Gerhard Richter Quotes

I just thought it made sense to call a book 'Not Garbage,' even though the majority of it was going to be the scraps from people's studios; like newspaper clippings, weird drawings and stuff they might not necessarily show as artists.

Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.

There's nothing new under the sun - you just get a can of paint out.

I work with things left over from other things.

One of my assistants found this old German machine. It was originally used to make underwear. Like Chanel, who started with underwear fabric - jerseys - we used the machine that made underwear to make something else.

I'll buy an old jacket and attach gold buttons and a couple royal patches. Or I'll find an old busted sweatshirt, tear out the zipper, and replace it with a $700 zipper. I make things my own.

Growing up I always used to shop in Oxfam. I'd find things for 50p and then take them home, cut them up and make them into something new.

Of course there are many ways we can reuse something. We can dye it. We can cut it. We can change the buttons. Those are other ways to make it alive. But this is a new step to use anything - hats, socks, shirts. It's the first step in the process.

I went to junkyards, abandoned car lots. I asked supermarkets for the big jugs they put pig guts in, to make cabinets for my bass speakers.

A lot of art and visual crafts are based on appropriating things.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

The funny thing about being creative is that, especially high school people, I kept noticing I'd always go to these certain materials. I'd always be picking up trash and picking up paper and using it.

One man's trash is another man's treasure, and the by-product from one food can be perfect for making another.

One man’s trash is another man’s dissertation.

An artist looks at a juice bottle, an egg carton, or a newspaper and sees something valuable in them.

I repurposed an old World War II merchant ship door into one of the best coffee tables you have ever seen. I have also made little cabinets and media centers.

Picasso took scraps of wallpaper, and instead of using paint and a brush, he used all the existing elements which he made his artwork with.

I believe in the ethos of the remix, like Andy Warhol making a painting of a Campbell's soup label.

There is no such thing as waste. It is just a question of whether we know how to use something or not.

I love taking prints, embroidery, appliques - precious things that seem to be from another time - and using them to create a contemporary, new story.

I'd take garbage, and I'd glue them together and create inventions.

I'm really into the recycling of art. That one piece of art inspires another piece of art, which inspires another piece of art. I really like that idea.

I was selling bric-a-brac in Portobello and Camden Market. I love objects. But I was embarrassed by the idea of collecting, so I began using these things in my art.

The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.

All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it?