One of the great currents in the contemporary experience of art is that it seems to come out of the experience of the author.

The main reason for the colossal objects is the obvious one, to expand and intensify the presence of the vessel - the object.

Art historical reference is like learning to drive a car - you always know how to drive even though you're not analysing how.

To most people who look at a mobile, it's no more than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, though, it may be poetry.

I'd love to do something like put a piece of moon rock on Mars and a piece of Mars on the moon, a sort of reverse archaeology.

Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the internment, and I like who I am.

The work itself has a complete circle of meaning and counterpoint. And without your involvement as a viewer, there is no story.

The most important things that one's working on are not necessarily the most important things that one thinks one's working on.

There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.

I knew I wasn't that good a writer, and all I could remember was that I could draw. I'm better at drawing than I am at writing.

At times, I've been incapacitated by anxiety and unhappiness. You really know what joy is if you have experienced the opposite.

The whole of nature is an endless demonstration of shape and form. It always surprises me when artists try to escape from this.

Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things.

I allow myself to be guided by the work which is in the process of being born. I have confidence in it. I do not think about it.

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.

To accuse me of making sensations is the easiest way of attacking me, and in reality leaves the question of sculpture untouched.

I don't think you can prevent an artist from being and I don't think you can cause one to be. No one knows what makes an artist.

One cannot set out to make a work that's spiritual. What is a contemporary iconography for the spiritual? Is it some fuzzy space?

I believe that photography can create great works of art, but hitherto it has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. (1908)

There are many kinds of conceit, but the chief one is to let people know what a very ancient and gifted family one descends from.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade

That freedom that Picasso afforded himself, to be an artist in a huge number of ways, seems to be a huge psychological liberation.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.

Any work that is not rooted in myth and poetry or that does not partake of the depth and essence of the universe is merely a ghost.

Sculpture is an art of the open air. Daylight, sunlight, is necessary to it, and for me, its best setting and complement is nature.

I used anything, various materials; this is wood, and this is mixed up clay, wedged together, clay with glazes and stuff like that.

Life ... is never the way one imagines it. It surprises you, it amazes you, and it makes you laugh or cry when you don't expect it.

I can consciously say I like squashing things because I saw 'Tom and Jerry' films or Charlie Chaplin in 'Modern Times.' That's true.

I have no conceit as a writer; in fact, I find it very difficult to start writing about sculpture generally & my aims in particular.

His work "The Pasture" features cast bronze cows in Toronto's financial district I wanted to remind stockbrokers what real stock is.

There's this privileged position of being an artist where you can do things on a more experimental nature simply to see what happens.

I think critics are very useful. But I think that they, in a way, betray their position when they stop people looking for themselves.

...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

That's the problem with working and living in the same space - my studio is downstairs, so I often get distracted by domestic things.

Things have character. So I'm interested in how the character of the thing might function as a protagonist in what isn't a narrative.

I think you have to teach kids to work, and you can only teach them to work if you work... I can't delegate jobs if I'm not doing it.

Content arises out of certain considerations about form, material, context-and that when that subject matter is sufficiently far away.

Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.

If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy.

I was very physical as a child - we lived on a smallholding, and I was always outside making mud pies or building structures up trees.

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

Coming [to Paris] has been a wonderful experience, surprising in many respects, one of them being to find how much of an American I am.

I think the Freudian impulse is in everything, so I just accept it. I don't always believe what Freud is saying but it sounds like fun.

My father wanted a boy badly and didn't get one, so I was happy to be the surrogate boy. I was very strong, always doing manual labour.

Everything for me has always been opposites; nothing has ever been in the middle... My life never had anything normal or in the center.

One senses the figures as passing by the tree line and, caught in the presence of the wall, turning to gaze upon it almost as a vision.

So take care of your life and take notice and be observant, for the number of widows is always far greater than the number of widowers.

I realized... that the artist is always alone. Early in life I had thought I needed other people to confirm or approve what I was doing.

You are what you are because your parents made love at that exact moment, and if they made love one second after you would be different.

How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at... color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.

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