Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
Robert RauschenbergRead
I don't really trust ideas - especially good ones... Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of materials and experiences over abstract concepts in the creative process.
Robert Rauschenberg suggests that genuine creativity arises not from trusting ideas alone, particularly those that seem appealing or 'good,' but rather from engaging directly with the materials and experiences that challenge our understanding. This interaction with the unknown fosters true innovation and connection to the creative process, as it grounds artistic expression in tangible reality rather than abstract thoughts.
In practice
During a workshop on creative processes, I shared this quote to inspire artists to focus on their materials.
Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
I never allowed myself the luxury of those brilliant, beautiful colors until I went to India and saw people walking around in them or dragging them in the mud. I realised they were not so artificial.
I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.
My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.
I have never followed fashion. What is fashion to me? I just think of things that inspire me, that inspire women, and I design that way.
Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. It's about intensive research, really. The concentration is warm and intimate and like the fire inside the earth - intense but not distorted. You can go to a place, really feel it in your heart. It's actually a beautiful feeling.
People say that I could sing the phone book and make it sound good.
I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.
When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.
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.
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