Robert Rauschenberg Quotes

There is no reason not to consider the world as one gigantic painting.

You begin with the possibilities of the material.

I don't really trust ideas - especially good ones... Rather, I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown.

The only thing that I could get with chance, and I never was able to use it, was that I would end up with something quite geometric or the spirit that I was interested in, indulging in, was gone.

It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.

I've not been cursed with talent, which could be a great inhibitor.

An empty canvas is full.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.

Even at this late date, I go into my studio, and I think 'Is this going to be it? Is it the end?' You see, nearly everything terrorizes me. When an artist loses that terror, he's through.

I don't want a picture to look like something it isn't. I want it to look like something it is.

It is impossible to have progress without conscience

It's when you've found out how to do certain things, that it's time to stop doing them, because what's missing is that you're not including the risk.

Art is a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.

I want my paintings to look like what's going on outside my window rather than what's inside my studio.

For me there is no difference between art and life.

You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting.

My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.

Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made - I try to act in the gap.

My concern is never art, but always what art can be used for.

I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.

I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop, At the time that I am bored or understand - I use those words interchangeably - another appetite has formed.

I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun.

I don't like masterpieces having one-night stands in collectors' homes between auctions.

Success is a worn down pencil.

A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil and fabric.

Well, I like way downtown near the Battery. I lived down there at this time and for, I guess, the following well, this is where I moved to uptown and I've been here for four years and this is 1965.

I prefer images that are less specific, so there is room for everyone's imagination.

Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc., it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement.

Curiosity is the main energy.

Understanding is a form of blindness. Good art, I think, can never be understood.

A newspaper that you're not reading can be used for anything; and the same people didn't think it was immoral to wrap their garbage in newspaper.

While my classmates were reading their textbooks, I drew in the margins.

I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.

I am sick of talking about What and Why I am doing. I have always believed that the WORK is the word. Action is seen less clearly through reason. There are no shortcuts to directness.

A canvas is never empty.

And also the new excitement and variety of ways that the abstract expressionists were applying paint. You could put it on as though it were colored air and it would be painting.

Most artists try to break your heart, or they accidentally break their own hearts.But I find the quietness in the ordinary much more satisfying.

And I think that even today, New York still has more of this unexpected quality around every corner than any place else. It's something quite extraordinary

I don't mess around with my subconscious

Work is my joy... Work is my therapy, I don't know anybody who loves work as much as I do.

So that ideas of sort of relaxed symmetry have been something for years that I have been concerned with because I think that symmetry is a neutral shape as opposed to a form of design.

I was much happier when I had less responsibility... when my only responsibility was to my work and to myself.

It's so easy to be undisciplined. And to be disciplined is so against my character, my general nature anyway, that I have to strain a little bit to keep on the right track.

I refuse to be in this world by myself. I want an open commitment from the rest of the people.

Basically painting is total idiocy.

And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway

I got so I was really just sick of sculpture.

But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable