Robert Rauschenberg Quotes - Page 2

My concern is never art, but always what art can be used for.

And I think that even today, New York still has more of this unexpected quality around every corner than any place else. It's something quite extraordinary

You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting.

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.

I don't mess around with my subconscious

I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world.

Even at this late date, I go into my studio, and I think 'Is this going to be it? Is it the end?' You see, nearly everything terrorizes me. When an artist loses that terror, he's through.

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.

I want my paintings to look like what's going on outside my window rather than what's inside my studio.

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.

I like photographs of anything uninteresting. Maybe just two doors on a wall... The point is to be uninteresting.

One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone.

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.

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

A canvas is never empty.

I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun.

Every time I've moved, my work has changed radically.

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself; it revolved around words like 'tortured', 'struggle'. 'pain'.. .I could never see these qualities in paint - I could see them in life and art that illustrates life. But I could not see such conflicts in the materials and I knew that it had to be in the attitude of the painter.

I never allowed myself the luxury of those brilliant, beautiful colors until I went to India and saw people walking around in them or dragging them in the mud. I realised they were not so artificial.

While my classmates were reading their textbooks, I drew in the margins.

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

My fascination with images open 24 hrs. is based on the complex interlocking if disparate facts heated pool that have no respect for grammar. The form then Denver 39 is second hand to nothing. The work then has a chance to electric service become its own cliché. Luggage. This is the inevitable fate fair ground of any inanimate object freightways by this I mean anything that does not have inconsistency as a possibility built in.

I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.

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

I always have searched for a point of view that a participant could change.