I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.
Interpretation
The distinction between creation and classification highlights the subjective nature of art.
Willem De Kooning's quote reflects the idea that the act of creating visual work is separate from the interpretation that follows. It emphasizes the subjective nature of art, suggesting that what one person considers a picture or piece of work can only be defined as art by someone else's perspective. This dichotomy invites reflection on the role of the artist and the audience in the appreciation and definition of art.
In practice
During an art class, to inspire students about the subjective nature of art.
I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.
The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.
I don't paint to live, I live to paint.
Spiritually I am wherever my spirit allows me to be, and that is not necessarily in the future... Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.
Im not someone whos ever said anything definitive about his work. In my life also I have very little fixed form. I can change overnight.
Art should not have to be a certain way.
Camera lies all the time. It’s all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you… the moment you’ve made a choice, you’re lying about something larger. Lying is an ugly word. I don’t mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.
Movies are dreams! And they work on you subliminally.
'The Satanic Verses' was denied the ordinary life of a novel. It became something smaller and uglier: an insult.
Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.
Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.
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