Mark Rothko Quotes

I seldom have my stuff up unless I'm testing it. If I'm worrying about a painting, I put it up and see if I detest it quickly or slowly. Otherwise I have things by other artists.

I mean, artistic processes are all about making choices all the time, and the very act of making a choice is the distilling down and the getting to the core of what it is that you care about and what you want to say, really.

I wanted to be a painter, somewhere between Abstract Expressionism and Pop.

I would have been a visual artist. When I was in high school, that was one of the things... I had to make a decision what I was going to go to college for, and at the time, I also painted and sculpted. I got more attention for my performing, so I thought that was a better idea.

Mission accomplished. The Museum of Modern Art's wide-open, tall-ceilinged, super-reinforced second floor was for all intents and purposes built to accommodate monumental installations and gigantic sculptures, should the need arise. It has arisen.

There is no reason for me to show my collection in New York, because it's not about craft and technique there.

With photography, you are lucky if you get people to look at your pictures at some point. There's no formal way to show them.

I have to say that I reject somewhat the distinction between something called art and something called public art. I think all art demands and desires to be seen.

You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.

As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.

I thought Out of Action was better as a catalogue than the honeycomb because the honeycomb was like walking into one compartment and then another compartment.

It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.

A photographer must choose a palette as painters choose theirs.

I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

It was always my intention that The Frieze should be housed in a room which would provide a suitable architectural frame for it.

I have improved the way in which I paint. The colours are cleaner and there is more energy in the brush work.

I look at every piece of furniture and every object as an individual sculpture.

Photography has always been a major part of my vision: my excuse for meddling with what the world looks like.

Collage is not a kitchen sink; it's not a refuge for the compositionally disabled.

Silent films weren't so different from my comics - the basic choice both offer an artist is what do you show and what do you tell.

At my first exhibits, people were saying that's just a light on the wall.

I don't understand indie films. So, I won't do such films.

Selection is the invention of the landscape painter.

One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul.