Jean Dubuffet Quotes

The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature - translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive.

Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression.

Some people have been kind enough to call me a fine artist. I've always called myself an illustrator. I'm not sure what the difference is. All I know is that whatever type of work I do, I try to give it my very best. Art has been my life.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

All art is dependent on technology because it's a human endeavour, so even when you're using charcoal on a wall or designed the proscenium arch, that's technology.

Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.

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

I suppose I consider my work a kind of picture making.

An artiste's input, her ability to create dimensions within the given space is very important.

Art was as much in the activity as in the results. Works of art were not just the finished product, but the thought, the action, the process that created them.

I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.

Without electricity, there can be no art.

New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas.

I think attempting to make art is a utopian process in itself, definitely. Nothing I do is ever equal to the ideas in my head. You do the best you can, you do it with patience and love, and then you give up. The moment you give up is when you know the book is done.

Whatever poetry that was in me was coming out in the form of constructing art books!

I like the feeling of being able to confront an experience and resolve it as art.

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

In the practice of art... it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry... may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor - the real labor of thinking.

We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.

I approach my music-making as an art-form--something pure from the spirit to which I can add dynamics and marketable reality. Music is genuine and healthy and the stimulation I get from molding it and adding dynamics is like nothing else on earth.

In terms of art, the only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don't do it, you don't know what might happen.

Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.

If I want to pursue the art of painting - or music or writing or sculpture - it requires only my time and a few dollars for materials. If, however, I want to produce a motion picture I have to go out and raise a million dollars!