Rachel Kushner Quotes

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

I take a pretty expansive view of craft, which is to say I don't see craft as just being technique - it's also process; subject; ideas and feelings; visions and dreams; the words that are put down and the words that are avoided.

My art in my head just needs to come out for me - for my legacy and who I am.

In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul

Art is concerned with the HOW and not the WHAT.

I am an artist. For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul. And you are like in some kind of possession, where you are doing anything to get the visual. You become another person. You're becoming an artist in action. And then a lot of miracles come. A lot of discovering. It's a very complicated thing.

The smudging makes the paintings a bit more complete. When they're not blurred, so many details seem wrong, and the whole thing is wrong too. Then smudging can help make the painting invincible, surreal, more enigmatic - that's how easy it is.

We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.

Art is mind and heart and touch as much and more than it is mere instrument, technique - without which however it cannot exist at all.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.

Art is craft, not inspiration.

Techniques vary, art stays the same; it is a transposition of nature at once forceful and sensitive.

Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.

The art is the challenge which you must meet every day: the technique you should learn to control with time. The science and the art of photography are really one, and not opposed to each other.

One mustn't let technique be the consciously important thing. It should be at the service of expressing the form.

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow.

such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, - ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I had felt called upon to produce.

Art is a crime scene in a sense, a crucible, of the mind and heart and our dreams.

I think that artists don't make art - the art makes itself through us. I'm not the doer. I'm just along for the ride. Acting really reminds me of that because I don't write the words; I don't make the decisions. That's the director. Narcissism is a tragic condition. It must be so miserable to live trapped in a reflection that only includes the smallest version of our identities. Our true identities should have no bounds and no limits.

I feel I have a responsibility to myself, a responsibility to explain where we're coming from. Because a song or the performance of a song is a lot like a work of art.

A man climbs a mountain because it is there. An artist makes a work of art because it is not there.

My life and art have not been separated. They have been together.

I think many writers write because it's a convenient way to explain themselves to themselves. We take the chaos and the turmoil and the bullshit of our lives, and we make it into something that has a harmonious shape and sound.

The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically.