Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.
Interpretation
Frustration is a crucial part of the artistic process, while satisfaction is ultimately unimportant.
In this quote, Philip Guston highlights the importance of frustration in the creative journey. He suggests that the struggle and challenges faced during the artistic process are essential for growth and expression, whereas the final satisfaction of completing a piece is trivial in comparison to the experiences gained along the way.
In practice
In a discussion about creativity at an art workshop.
No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope that you are alert - ready - to see. What joy it is for paint to become a thing - a being. Believe in this miracle - it is your only hope. To will this transformation is not possible. Only a slow maturation can prepare the hand and eye to become quicker than ever. Ideas about art don't matter. They collapse anyway in front of the painting.
I go to the studio everyday because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don't go and the Angel comes?
You know, comments about style always seem strange to me - 'why do you work in this style, or in that style' - as if you had a choice in the matter... What you're doing is trying to stay alive and continue and not die.
If the artist starts evaluating himself, it’s an enormous block, isn’t it?
Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see.
Probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image-maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and imagine, to realize it for oneself, through oneself, as concretely as possible.
I want my audience to be constantly captivated, bewitched, so that it leaves the theatre dazed, stunned to be back on the pavement.
I remember a conversation with my parents about who the people on the TV were, and learning they were actors and they acted out this story and just thinking that was the most fantastic notion, and that's what I want to do.
To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.
Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.
If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.
Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer's art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories--when his dancing days are over.
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