Paul Gauguin Quotes

In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?

Nothing more inelegant and ineffective than an art conceived in another art's form.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

I always talk about if you want to be an artist, you have to be authentic because people can tell bullshit a mile away. There is nothing wrong with creating a character, standing behind that character, and that being an authentic performance piece, because that's a piece of art as well. But if you want to be an artist in any form, you have to know to come with it.

I really feel that artists or musicians are controversial people. Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. If people are not doing that, they're not artists - they're artisans.

What makes a good work of art is something that honors certain traditions and breaks with others.

In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.

You must neither completely nor partially copy the art of others. If so, you will be producing kitsch.

One painter ought never to imitate the manner of any other; because in that case he cannot be called the child of nature, but the grandchild. It is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete with such abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, who learnt everything from her.

Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to, It's like an art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he could paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on the side of a face... See if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist...You can take that to the grave and dig it up when you need it.

I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call "curator's art." Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, "Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art?" If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.

The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.

All art is based on non-conformity.

To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today.

Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

People understand what art is supposed to look like, and so it's easy to make something that looks like art but isn't - especially in an abstract form.

I don't like post-modernism. It's cynical, and takes no discipline - you just copy. It doesn't allow a film to be open to reality.

Rozay is an artist himself so he understands the importance of being true to your work.

I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.

I didn't sit down and work out other people's material; I've never believed in that.

Creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story- a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination.

The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist.

I think it's harder to make a classic now, not because of what people say, but because artists now are so concerned with what people say.