My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
Maya LinRead
I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a journey of self-discovery and understanding one's cultural identity in relation to art.
Maya Lin expresses a realization that her early aspiration to conform to American ideals overshadowed her inherent Eastern influences in her artistic work. As she matured, she recognized the importance of her heritage and how it uniquely shaped her perspective in art and architecture, highlighting the significance of cultural identity in creative expression.
In practice
This quote can be used during an art seminar to discuss cultural influences in creativity.
My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.
When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.
I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.
If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience.
On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It's very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from the notion of a lifelike quality. You see, actually lifelike, tape-recorded dialogue like this has very little to do with good novel dialogue. It's a matter of getting that awful tyranny of mimesis out of your mind, which is difficult.
To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.
Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing.
I shall create! If not a note, a hole./If not an overture, a desecration.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.