Robert Motherwell Quotes

My primary thing is to make a painting, not necessarily to make a painting to sell for gazillions of dollars, but just to make a painting.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.

I believe that if your primary motivation in life is to be moral, you don't become an artist.

What is art? Prostitution.

I don't think I'm making any great statements, and I certainly don't think I'm making art.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism.

Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise.

It is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.

In my mind, the plays I was writing were extreme examples of art for art's sake. I didn't necessarily think that other people would love them, though I thought they probably would.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

Using creative expression as a means to a professional end makes me curl up a bit.

Every time we put out a piece of art, it continues to define who we are. What could possibly be more important than that and require more of your focus and your time and your energy.

As an artist, you're taking your experiences and placing them into your art. So the more experiences you have, the richer your art and more people can relate to it.

The arts are not a way to make a living.

For the serious artist does not satisfy needs

I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well.

Too much art was no art at all. Like candy instead of bread!

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

The French have a different take on photography than Americans do. They consider photography to be absolutely parallel to literature. That often makes for a deeper perception of the work.

One clear difference between art and commercial work is that commercial work is exploitive: the work may be high quality but the intention is to sell product or tickets. Art exists with or without ticket sales.

When art is really great, it's really powerful, can really do something to you, make you feel more alive and make you feel more connected to something. If you don't feel like that when you do it, and you just make a movie to make money, that would be pretty boring to me. I just wouldn't do it. That would be like sitting in an office, which I don't want to do.

Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.

Art is no crime. It's every artist's responsibility to make art that is meaningful