Robert Rauschenberg Short Quotes

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It is completely irrelevant that I am making them. 'Today' is their creator.

Robert Rauschenberg
Understanding is a form of blindness. Good art, I think, can never be understood.

Robert Rauschenberg
I think a picture is more like the real world when it is made out of the real world.

Robert Rauschenberg
Work is my joy... Work is my therapy, I don't know anybody who loves work as much as I do.

Robert Rauschenberg
Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two)

Robert Rauschenberg
[Art is] a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.

Robert Rauschenberg
A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil and fabric.

Robert Rauschenberg
This was my first encounter with art as art... somebody actually MADE those paintings.... [it] was the first time I realized you could be an artist.

Robert Rauschenberg
Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc., it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement.

Robert Rauschenberg
[we gave] permission to do what we wanted.... It would be hard to imagine my work at that time [c. 1956 – 1960] without his [Jasper John's] encouragement.

Robert Rauschenberg
I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop. At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed.

Robert Rauschenberg
I am sick of talking about What and Why I am doing. I have always believed that the WORK is the word. Action is seen less clearly through reason. There are no shortcuts to directness.

Robert Rauschenberg
I could not design forms and colors that would achieve some preconceived result... I wasn't going to hire them. I was more interested in working WITH them than in their working for me.

Robert Rauschenberg
I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.

Robert Rauschenberg
I used to think of that line in Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'', about the 'sad cup of coffee'... I have had cold coffee and hot coffee and lousy coffee, But I've never had a sad cup of coffee.

Robert Rauschenberg
I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.

Robert Rauschenberg