Ken Liu Quotes

The process of art evolving is always one which has fascinated me.

No art goes unmediated by other art.

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Entertainment and art are not isolated.

The real change that paintings undergo is in the perceptions of the viewer.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

My wife is a painter, musician, and fiber artist. We married in 1993, and as she worked, I found that my reading about art was helping me understand what she was doing, just as seeing her work gave me a language with which to speak of art.

I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around.

The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny.

When art works travel from place to place, what you have is the opportunity to engage with the intellect of another person who has made a thing that should have enough information in it in the way it's constructed to start thinking about why that picture got made - not why it is relevant to you.

In the study of the fine arts, they mutually assist each other.

In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.

When I see people making 'abstract' painting, I think it's just a dialogue and a dialogue isn't enough. That is to say, there is you painting and this canvas. I think there has to be a third thing; it has to be a trialogue.

For all the years I'd spent talking about pictures, the truth was that I had no idea how to draw or what it felt like to do it. I would mistrust a poetry critic who couldn't produce a rhyming couplet. Could one write about art without knowing how to draw?

Enough of Art. It's Art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art.

All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.

I come from a generation where you put the art out and had the luxury to sit back and watch the world deconstruct it, and that was valued. Unfortunately now the work lives in a weird context.

Talking with other artists is an incredible process. You engage with the work very differently...a nd different relationships between different works start to emerge. To tap into that energy-to tap into that moment-is great for me as an exercise.

Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

What really drives me mad about art is that, in America, the only thing you can do is to take it apart.

I had no idea what art was. There was one art class in high school, but it didn't make a big impression on me. Then I went to college and thought I'd become a writer.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!