The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.
I don't know if I actually respect other artists as people as much as I should. I look at their work as excellent data that feeds my mind as nature feeds my body.
What motivates me is true talent, it's golden when talent acknowledge talent.
Growing up, I was always trying to catch a great show. And that's where I learned an artist gets respect. That's what makes people talk.
I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever. I'm not really book-smart.
For the first time in my career, I'm working in a fine-arts arena, so I'm finally getting some intelligent reviews.
When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.
As far as more recognition goes, I am happy with the amount of love and respect I have received from other artists and the public. Of course, I would love more, and think I deserve it.
For me, music is for the soul - no matter whether the song is composed by me or by someone else.
I think many people love poetry who don't know they love it. People are sometimes afraid of poetry, or they've been introduced to poetry that doesn't speak to them.
The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.
I do take for granted, probably, the fact that I grew up in New York City, one of the most liberal places on earth, with bleeding-heart, liberal parents who took me to see 'Rent' and Terrence McNally plays from a very young age.
There's something pleasing about large, well-lit spaces. I love that dealers are willing to take massive chances in order to give this much room to their artists. Most of all, I love that more galleries showing more art gives more artists a shot.
It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes.
One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain — because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.
Just watching a girl can give me the best reason to smile. Girls are something very special and you got to treat them that way. That's why I always say don't stare right at a chick. She'll begin to fidget, wondering if her hair's messed up or if her make-up is smeared. It's kind of like going to an art gallery to see beautiful paintings. If you look at a painting just the right way, you get the most out of it!
Art is very subjective and having to put numbers on it seems counterintuitive.
The modern world thinks of art as very important: something close to the meaning of life.
I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.
When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.
I have unbounded admiration for the nude. I worship it like a god.
I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.
Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.
Two of my favorite artists are Josh Smith and Joe Bradley. But I argued against them for years, until I grew to love them and felt stupid for my immediate reaction towards their work. Now, I wouldn't be happier than to simply be their friend and to talk to them about what got them making art that was years ahead of my understanding. I never went to school for art or was told what to like or when. So every day is a learning process, like most of life.
