I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress.
Kara WalkerRead
It feels like a game, this work I do. It is totally heartfelt, and I love the sticky terrain, the straight-up cartoons, how the irrepressible and icky rise to the surface. But I am not just trying to call forth bugaboos and demons for the sake of it, for fun.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the artist's passion for their work, emphasizing the complexity and emotional depth involved in creating art.
Kara Walker's quote reveals her deep connection to the artistic process, describing how she engages with both the joys and challenges of creativity. She compares her work to a game, highlighting its playful yet serious nature, and suggests that her artistic endeavors are not merely for entertainment, but to illustrate profound truths and confront difficult themes such as darkness and struggle.
Themes
ArtCreativityPassionEmotionComplexity
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the role of emotional depth in art.
More from Kara Walker
All quotes →There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.
Kara WalkerRead
I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful
Kara WalkerRead
Sugar crystallizes something in our American Soul. It is emblematic of all Industrial Processes. And of the idea of becoming white. White Being equated with pure and ‘true’ it takes a lot of energy to turn brown things into white things. A lot of pressure.
Kara WalkerRead
I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.
Kara WalkerRead
Once you open up the Pandora's box of race and gender... you're never done.
Kara WalkerRead
Similar quotes
I changed my writing style deliberately. My first two novels were written in a very self-consciously literary way. After I embraced gay subject matter, which was then new, I didn't want to stand in its way. I wanted to make the style as transparent as possible so I could get on with it and tell the story, which was inherently interesting.
Edmund WhiteRead
The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous.
Paul RandRead
I wake up from dreams and go, 'Wow, put this down on paper.' The whole thing is strange. You hear the words, everything is right there in front of your face. ... I am always writing a potpourri of music. I want to give the world escapism through the wonder of great music and to reach the masses. ... And I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street and I'd see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would have to work instead.
Michael JacksonRead
It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.
William FaulknerRead
It doesn't matter one damn bit whether fashion is art or not. You don't question whether an incredible chef is an artist or not-his cakes are delicious and that's all that matters.
Sonia RykielRead
Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.
Wilfred OwenRead