In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
When I talk of primordial innocence, I hear it in Sufi music with the nay flute. I see it in Coptic icons, in most traditional art, particularly art of the American Indian. I find the texts extraordinarily beautiful and very childlike and very simple. I've been particularly interested in American Indian texts.
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.
Lady Diana Spencer looked to relatively unknown designers - David and Elizabeth Emanuel, recently graduated from the Royal College of Art - when she wed Prince Charles in 1981.
'The Next Wave' started as a drawing for a new silkscreen fine art print. I ended up doing the prints digitally because the water-based inks were better for the environment than the oil based inks. So, I learned about the Epson digital printers to get the image I wanted.
Who thought it would be a good idea to undermine art in the school curriculum? Who thought studying the history of our visual culture was a waste of time? Who thought that only private schools should have that privilege? Was it someone who said we don't need experts?
Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
An artist who goes around proclaiming that the art he's making is art is probably making a serious mistake. And that's one mistake I try not to make.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.
I always make music as an art - it's never been a product for me.
I am not a food critic. Or a chef. Or even a professional writer. What I am schooled in the art of, however, is enjoying myself.
I've always been obsessed by visual art as I have been by music personally, but that doesn't mean anything professionally.
I try to keep a low profile in general. Not with my art, but just as a person.
Art is about profundity. It's about connecting to everything that it means to be alive, but you have to act.
Individuals have to find a place to experience a profundity of feeling, and art is a means to that.
Instead of a passion for the Yankees or fly-fishing or birding, I want to pass on to my sons a love of books, music, and art. I accept that this is partly about the gratification of my own ego, but it's also one of the only ways I know of making a rich life. That's what we all want for our progeny.
Haunted since the day its discovery was projected all over the world in 1994, I, like many others, have always wanted to see inside the Chauvet cave, site of the world's earliest known cave art. Quite rightly, we will never go. It is closed to the public.
A secondhand wardrobe hand clothes doesn't make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, or HIV. I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay doesn't make one witty... the only thing that makes one an artist is making art.
Art is the proper task of life.
