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
Screwing things up is a virtue. Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can't read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Embracing mistakes can foster creativity, while being overly concerned with correctness can stifle innovation.
This quote by Robert Rauschenberg emphasizes the importance of valuing the creative process over the pursuit of perfection. It suggests that making mistakes is a natural and necessary part of developing ideas, and that a fixation on being correct can hinder the flow of innovative thoughts and expressions. Rauschenberg illustrates the tension between the desire for neatness in communication and the chaotic, fluid nature of creativity, advocating for the acceptance of errors as a vital part of artistic exploration.
Themes
CreativityInnovationMistakesPerfectionArtMomentum
In practice
Example use cases
In a creative writing workshop, this quote can serve as a reminder that rough drafts are necessary for good writing.
More from Robert Rauschenberg
All quotes →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.
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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.
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My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.
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The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
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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.
Robert RauschenbergRead
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