Richard Serra Quotes

In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.

If you think about it enough to have a really articulate answer, you're not doing it right. That's how I feel about art. If your thought process could take you to knowing exactly what you're doing and why, there would be no point in making the art. It would become like propaganda. It's more nebulous than that.

Making art is complicated because the categories are always changing. You just have to make your own art, and whatever categories it falls into will come later.

Being a creative person. It's so much more rewarding when you find things on your own, to live whatever the writers are writing or to display what the director is looking for. You are the thing that everybody uses to get the story out.

Every artist of importance creates his own world, with its own laws - creates and shapes it in his own shape and image, and no one else's. This is why it is difficult to fit the artist into a world that has already been created, a seven-day, fixed and solidified world: he will inevitably slip out of the set of laws and paragraphs, he will be a heretic.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

I am not a representative of anything. When art historians or critics or the public put somebody in a drawer like this, it has a tranquilizing, paralyzing effect. Artists are individuals. They have ideas, and the conventions for one's self as an individual are not for a group. There are always those who follow the group, but they belong in the margins. I refuse to be placed within, or added to, one particular school.

Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.

You've really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you've just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.

Art is made by the alone for the alone.

Every man is an artist.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

I sketch literally all the time; constructing a collection is like building a family - you have to have a certain balance. I isolate myself - I need to be concentrated for this so I leave Paris, I leave to a place without a phone.

I can concentrate on my art.

The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not.

There's no wrong way of doing art. It's an expression of the individual.

I just love the idea of going into a room and creating something by myself.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different.

Burzum is not a political or religious band, or even an anti-religious band. Burzum is music - art if you like - and the interpretation of art lies in the eye of the beholder.

I'm focused on creating art and whichever outlet it can get out in.

When you're not hearing my voice, I'm working on art. So if you're not hearing me, I'm working for the people and getting inspired.

Art is freedom. If you defend art, you defend freedom.

When I'm sitting at my drafting table in my studio, I could really be anywhere.

What I've learned and all of us have learned is: You can't force art, and there's no way you could force somebody to do something that they didn't want to do in this line of work.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.