Quotes About Art

I was attracted to Robert's work because his visual vocabulary was akin to my poetic one, even if we seemed to be moving toward different destinations. Robert always would tell me, "Nothing is finished until you see it.

He wrote me a note to say we would create art together and we would make it, with or without the rest of the world.

Your work, coming from a fluid source, can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke then of holding hands with God. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard, Robert, and don't let go. (letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, 1970)

I drew no line between life and art. I was the same on- as offstage.

Everything I came up with seemed irreverent or irrelevant.

Of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

Secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

What do we do with those that can be accessed and dismissed by a channel changer, that we love no less than a nineteenth-century poet or an admired stranger or a character from the pen of Emily Brontë? What do we do when one of them commingles with our own sense of self, only to be transferred into a finite space within an on-demand portal?

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God. The guy who built the Tower of Babel was the first artist. If I had to check out where I was in other centuries, I was his old lady. If I wasn't the guy, I was his chick. He knew that there was more and God got jealous. Even gods get uptight. Women make gods uptight. Everyone thinks of God as a man -- you can't help it -- Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man. But a man comes once. A woman never stops coming.

I craved honesty, yet found dishonesty in myself. Why commit to art? For self-realization, or for itself? It seemed indulgent to add to the glut unless one offered illumination.

Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.

And what was the ultimate goal? To have one's work caged in art's great zoos—the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?

I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo.

Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had left our private world. It was what I had always wanted for him, but I felt a slight pang of possessiveness sharing it with others. Overriding that feeling was the joy of seeing Robert's face, suffused with confirmation, as he glimpsed the future he had so resolutely sought and had worked so hard to achieve.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off, too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

Avevo trovato conforto in Arthur Rimbaud, in cui mi ero imbattuta a sedici anni, su una bancarella di libri di fronte alla stazione degli autobus di Philadelphia; il suo sguardo borioso aveva incrociato il mio dalla copertina di Illuminazioni . Possedeva un'intelligenza insolente capace di infiammarmi, e l'avevo accolto come un compatriota, un parente, un amore segreto perfino. Non avendo i novantanove centesimi per comprare il libro me lo ero messo in tasca.

Toys to deftly pluck up like animal crackers and deposit safely into a crate decorated with friezes of bright circus trains carrying aardvarks, dodos, swift dromedaries, baby elephants, and plastic dinosaurs. A box of mixed metaphors.

I have smoothed the hem of the robe of Parsifal. Watched Giotto's sheep wander from a fresco. Prayed before holy icons unveiled, surviving time. Held shavings swept from the hut of Geppetto. Unzipped a body bag and beheld the face of my brother. Witnessed the acolyte scatter petals over a dying poet. I saw the smoke of incense form the shape of my days. I saw my love return to God. I saw things as they are.

It occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

Nos miramos las manos, que teníamos cogidas. Respiramos hondo y aceptamos nuestra complicidad, no en el robo, sino en la destrucción de una obra de arte. –Al menos, ellos no lo tendrán nunca –dijo. –¿Quiénes son ellos? –pregunté. –Cualquiera excepto nosotros –respondió.

Beneath the feet of Christ was a skull embellished with the words memento mori. "It means 'Remember we are mortal,' " said Gregory, "but poetry is not." I just nodded. (p. 155)

And the eye became a body, the murky heart of a rose. The sinister shadow of an orchid. Or the indolent poppy balanced behind the ear of Baudelaire.

I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.