Hans-Ulrich Obrist Quotes

I feel that every professional is the art school for the next guy. I feel that maybe a lot of the dynamism in my own work, having been felt by the rest of the artists, they'll react to it and put elements of that in their own work, feeling that it'll help it.

Artists such as Lorna Simpson, Zoe Leonard, Byron Kim and Stephen Andrews and I are around the same age, and I know them personally. The discussions I have had with them over the years have influenced the work that I have made throughout my career.

The more I get to know more artists, the more they inspire me.

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

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 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.

This new art made a deep impression on me, and I began to study it ardently.

When I was a young artist, and I would go look at other artists' career retrospectives, and I was often disappointed with the lack of story line... What was missing to me was the story of where the artist came from and how they got to where they were.

I view art as an inspirational tool.

I had tried painting, mostly to give myself a greater appreciation of the craft and to inform how I looked at paintings. That led to collaging some of the work I had done on paper, and I found myself mixing in found pieces as well.

I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself.

I've been attracted to imagery and occasionally I've drawn from it, but I never thought I'd be painting these paintings. I didn't have any desire to. I didn't think there was any reason to.

I've always believed that as an artist, as a writer, you need a lot of contact with other people to make your art good.

I follow the work of my contemporaries. I love their work.

I went back to my mother's house recently and I saw some of my earlier works as a 15-year-old art student. And a lot of them were reiterations of classic works.

I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.

Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good.

I think any good artist - and I'm not saying that I am one - takes notes and should first emulate their heroes and then try to move beyond them.

Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child.

I think that's such an important message, especially for younger women, to know, 'I don't have to come out of the womb painting like Frida Kahlo. My very first thing that I make isn't going to be an around-the-world sensation.' You have to paint a hundred really ugly, barfy, diarrhea paintings before you come up with that one where you start to really get into your groove.

No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid.

If you're going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art. A youngster told me recently that he was going to give himself a year to see if he has talent. A year! It takes a lifetime to see if you have it. Painting is total engagement.

In reality, however, an artist is a product of art

I wish to be of service to the artists of our own day, by showing them how a small beginning leads to the highest elevation, and how from so noble a situation it is possible to fall to utmost ruin, and consequently, how these arts resemble nature as shown in our human bodies.