Charles Baudelaire Quotes

You have to have a certain amount of limitations, I think, to make art and to make something that can be alive on film. Money can get in the way of that.

Nobody wants to make something that displeases people, but once you make a film, that's out of your control and you can't think about that. You just have to follow your head and make sure that you're satisfied by putting down what you intended.

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

Rules limit you, and once you start thinking about what the audience wants or expects, it becomes a trap that a lot of artists fall into.

I think that limitations are the most important part of any art form

Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion.

It's tough to make music and make it your own, and not have somebody call it something you don't agree with but can't control. Sometimes the press doesn't realize how much power they have and how they can shape somebody's life. I think there's a lot of people just trying to make music and get their art out there, and their heads get f**ked by the press calling them this or calling them that.

Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise. As an actor, you're giving it up, you're at the mercy of so many other people.

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint... I'd like to pretend that I've never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything... and then make something... Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it... Nothing is important... so everything is important.

The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

With a computer, there are too many choices, and I always liked working within limits. You know, if you look at Mozart, who had this strict classical framework - an allegro, an andante, a scherzo and a finale - you see that within that formula, he got results he might never have gotten if he had all the options in the world.

The filmmakers always have a great level of control.

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

I wanted to express myself more fully through writing and directing. It just feels like a package deal. Anytime you create anything, you try to exert mastery over your world.

In America there's no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

Giorgio Morandi's paintings make me think that artists may not totally choose, or even control, their subjects or style.

In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

Artists who take on curatorial activities have the advantage of negating the professional hurdles and limitations comprising institutions.

There's a good many pictures I'd like to make; we'll see how many I'll be allowed to make.

When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art.

All the artists out there, I ask you and beg you: Take over your ship. It's your career. It's your life.

No actor has complete freedom.