Quotes About Creativity

nu simt decât c? am un curcubeu în cap… ?i trebuie s? beau întruna ap? ca s? nu se evapore… ?i s? stau în lumin? ca s? sclipeasc?… s?-l pot vedea

Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, "Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don't. But you listen to them anyway." So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.

I always question artists who are successful in whatever they do—I think what that means is that they're repeating themselves and not taking enough risks.

Some couples buy pots and pans when they move in together. Ulay and I began planning how to make art together.

Art is not just about another beautiful painting that matches your dining room floor. Art has to be disturbing, art has to ask a question, art has to predict the future.

It taught me that the process was more important than the result, just as the performance means more to me than the object. I saw the process of making it and then the process of its unmaking. There was no duration or stability to it. It was pure process. Later on I read—and loved—the Yves Klein quote: "My paintings are but the ashes of my art.

Much later on, I read a statement of Bruce Nauman's: "Art is a matter of life and death." It sounds melodramatic, but it's so true. This was exactly how it was for me

I realise the power of art that does not hang on the walls of galleries.

There's nothing more tragic than artists from the 70s still doing art from the 70s.

Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.

Immaterial art is the strongest because there's no obstacle; there's just energy, and I believe in energy.

I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.

If you are not passionate in life, you can't be passionate in art.

Ideas can come anytime, anywhere, while I am making this gazpacho or going to the bathroom. I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I'm afraid of.

My first paintings were of my dreams. They were more real to me than the reality I was living in--I didn't like my reality. I remember waking up, and the memory of my dreams was so strong that I would write them down, and then I would paint them, in just two very particular colors, a deep green and a night blue. Never anything else.

When I think about my life, the early works, you know, always you learn as a young artist to have a style you can follow, a certain line. But I didn't do that. I had this enormous urge to make different works. And some of them, I didn't see any kind of connection. I didn't know where I'm going. But now, looking 45 years back, everything had perfect sense. It's like a straight line.

I've never really had a studio. A studio makes you lazy and comfortable, and you repeat yourself.

I expose myself to life, and from that, ideas come as a surprise. I totally dismiss the ones that are pleasant and easy. I'm only interested in the ones that really disturb me and that I get obsessed about. They're what bring me to new territory.

Because I did an event with Jay Z, she said I'd killed performance art. But who made these rules?

I made a tape recording of a bridge collapsing and I wanted to play it suddenly and very loudly when people were walking over a big bridge in Belgrade. The council forbid it. Their imagination is tiny; mine is big. I want always to shake everything up.

When you are a young artist, you have no idea what you are doing. Every artist who says he knows, it is a lie.

I'd always thought of art as something that was expressed through certain tools: painting, sculpture, photography, writing, film, music, architecture. And yes, performance. But this performance went beyond performance. This was life.

I always thought the more fucked-up childhood you have, the better artist you get, because you have more material to work with. I don't think anyone does anything from happiness. Happiness is such a good state, it doesn't need to be creative.

In the performer's body, you don't care how you look. It doesn't matter if you're old, fat, beautiful, or ugly. It doesn't change anything. The only thing is your charisma and how you express your idea.