Saturday, July 6, 2013

Diebenkorn on when a picture is "right"

"When a picture is right and complete there is a cumulative excitement in the sequential encounters with the parts until the work is completely..experienced. The pitch of 'right' response mounts, if the chain isn't broken, to an extreme and often physical sympathy with the presentation."

Elderfield, "The Drawings of Richard Diebenkorn"

Untitled (2001), Terry Winters


Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Greil Marcus on the impulse behind art.

"What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, 'If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.'"

From 2013 SVA Commencement speech, quoted on BrainPickings May 14, 2013

Thursday, April 25, 2013

The Great Silence (2012), Lorrie Fredette



Jasper Johns on what "one wants from painting"

"When you begin work with the idea of suggesting , say, a particular psychological state of affairs, you have eliminated so much from the process of painting that you make an artificial statement, which, I think, is not desirable. I think one has to work with everything and accept the kind of statement which results as unavoidable, or as a helpless situation.  I think that one wants from painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final gesture, the final statement has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement.  It has to be what you can't avoid saying, not what you set out to say."

From Interviews with American Artist, by David Sylvester

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Franz Kline on "why"

"It just seems as though there are forms in some experience in your life that have an excitement for you."

From Interviews with Artists, by David Sylvester

Monday, April 15, 2013

David Smith on inspirations

"They can begin with any idea.  They can begin with a found object; they can begin with no object; they can begin sometimes even when I'm sweeping the floor and I stumble and kick a few parts that happen to be thrown into an alignment that sets me off on thinking.  It sets off a vision of how it would finish if it all had that kind of accidental beauty to it.  They go that way, they go anyway."

David Smith, in Interviews with American Artists by David Sylvester