Marina Abramovic Quotes

Art chooses its constraints.

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.

A lot of great creativity comes from restrictions.

There's no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist.

For me, restrictions are not always negative. Restrictions can push creativity. I like restrictions.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

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

As an artist, you find at different times you want to do different things.

My creativity thrives with limitations.

The artist in me welcomes another opportunity to be creative.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

... everyone's free to embark on either a great clipper or a little fishing boat. An artist is an explorer who oughtn't to shrink from anything: it doesn't matter whether he goes to the left or the right -- his goal sanctifies all.

Our internal artist is always our creative child.

Why not do something strange and different for once? Artists can do whatever they want!

Creativity thrives best when constrained.

A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, “Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.” And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. (Steve Jobs)

Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.

I think constraints are very important. They're positive, because they allow you to work off something.

It's the obvious thing to say but artists want to be able to tell all kinds of stories and tear down every kind of wall, to look at ourselves and examine who we are and just get deeper insights into what makes us human beings. Anything that could possibly prevent that in our near future horrifies me to no end.

An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality.

To create is to relate. We trust in the artist in everybody to make his own connections, his own juxtapositions.

I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.

Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)