Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
Robert RauschenbergRead
Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else's aesthetics. I think you're born an artist or not. I couldn't have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the idea that art is subjective and that true creativity is innate rather than learned.
Robert Rauschenberg's quote suggests that artistic expression is inherently personal and that any action taken in art will inevitably clash with someone else's aesthetic standards. He emphasizes that creativity is an inherent trait, suggesting that true artists are born, not made, and that seeking more knowledge about art might limit one’s creative potential. This perspective challenges conventional notions of art education and the ideal of perfecting craft through learning.
Themes
ArtCreativitySubjectivityExpressionInnate
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in an art class to initiate a discussion on the nature of creativity.
More from Robert Rauschenberg
All quotes →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.
Robert RauschenbergRead
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.
Robert RauschenbergRead
My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.
Robert RauschenbergRead
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
Robert RauschenbergRead
There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.
Robert RauschenbergRead
Similar quotes
When I was younger, I was so crazy about poetry that I didn't notice who was noticing. It seemed to me so tremendous and large.
Robert HassRead
A film ingeniously directed does indeed give the impression of having been laid end to end, but a film ingeniously edited gives the impression of having suppressed all direction.
Jean-Luc GodardRead
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Octavia ButlerRead
Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.
Marilyn MonroeRead
Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.
Pablo PicassoRead
The only logical thing I can think of is that I knew there were such things as artists, and I knew there were none where I lived. So I knew that to be an artist you had to be somewhere else. And I very much wanted to be somewhere else.
Jasper JohnsRead