Paul Simonon 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'm very interested in the language of photography in relationship to painting.

I try to consider each body of work on its own terms, discretely, so terms like 'sculpture' or 'photography', in their broad sense, don't really enter into my thinking.

At that point it certainly would be called abstract. That is to say, you had a model and there'd be one or two or three people there drawing the model but otherwise you had abstractions all around the room, even though the model was in front of you.

I had tried painting, mostly to give myself a greater appreciation of the craft and to inform how I looked at paintings. That led to collaging some of the work I had done on paper, and I found myself mixing in found pieces as well.

The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art.

I've always been a creative person, and I'd always wanted to paint, so I went to art school and began painting and sculpting.

I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around.

David is purely a conceptual artist. He didn't play any instruments or paint or anything. We were painters.

Art - be it painting, sculpture, music - they are all creations, they are creative acts. I consider a film, with everything that is involved in it, an art.

When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.

I gravitate toward contemporary art. I love great paintings, sculpture, photography, some video art.

Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense.

Basically painting is total idiocy.

I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing.

Maybe I was a little jealous or envious of the abstract painters - but the truth was I thought what they were doing was boring.

If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.

I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.

Everything I do, it's a bit painterly. I like being surrounded by objects, mostly on paper. I like the images. I like the painting. I like good photography. It's something that makes me an emotional connection, and I feel comfortable around it.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.

I'm a contemporary artist and I show in art galleries and museums. I show a number of photographs and films, but I also make television programs, books and some appetizing, all with the same concept.

If it weren't for how esoteric the art world likes to be, I would love actually to play the music in the shows, painting the music that influences me most.

I'm just really impressed by oil paintings - I don't see how people do it! That's the style I like: classic oil paintings. Abstract art just isn't my thing.