Matthew Barney Quotes

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

The idea is to take it a step forward and innovate. Or else why am I doing it? I don't want to be just another can in the assembly line. I want to create - do something that is totally different and unusual.

It's very important to understand that we never do the same thing twice; each of our projects is unique. We'll never do another 'Gates.' Each project is a unique image. We do not know in advance how the work will look. I do preparatory drawings, but they are only projections of our vision.

When Wes has a new a project, you know that it's going to be something as different as the previous was from the previous one. Each time, he tries to take you to a country, or a land that is unknown for you and for him, and reinvent this land. That's what he did with 'Darjeeling,' with 'Mr. Fox,' with 'Moonrise Kingdom.'

I love to create magic - to put something together that's so unusual, so unexpected that it blows people's heads off. Something ahead of the times. Five steps ahead of what people are thinking.

The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator.

Creativity...involves the power to originate, to break away from the existing ways of looking at things, to move freely in the realm of the imagination, to create and recreate worlds fully in one's mind-while supervising all this with a critical inner eye.

To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.

If your mind is at work, we're in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we'll come up with something original.

Every film has to be the next something else; originality isn't celebrated because you can't market it.

Make something new, and define territory that's never been. I fall in love with shows because I've never see that before. I fall in love with new vocabularies.

The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

There are no original ideas. There are only original people.

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.

It's so important to me that I feel like I'm doing something that's never been done before, whether that's in the show, or I'm writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it.

The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring.

It is always possible to create something original.

Artists rarely do the same thing over and over again. Art is about the new, doing things in a new way.

If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that's really worthwhile.

I mean, the most important thing to me is imagination.

I'm into creating something that I've never created before.

The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

Ideas are the root of creation.