Tamra Davis Quotes

For me, Warhol made so much sense.

Robert Rauschenberg was not a giant of American art; he was the giant. No American created so many aesthetic openings for so many artists.

Picasso is what is going to happen and what is happening; he is posterity and archaic time, the distant ancestor and our next-door neighbor. Speed permits him to be two places at once, to belong to all the centuries without letting go of the here and now.

Observe that it is a great error to believe that all mediums of art are not closely tied to their time.

Art is the signature of a generation; artists have a way of defining the times.

In every domain of art, a work that corresponds to the need of its day carries a message of social and cultural value. It is the artist who crystallizes his age ... who fixes his time in history.

It's high time for the art world to admit that the avant-garde is dead. It was killed by my hero, Andy Warhol, who incorporated into his art all the gaudy commercial imagery of capitalism (like Campbell's soup cans) that most artists had stubbornly scorned.

We are concerned with the relationship between art and life. Contemporary art is only intelligible in terms of its relationship to our life.

I hate artists who are not of their time.

The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.

If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.

Picasso's always been such a huge influence that I thought when I started the cartoon paintings that I was getting away from Picasso, and even my cartoons of Picasso were done almost to rid myself of his influence.

What interests me most is when a work of art is no longer just an object, but also touches reality and life.

The German ueber-photographer Andreas Gursky was the perfect pre-9/11 artist.

As for critical writing about modernism, its moments of lucidity are but fulgurations illuminating the dark and incomprehensible landscape of its subject's unabashed difficulty.

All really great artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett or Joyce - you are never indifferent to them.

If you look at art history, at Goya or Gainsborough, it's always about acknowledging the people of your time who have influence.

The days of the painter at the Bauhaus appear to be truly over. They are estranged from the actual core of present activities, and their influence is more restricting than inspiring.

I've loved Basquiat since I was 13. From his artwork to his interviews to the way he thought about things, I've always been excited by him.

I don't think there is any question that Picasso is the greatest figure of the 20th century.

The artist is the consciousness of society... but musicians' role is very special.

Generationally, I relate to Basquiat's culture and the essence of his life story.

In the contemporary world, artists are almost entirely self-referential.

Anne Imhof is a powerful artist from Germany making work that is totally interdisciplinary.

Thinking about the artists I've loved through the years, my favorites are the ones who've made music with cultural, societal and political significance.