Quotes About Art

When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.

Maybe black and white is the best medium for landscapes, I don't know.

Even drawing gray hair at all is difficult to render in black and white.

Black and white means photography to me. It's much easier to take a good color photograph, but you can get more drama into a black and white one.

I think my most famous was 'Poco's Legend.' It's a white album with a simple line drawing of a horse. It almost has a Picasso feel to it. I remember that Rusty Young, the lead singer of the band, said, 'I want you to draw a horse for the song 'Legend,' which is about a phantom spirit horse. I want you to do it in several lines.'

White paint is my marble.

If I'm doing a logo, I'll do it in black and white. Once the form is feeling right, only then do I start exploring the color palettes. A good example was the process of rebranding the Salvador Dali Museum. I did at least 100 versions in black and white.

It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.

The giant white cube is now impeding rather than enhancing the rhythms of art. It preprograms a viewer's journey, shifts the emphasis from process to product, and lacks individuality and openness. It's not that art should be seen only in rutty bombed-out environments, but it should seem alive.

I question the political judgement of those who would have the nerve to paint Christ white with his obvious African nose, lips and wooly hair.

I think that zinc white has a property of scaling and cracking.

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.

We were from downtown, so we were rapping in Danceteria, in these white downtown clubs, really. Nobody downtown was rapping. Nobody we knew was rapping. So we were like, 'We should do it.' We weren't making fun of it; we loved it, and we wanted to be part of it.

I want to use whatever connections to get a super-outstanding Basquiat in the White House. It could be one of mine. It could be something that a friend owns.

I do think that I'm not good at making pretty things. It doesn't come so naturally for me.

My parents were artists, so my salvation was to make pretty things - and ultimately delicious things at the same time.

'Faces' became more than a film. It became a way of life, a film against the authorities and the powers that prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want to, something that can't be done in America, that can't be done without money.

The works of previous artists have come from their own experiences or insights but haven't given the experience itself. They had set themselves up as a sort of interpreter to the layman... Our interest is in a form where you realize that the media are just perception.

I can consider not only great art, but the context in which that art has been created. I can consider the people who paid a price for that art to be created and whether or not I want to appreciate that art on their backs.

My great-grandparents have some beautiful sculptures which have come down the generations. They are priceless and whenever I look at them, I am inspired.

I don't pay attention to auction prices. Nothing interests me less. One of the benefits of not being an artist is I don't have to navigate the social hierarchies of the art world as a person of desire. I don't need anything. I live in a different way.

Marlene Dumas is one of the two or three most successful female artists alive, if you judge by prices. I've never reviewed her work, because I find nothing in it to get excited about no matter how hard I look.

The turban is a Sikh's honor, pride and art.

I have such pride in furthering the American musical and using it as a way to tell story.