Robert Rauschenberg Quotes - Page 4

I refuse to be in this world by myself. I want an open commitment from the rest of the people.

I don't think he (Joseph Albers, fh) ever realized that it was his discipline that I came for. Besides, my response to what I learned from him was just the opposite of what he intended.. ..I was very hesitant about arbitrarily designing forms and selecting colors that would achieve some predetermined result, because I didn't have any ideas to support that sort of thing - I didn't want color to serve me, in other words.

And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway

I got so I was really just sick of sculpture.

So that ideas of sort of relaxed symmetry have been something for years that I have been concerned with because I think that symmetry is a neutral shape as opposed to a form of design.

This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.

But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable

An empty canvas is full only if you want it to be full.

And all of this, all these physical aspects of painting at that time excited me very much. You could do a picture in just black and white. I mean all the things, whether you're soliciting permission or not, do give you permission

You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist.

It's so easy to be undisciplined. And to be disciplined is so against my character, my general nature anyway, that I have to strain a little bit to keep on the right track.

If I declare it to be so, then this is a portrait.

I'm quite taken aback when I get something that appears to be technically a good photograph, because it's not necessarily my intention.

I think that in the last twenty years or so, there's been a new kind of honesty in painting where painters have been very proud of paint and have let it behave openly.

Well, I like way downtown near the Battery. I lived down there at this time and for, I guess, the following well, this is where I moved to uptown and I've been here for four years and this is 1965.

I was much happier when I had less responsibility... when my only responsibility was to my work and to myself.

The only thing that I could get with chance, and I never was able to use it, was that I would end up with something quite geometric or the spirit that I was interested in, indulging in, was gone.