American Artist Quotes

It's a mistake to ask a work of art to be all things to all people.

I want to express the utmost intensity of the color, bring out the quality, make it expressive.

Adolph Gottlieb

When you see 300 people naked in Grand Central Station, or a river of flesh flowing through the beauty aisles of Selfridges department store, it makes you think about all sorts of social and political issues.

A rain-tight roof, frugal living, a box of colors, and God's sunlight through clear windows keep the soul attuned and the body vigorous for one's daily work.

Albert Pinkham Ryder

I wanted to change history and preserve humanity. But in the process I changed myself and preserved my own.

The desert... may serve better as the backdrop for the problematic relationship between man and the environment. The human struggle, the successes... both noble and foolish, are readily apparent in the desert. Symbols and relationships seem to arise that stand for the human condition itself.

Richard Misrach

I value the referential quality of art, the fact that a work can allude to things or states of being without in any way representing them.

Forgive me not! Hate me and I shall know Some of love's fire still burns in your breast! Forgiveness finds its home in hearts at rest, On dead volcanoes only lies the snow.

Lilla Cabot Perry

When you reach round a dark corner to switch on a light, be careful. Slenderman will often run his finger over the back of your hand. This is the first signal of his interest in you.

The freeze of a photographic gesture, the fix of an action, how an arm twists, how a smile gets momentarily stabilized or exaggerated - to try to get some of this is important... The photofix inflects the almost literal shaping of a figure, changes of movement or potential movement, and a sense of occurrence or event.

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

Just as I came out into the rue, an omnibus came by - pas complet, so I sprang in, without that prayer and fasting which should chasten the mind before risking it in a French omnibus.

In my work, the information is the least important part. It's there, and the work wouldn't mean the same thing without it, but it isn't structured around the information. The most interesting part to me is the visual play... looking at this little universe of representation that I can make out of the world.

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

People like me, who care about printing, constitute the tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation.

What is it about our specific belief in God and His wishes that makes us so angry at the specific beliefs of another? What is it about the teachings of our respective deities that makes us more right than the next person? Or more wrong?

I have found that try as I will, I cannot escape the nemesis of my color. I believe, deep in my heart, that the dark tinge of my skin is the thing that has been my making. For you see, I have had to work 100 percent harder to realize my ambition.

Archibald Motley

Forget all the rules you ever learned
about graphic design.

Bob Gill (artist)

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

Andreas Feininger

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

She walked to the rear door and took out a bobby pin from her pocket. Hugo watched as she fiddled with the pin inside the lock until it clicked and the door opened. "How did you learn to do that?" asked Hugo. "Books," answered Isabelle.

The less [government] the better. As far as your personal goals are and what you actually want to do with your life, it should never have to do with the government. You should never depend on the government for your retirement, your financial security, for anything. If you do, you're screwed... That's all the government should be: Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines... I think a lot of people are afraid of freedom. They want their lives to be controlled, to be put into a box... Why should someone put a limit on how much fun I can have, how much I can accomplish?

The blackbirds are in this book, they're both pro the kids and against the kids. Just like fate. Sometimes it goes your way. Sometimes... and also a blackbird is from my passion for Schubert songs and his blackbirds and his birds of doom or birds of good. … some people were baffled that in the last big picture of that book, there's a crucifix on the wall of the children's house. Everybody assumes the hero and heroine are Jewish and the mother is Jewish. They're not. They're not. — That was my point. Those kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And all children were in the Holocaust. Everybody was in the Holocaust. So, I made sure my hero and heroine were not Jewish children. That was too easy. That was too easy.

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

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.