John Ciardi Quotes

Art need no longer be an account of past sensations.

I spend a lot of time working as a painter and in my studio I go from upstairs where I paint to downstairs where I play and record, so I get this thing crossing over.

If I had a place with a studio where I could paint I'd be happy.

I will revolutionise art and the world. Hurrah!

As an artist, you find at different times you want to do different things.

In general, modern art... has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted.

Modern art was born from a desire to destroy kitsch.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

I wanted to be a painter, somewhere between Abstract Expressionism and Pop.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc.

I enjoyed art in school. I've always done little drawings and stuff like that. I don't really know what I'm doing with the painting, but I experiment.

What interests me, and has always interested me, has been modernism.

If I'm away from painting for a week, I get bored.

In my previous life, I was an artist. I still paint. I love art.

In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.

In the mid- to late '60s to the mid-'70s, when I was a student, there was a major change in the thinking about what art can be and how art is made.

The whole thrust of modern art, as far as I understand it, is expanding the role of the artist as a kind of esthetician, someone who actually spends his time, is trained in a way to deal with qualities.

Art is changing. Again. Here. Now. Opportunities to witness this are rare, so attend and observe.

The basis for my own work during the years just before coming to America in 1915 was a desire to break up forms - to 'decompose' them much along the lines the cubists had done. But I wanted to go further - much further - in fact, in quite another direction altogether.

There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning.

'Art or anti-art?' was the question I asked when I returned from Munich in 1912 and decided to abandon pure painting or painting for its own sake. I thought of introducing elements alien to painting as the only way out of a pictorial and chromatic dead end.

When you think about Dada and the great moments in Modern Art, it's always the sense of when you're not sure that art is most likely to be occurring.

It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.

It was a movement that had all the art critics, all the museum directors in its thrall.