Hans-Ulrich Obrist Quotes

The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.

That's what I've always wanted to do - work with my favorite writers and make something from scratch with them that we can feel like didn't exist before we came in the room.

It's just so fun to share that experience with your best friend when you're finding your voice as an artist.

That's what's great about the arts. Everything inspires you, and you get a chance to grow from watching other people and how they do their work.

I really challenge every actor at the beginning of a process, and I always say, 'I have an idea that I'm going to bring to the table. I hope and expect that you will have an idea and bring it to the table. But the way I really want to work is that together we're going to have a third idea that is better than either of our ideas.'

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

I think about that 'empty' space a lot. That emptiness is what allows for something to actually evolve in a natural way. I've had to learn that over the years - because one of the traps of being an artist is to always want to be creating, always wanting to produce.

I can't imagine anybody who ends up being an artist who didn't pass through a time of geekiness.

There's no better feeling than just going in and just working with someone and what comes out is something that the world knows about.

I feel like there is a different, new energy when I collaborate with a living artist, whether it be a composer, designer, lighting designer. I love that process.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.

There is no such thing as being done with an artistic life. Frustrations and rewards exist at all levels on the path.

Movies are a collaboration, I feel, so I didn't think of myself as an authoritative figure as much.

On a film, you start to get closer and closer with the people you're working with, and it becomes like this circus act or this travelling family.

You can never tell when an artist really will take up someone's work and work with it happily.

Art has been good for my soul. And it's been good for my brain. I think I'm a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas.

I don't know if it'd be any time soon but I'd really like to work on a collaboration with somebody - I always have ideas for stuff like that.

I view the whole thing as a collaboration. As an actor, I always found that to be the most freeing thing, when the director would collaborate with you, so that together you'd come up with something exponentially better.

All artists are people of growth. It's like food, you take the good and leave the rest.

Work can take on a new dimension if you know something about the artist.

I take this art very seriously and passionately. I love what I do. You can't help but grow. That's not to say you don't make mistakes or make bad choices, but that's part of the art. Painters paint bad paintings.

In truth, I have always been amazed by a group of people who all work toward putting one person's vision forward - that's an interesting story for me.

Like all artists, I go through creative spurts.