Doug Aitken Quotes

Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying to make some kind of jump or leap, where , the painting is always saying, 'What do you want from me? I can only be a painting.' You have to go from part to part, but you shouldn't see yourself go from part to part, that's the whole point.

Find the most puzzling kind of art you can think of, and then go out and try to approximate it with your camera. Take a photograph that corresponds to it. (Assignment to students.)

In my mind, I'm doing everything, but in reality, I'm doing very, very little. You come up with one idea, one moment, one line that leads to something and you feel like it's easy. And then, you sit back and think there would be no show without that.

I like making movies. I like the process. I like trying out new ideas, and if they don't work, they don't work. That's the reason I generated the money in the first place, to be able to try things. That's where I spend my money.

It seems to me it's a painter's duty to try to put an idea into his work.

I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.

If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.

When I'm putting the character together I try to find music that I think fits the character.

...when you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that's why I don't think there's any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead.

Your rainbow panorama enters into a dialogue with the existing architecture and reinforces what is assured beforehand, that is to say the view of the city. I have created a space which virtually erases the boundaries between inside and outside – where people become a little uncertain as to whether they have stepped into a work or into a part of the museum. This uncertainty is important to me, as it encourages people to think and sense beyond the limits within which they are accustomed to moving.

I don't think you need to be so result-oriented when you're trying to define the success of an art work. I think we can allow some unpredictability.

I think that one of the things is that, if you are going to decide to be a painter, you have got to decide that you are not going to be afraid of making a fool of yourself. I think another thing is to be able to find subjects which really absorb you to try and do. I feel that without a subject you automatically go back into decoration because you haven't got the subject which is always eating into you to bring it back - and the greatest art always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation.

I haven't been walking around for years with some burning desire to do a solo record. If I had, maybe I'd have made a record that was experimental. Usually, the idea of a solo record is to get some weird stuff out of your system, but I don't think like that. I wasn't interested in making something that was a hard listen - maybe I'll get around to that some other time. I wanted it to sound effortless, not like I was trying to reinvent the wheel.

The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees

If an idea seems to find its way towards a stage setting, that's the direction I take. I don't know if I'm trying to achieve anything other than to follow an idea on to the page.

I'm not trying to spell out a story. I still think you feel the painting, and the reason you read the mark is because you also feel the mark.

Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material... so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.

If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today.

The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want to try it again and again, and a lot of times my fellow musicians have to hold me back and say, "Nah, I think we got it."

Puppets are pure form then ideas for performance come out of that. It's always the form and the visuals and that's why I like to make puppets in a gallery or museum. They're not often in those contexts.

If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one.

Maybe that's when bad scripts are written, when you choose the theme first. I consider that I've something to say when I've thought of a person, a moment, a single beat of the heart, that I think is true and interesting, and therefore should be seen.

I'm mystified by the stuff that doesn't work. I'm mystified by what's going on in the critical side, too. Stuff I like is getting trashed and stuff that is being praised I think is terrible. I don't really feel in sync with what's happening, but at the same time, what I think keeps me afloat is that I try not to be, and don't want to be, very indulgent. I try to make the films as lean as possible, and to not spend a lot of time crawling up my own ass creatively.