Quotes from Robert Rauschenberg

You begin with the possibilities of the material.

I did a twenty foot print and John Cage is involved in that because he was the only person I knew in New York who had a car and who would be willing to do this.

So that ideas of sort of relaxed symmetry have been something for years that I have been concerned with because I think that symmetry is a neutral shape as opposed to a form of design.

Curiosity is the main energy...

An empty canvas is full.

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. I try to act in that gap between the two. - 1959, from a catalogue

I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.

I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun.

You have to have time to be sorry for yourself to be a good Abstract Expressionist.

I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop, At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I'm not one. I'd rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can't ignore.

A pair of stockings is no less suitable o make a painting of than wood,nails,turpentine,oil,and fabric.

I didn't want painting to be simply an act of emphasizing one color to do something to another color, like using red to intensify green, because that would imply some subordination of red. I didn't want color to serve me.

Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made - I try to act in the gap.

Success is a worn down pencil.

And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway

An empty canvas is full.

I did a twenty foot print and John Cage is involved in that because he was the only person I knew in New York who had a car and who would be willing to do this.

I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world.

One can see that a canvas is six feet by eight feet, say, quite accurately. But you can spend two minutes and think it's five, or thirty seconds and it's just a different bed for activities there.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

Well, I like way downtown near the Battery. I lived down there at this time and for, I guess, the following well, this is where I moved to uptown and I've been here for four years and this is 1965.

You wait until life is in the frame, then you have the permission to click. I like the adventure of waiting until the whole frame is full.

By the time you establish your priorities, there really isn't any fun or need to interest yourself in what you're doing. And this I find disastrous.