“If everything around us today is art, then we must either be blind or we ought to be so.”
“We are eccentric. And we’re in love. So, that’s how it goes. You take what the world says you can’t have, and you hold it tighter.”
“Afraid that my head might burst through the roof, I head for the mall. I have ten bucks in my pocket—what to spend it on? French fries—ten bucks’ worth of french fries, ultimate fantasy.”
“People are striving for authenticity in an inauthentic world. That’s why sensuality is now more crucial than ever.”
“People are looking for sensuality as part of their daily lives. For example, sensuality meets everyday lingerie. Everyday experiences, like cooking and bathing, are elevated beyond the ordinary and given a new meaning through sensualization. Kitchen appliances, high-end kitchen and bath fixtures and fittings and stone countertops and floors. Yes, these can be beautiful, even opulent, but the real meaning comes from the special feelings people get using them, which comes from their longing for a sensual lifestyle.”
“I m not just drawing clothes, I m drawing dreams .”
“An artist constantly risks falling fully into chaos, instead of transforming it.”
“My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive.”
“When we are too focused on readers getting our point, we can become didactic and perhaps preachy, engaging only one dimension—perhaps just the mind or just the will. Art engages the whole person—will, heart, soul, mind, and strength (p. 158).”
“Nothing is more complex than simplification; what art takes from enigma it more than replenishes in the instantiation of itself, in the labyrinthine puzzle it plants in history. The intensification of enigma. The luxuriantly problematic loam of existence is built out of the sedimented aeons of residues deposited by the will to power, the impulse to create.”
“Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge.”
“We need to understand the role of art, and stop thinking about it as an option, or a luxury, or worse, an affection. Art is the bedrock of culture itself. It is the foundation of the process by which we unite ourselves psychologically, and come to establish productive peace with others. As it is said, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4). That is exactly right. We live by beauty. We live by literature. We live by art. We cannot live without some connection to the divine — and beauty is divine — because in its absence life is too short, too dismal, and too tragic. And we must be sharp and awake and prepared so that we can survive properly, and orient the world properly, and not destroy things, including ourselves — and beauty can help us appreciate the wonder of Being and motivate us to seek gratitude when we might otherwise be prone to destructive resentment.”
“It behoves the art establishment to elevate them to a higher plateau as fast as possible, to make them unavailable, aesthetically, to a low art market...[The art establishment] extends its parameters to capture the new thing and elevate it from low art to high art—successfully enough to increase the commerce proposition that goes along with it—and to consign the idea of art to a particular world.”
“Art teaches art.”
“Everything new is shit, untill it has been revised 3 or 4 times. And to reverse it, shit is not even shit untill it has been processed 3 or 4 times.”
“The true painter must be able, before an infinite panorama, to limit himself to reproducing a single ant.”
“A great painter forces the world to see nature as he sees it....We paint from within outwards.”