires people, it's a gift to people, it's not the other way around, I do not take something, I do not hurt people. Yes, I think today would be more than impossible and yet part of me would think that I continue to think that nothing is impossible.
I can't do the movies like I do painting because I am really more of a sort of dilettante or something. I mean I know guys that make movies that I can see it is absolutely their medium and they can just go from one movie right into the next because it is just - they have got it so much on the tips of their fingers. But for me it is a special effort.