Creative Context Quotes

Unfortunately, I haven't thought sufficiently about art. What I never realized - and it's really stupid - is the art world is the art world because all these thousands of famous and not-famous artists do things, over centuries. This hadn't occurred to me.

I think the idea of the lone tormented artist - which we can apply to others - I think that it needs to be revisited. Jack Kerouac needs to be seen in the context of a lot of other artistic activity.

The reason I don't play any of the old songs is because I really honor my old band, and I think that those songs are best served within the context of that band.

I think if you're able to make the music you want and you can do it in the right kind of context, you don't have to be a circus ringleader to be successful.

When I found film, it was like, 'Of course!' It was this very intense realization that this is perhaps the most powerful, honed context that I've found.

You can publish a poem you think is a very important poem, and you don't hear a word from anyone. [...] You can publish a book of poetry by dropping it off a cliff and waiting to hear an echo. Quite often, you'll never hear a thing. So doing that, using older work, puts it in a context, and that sort of forces the reader to realize what its importance is-if it has any. Everything needs a context. You're not going to recognize a poet unless you have a context.

If you're making films in New Zealand, you can't avoid the landscape. It's certainly more handsome than I am.

The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.

I always loved designing, but the context needs to be right, and have a positive perspective.

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

Critics, at least generally, want to regard works of fiction as independent entities, whose virtues and failures must be reckoned apart from the circumstances of their creation, and even apart from the intentions of their creator.

When you hear his music, mine will all of a sudden make sense.

If you're wandering the streets, talking in gibberish, nobody ever asks you to change anything about your art because there's no context for people to look at what you do.

If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference.

Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted: it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors.