Spring ’20 – 16 Ideas about Art

I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother (random order). I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, perserving, etc. Also, (up to now separately) I “do” Art. Now I will simply do these maintenance everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art. I will live in the museum as I customarily do at home with my husband and my baby

Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Megan Stack[‘s book Women’s Work] is willing to confront hard questions that many of us flinch from: about the relationships between women and the women we hire to take care of our houses and our children, to do the traditional women’s work that gives ‘liberated women’ the time to do traditional men’s work.

Anne-Marie Slaughter

the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.

Jackson Pollock

Ain’t about how fast I get there

Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side

It’s the climb

Hannah Montana

To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover, to your surprise, that you have rendered something in its true character.

Camille Pissarro

I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.

Nan Goldin

One of the spinners in Whitnel Cotton Mill. She was 51 inches high. Has been in the mill one year. Sometimes works at night. Runs 4 sides – 48 cents a day. When asked how old she was, she hesitated, then said, “I don’t remember,” then added confidentially, “I’m not old enough to work, but do just the same.” Out of 50 employees, there were 10 children about her size.

Lewis Hine

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.

Salman Rushdie

When I write I don’t aim to shock people, and I’m surprised when I do. But I don’t think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.

Tenessee Williams

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keates

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!

My tables,–meet it is I set it down,

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act I, Scene V

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act V, Scene I

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act V, Scene I

So she sat on with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland. Though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality.

Lewis Carroll

I’ve been a soldier and a slave. I’ve seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I’ve held them in my arms at the final moment.

These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no brave last words, only their eyes, filled with confusion, questioning “Why?”

I don’t think they were wondering why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?

To surrender dreams — this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash.

Too much sanity may be madness!

But maddest of all — to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Dale Wasserman

The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective… it humbles you and makes you feel almost like you’ve been baptized. I feel born again when I get out of the ocean.

Beyoncé Knowles

If everybody had an ocean
Across the u.s.a.
Then everybody’d be surfin’
Like californi-a
You’d seem ’em wearing their baggies
Huarachi sandals too
A bushy bushy blonde hairdo
Surfin’ U.S.A.

Brian Wilson

All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.

Andre Breton

Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.

Andre Breton

I lost my credit card today. I dug thru a trash can on my street for an hour. It wasn’t in there and I almost threw up. Then I looked through the dumpster in my apartment and it was not there. Then I looked in my car. There it was!

Emma Chamberlain

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows.

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.

Jim Jarmusch

No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way, you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We’re looking at six or seven problems constantly. We’re living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented.

Marina Abramovic

A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.

Douglas Adams

I work with stone because stone is so much work. Physical labor stimulates thinking. The more engaged I am in working the freer my thoughts become. It takes a lot of stone to stay working. I appreciate stone for its abundance and for its willingness to play along.

Dan Snow

Artists need to create on the same scale that society has the capacity to destroy.

Lauren Bon / Sherrie Rabinowitz

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.

Banksy

I think ‘punk’ should really be defined as paving your own way creatively and by defying any sort of orthodoxy or commercial pressure.

Shepard Fairey

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

Jeff Bezos