When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between...
You can go to Graff and buy a diamond that's flawless. You aren't going to be able to buy the same diamond at Fortunoff, but it's still a diamond you can enjoy. If fashion can allow you to have the Chanel mystique through a lipstick, then why shouldn...
Until I was eighteen, I did not know that you could study fashion design or art. I really didn't know. I already had my nose in the art world; I was already looking at things, but I didn't really get it that you could study that because my school was...
I don't have so many things in the fashion world that interest me. It's probably because I am so deeply into it. Often when you go very deep into something, you also discover what it's about, and you understand it better. With the art world, I still ...
The No. 1 quote critics give me is, 'Thom, your work is irrelevant.' Now, that's a fascinating, fascinating comment. Yes, irrelevant to the little subculture, this microculture, of modern art. But here's the point: My art is relevant because it's rel...
So I am totally aware that when I defend the autonomy of art I'm going counter to my own development. It's more an instinctive reaction, meant to protect the private aspect of the work, the part I am most interested in and which nowadays is at risk i...
A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to appl...
I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot. It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.
If what any artist has to say is fundamentally human and profound the public will ultimately take his work unto itself. But if his own conceptions are limited and narrow in their human meaning it seems likely that time will erase his work.
As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.
Looking back upon my work today, I think the best I have done grew out of things deeply felt, the worst from a pride in mere talent.
Do not cry for me, Azrael. Do not waste your tears. You made your decision. And this is mine. Sacrifice seems to be my destiny. A funny thing for a selfish man, isn't it? They always called me weak back then...
Here's one from me: 'You have to be aware that everyone else is thinking far too hard about themselves to be thinking about you, whoever you are.' If you want it, you can have it. Once you know that, you can be free.
I want people to hear really exciting music played by the best, but in a context where they can clap when they want to, chase their toddlers, drink beer, take photos, get lost in the music and generally be themselves. And because a field has no rules...
The most important thing is to just do it. If I work at a higher level I have responsibility to do better than what I've done before. Sometimes the best happens - beyond possibility. Just do it. Can't worry about it.
It was relatively easy to write 'The Cave of Lost Souls', though, because it came to me one night in a dream. I remember waking up and having this idea for a complete story - from start to finish - in my head, so I jotted it down, then later began wr...
Then Treece realized a remarkable thing. He understood in a flash that everyone in the world was the same age -no one younger or older than anyone else. He could not understand it, but he knew it to be true. Was there something in the air of the worl...
Normally, architects render a service. They implement what other people want. This is not what I do. I like to develop the use of the building together with the client, in a process, so that as we go along we become more intelligent.
I want a painting to be difficult to do. The more obstacles, obstructions, problems - if they don't overwhelm - the better. I would like to feel that I am involved at any stage of the painting with all its moments, not just this 'now' moment where a ...
With rare exceptions, I respond most to painting that cuts across grain rather than following it. I think the artist here can get in touch with that grain rather than simply feel its flow. And he really can't cut right across it anyway.
But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fairly sure I wanted in the painting, and then collage on the painting with printed dots or painted paper or something before I really committed it.
