I had given up ( around 1950, fh) any ambition of making a career as an artist…..I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a shift from ambition to personal enjoyment in creating art, emphasizing the value of authenticity over conventional success.
In this quote, Jean Dubuffet expresses a personal transformation in his relationship with art. He describes a moment when he abandoned the pursuit of a conventional artistic career and the pressures tied to it. Instead, he finds joy in the simplicity and purity of children's art, realizing that his own creative fulfillment lies not in fitting into established artistic norms but in creating for personal pleasure. This conveys a powerful message about valuing personal expression over societal expectations.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing one's passion over societal norms.
The things we truly love, the things forming the basis and roots of our being, are generally things we never look at. A huge piece of carpeting, empty and naked plains, silent and uninterrupted stretches with nothing to alter the homogeneity of their continuity. I love wide, homogenous worlds, unstaked, unlimited like the sea, like high snows, deserts, and steppes.
In the name of what - except perhaps the coefficient of rarity - does man adorn himself with necklaces of shells and not spider's webs, with fox fur and not fox innards? In the name of what I don't know. Don't dirt, trash and filth, which are man's companions during his whole lifetime, deserve to be dearer to him and isn't it serving him well to remind him of their beauty?
Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.
Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.
As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.
I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.
I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that.
She danced the dance of flames and fire, _x000D_ _x000D_ and the dance of swords and spears; _x000D_ _x000D_ she danced the dance of stars and the dance of space, _x000D_ _x000D_ and then she danced the dance of flowers in the wind.
Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which otherwise would remain unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.
I think that still, for the most part, even in 2010, the vast majority of museum shows and gallery shows and gallerists are pretty much dominated by men. So having a sense of what women are up to, for me, frankly, is very, very important.
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