American Artist Quotes

We are getting mixed up with the French tradition. In talking about the necessity to 'finish' a thing, we then said American painters 'finish' a thing that looks 'unfinished', and the French, they 'finish' it. I have seen Henri Matisse's that were more 'unfinished' and yet more 'finished' than any American painters. Matisse was obviously in a terrific emotion at the time and he was more 'unfinished' than 'finished'.

William Baziotes

A nursery rhyme from the American Psychiatric Society:
Monday's kid is passive-aggressive
Tuesday's kid is compulsive-obsessive
Wednesday's kid is hypochondriacal
Thursday's kid is just plain maniacal
Friday's kid is anal-retentive
Saturday's kid is too non-attentive
But the kid who's born on the Sabbath day
defies diagnosis in every way.

Expatriate? It appears to me that in order to be an expatriate one has to be, in some manner, driven from one's fatherland, from one's native land.... One must belong before one may then not belong.

Beauford Delaney

We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but Africans of the world.

Does any sane man imagine that the church could cease to be missionary and remain the church?

A lot of my work has to do with not allowing my characters to have an ego in a way that the stomach doesn't have an ego when it's wanting to throw up. It just does it.

What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see. Perception, belief, action, and change are codependent.

John Paul Caponigro

It was great fun, to learn anew. You think you know enough, but you don't. You must open up; let it in. be receptive, admit what you don't know, which few are willing to do. Start from square one. Again!

What affected me most profoundly was the realization that the sciences of cryptography and mathematics are very elegant, pure sciences. I found that the ends for which these pure sciences are used are less elegant.

A lot of good and regular art gets made because of who you talk to. No one is immune to human contact and art is not made in a vacuum.

Success based on anything but internal fulfillment is bound to be empty.

Martha Friedman

Unfortunately, the only recognized relics of yesterday's farmers are obsolete curiosities when the greatest relic, their philosophy of living, is seldom considered.

As an artist grows older, he has to fight disillusionment and learn to establish the same relation to nature as an adult, as he had when a child

Charles E. Burchfield

Clio may be the most austere and chaste of the Muses, but she has been known to come down informally from Mount Helicon in a mood so raffish that there are those who claim to have seen her with her slip showing.

Thornton Willis

I've realized over the years that, with rare exceptions, most writer's block isn't writer's block at all: It's necessary time that allows the unconscious mind to do its deep work. The great Ah-Ha! moments don't usually come at the keyboard. They come when I'm lying on the floor, staring into space (or banging my head against the wall in frustration). All of a sudden the Unconscious Camera turns on, a movie starts playing in my head-and there it is: The Big Moment. Or the Whole Damn Story. And, in many ways, I had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

J. M. DeMatteis

Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch.

Richard Artschwager

Didn't it make sense that after something horrible happens, something better should follow?

Calendar Reform is the final act of history, and the first step toward Earth Regeneration in the cradle of galactic culture.

José Argüelles

No to spectacle no to virtuosity no to transformations and magic and make believe no to glamour and transcendency of the star image no to the heroic no to the anti-heroic no to trash imagery no to involvement of performer or spectator no to style no to camp no to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer no to eccentricity no to moving or being moved.

I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

The business of the state trying to legislate modesty is relatively both an infantile and ridiculous procedure. Of course, it is true that the more things are secreted the more intriguing they become, because it is always the forbidden that has the strongest appeal. Nudity is a state of fact - lewdity a state of mind.

Paul Outerbridge

Experience has shown that the more fascinating the subject, the less observant the photographer.

Andreas Feininger

I TOOK THE PIECES YOU THREW AWAY AND
PUT THEM TOGATHER [sic] BY NIGHT AND DAY
WASHED BY RAIN DRIED BY SUN A MILLION PIECES ALL IN ONE

If I had a hammer, I'd build a city on stilts so my feet would stay dry when God's wine glass tilts. If I had a shovel, I'd dig a hole in the dirt and I'll be hiding when his drunken stupor lands upon earth