Rachel Kushner Quotes

If we talk about art in general... all the works of art, each one of them could reflect a moment in the history of mankind, the time in which it was created.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

Edgar Degas's famous sculpture, 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen,' served as my muse for 'The Painted Girls.' I came upon a television documentary on the work, and as someone who held the sculpture in high esteem and who largely considered ballet to be the high-minded pursuit of privileged young girls, I was struck by what I would learn.

We want people to experience art and think about it. The art reflects our time, it is about our culture.

Every work of art belongs to his time. I would not paint again the Mona Lisa in the third dimension.

The more I've gotten interested in writing about history and making sense of myself within the continuum of history, the more I've turned to paintings, to art. I look to the imagery of art to help me understand something about my own place in the world.

I recognize very much in Hopper that it does look like the United States; it looks like the 30's and my first impressions of everything, all of which I have to deal with and which gets mixed up in my work and probably gets mixed up in everybody else's work too.

Also, since art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced. Anyone who understands the work of art owns it. We all own the Mona Lisa.

To understand a field, you look at its arts. Arts can be cautionary as well as inspiring.

Art is not boosterism, it's not propaganda, and it's not spin, but that's not something that art does, and nor has it historically ever done it.

I believe that art is a tool and that, like all tools, it has functions. I also think it is important to know what the tool is for so that we can better know how and when to use it.

I've always taken the view that works of art are not just things that we enjoy. They can convey truths about the world more vividly and to greater effect than ordinary philosophical prose can because they don't just deal in ideas but show the emotional reality of them.

I like to look at fashion and relate it to the time when it was happening.

If something sticks with me for a long time, it goes into a painting.

Art points to things. It's a way of giving people not the standard way of looking at the world.

Every frame of every film is from a particular time. So, if you make a film in 2017, the times can't not have a bearing.

I'm interested in teasing out the contemporary issues in what I'm working on, however old the piece might be, whenever I'm working on it.

Old images and films are my main source of inspiration.

Life and art are inseparable.

Everyone thinks that hieroglyphics are really old but if you think about how the world's going now, I think they are just emojis.

Listening to the stories told in jazz music and how those artists expressed their truths about the times and what they were dealing with is what struck me the most.

Characters work really well when they're reflective of the times that they're operating in.

I find the history of toys very interesting on an academic level - they're very much products of their time, just like paintings and furniture tell us about their time.

I like stories. I like to figure out how history ties to the present.

Traditionally, photography has dealt with recording the world as it is found. Before photography appeared the fine artists of the time, the painters and sculptors, concerned themselves with rendering reality with as much likeness as their skill enabled. Photography, however, made artistic reality much more available, more quickly and on a much broader scale.