Baselitz Georg Quotes & Sayings

Asked what role he believes art plays in society, Baselitz replied, 'The same role as a good shoe, nothing more. — Georg Baselitz

What counts most is finding new ways to get the world down in paint on my own terms. — Georg Baselitz

What I could never escape was Germany, and being German. — Georg Baselitz

I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens. — Georg Baselitz

I really think it all happens for a reason Ember, every decision brought me here to you, — R. Holmes

The reality is the picture, it is most certainly not in the picture. — Georg Baselitz

Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption. — Georg Baselitz

I always work out of uncertainty but when a painting's finished it becomes a fixed idea, apparently a final statement. In time though, uncertainty returns ... your thought process goes on. — Georg Baselitz

My Paintings are Battles. — Georg Baselitz

I always feel attacked when I'm asked about my painting. — Georg Baselitz

I had always loved expressionist painting, like every European. In fact I admired it all the more because these were precisely the paintings despised by my father's generation. — Georg Baselitz

Everything changes all the time, and unfortunately, everyone who knows what you do by buying records only hears a small amount of what's going on in your life. — Pat Benatar

Help thyself: then everyone will help thee too. Principle of Christian charity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You cannot deny your origins: I love Kirchner more than Matisse, although Matisse was a greater artist. That isn't to do with nationality. It's a stronger feeling. — Georg Baselitz

Someday, we'll all be a thousand years older than we are now and I'm not sure we'll be any wiser when it comes to the heart and when it comes to love ... — Jason Myers

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial ... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does. — Georg Baselitz

Sharp men, like sharp needles, break easy, though they pierce quick. — Henry Ward Beecher

Anything in life worth having is worth working for. — Andrew Carnegie

The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse. — Georg Baselitz

I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious. — Georg Baselitz

Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art. — Georg Baselitz

Museums collect what's important in their respective countries. In Berlin's National Gallery, however, this isn't the case. They're interested neither in me nor the other usual suspects. It's simply a German reality. — Georg Baselitz

For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print ... substitute drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in question. — Charles Lamb

And the way he does look at me makes me feel absolutely beautiful. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

I dont want to create a monster; I want to make something which is new, exceptional, something that only I do ... something that references tradition, but is still new. — Georg Baselitz

There is no communication with any public whatsoever. The artist can ask no question, and he makes no statement; he offers no information, and his work cannot be used. It is the end product which counts. — Georg Baselitz

We therefore find that the triangles and rectangles herein described, enclose a large majority of the temples and cathedrals of the Greek and Gothic masters, for we have seen that the rectangle of the Egyptian triangle is a perfect generative medium, its ratio of five in width to eight in length 'encouraging impressions of contrast between horizontal and vertical lines' or spaces; and the same practically may be said of the Pythagorean triangle — Samuel Colman

Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another. That is what the universe, God, history, and life is all about. If you favor money, power, and accomplishment over human relationships, you will dash yourself on the rocks of reality [ ... ]
[it is] impossible [ ... ] to stay fully human if you refuse the cost of forgiveness, the substitutional exchange of love, and the confinements of community.
[ ... ] We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made. — Timothy Keller

The main point is first get the right people on the bus (and wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor in people decisions in order to take a company from Good to Great. — James C. Collins

I love my old paintings as postulates as fresh starting points but I have to destroy them. I have to make a new manifesto. — Georg Baselitz

In Germany, we often hear the absurd complaint that museums don't have the money to buy paintings. Of course, I'm not talking about me and my paintings. There are, after all, more popular painters in this country. — Georg Baselitz

I hang my work upside down to emphasize surface. — Georg Baselitz

I begin with an idea, but as I work, the picture takes over. Then there is the struggle between the idea I preconceived ... and the picture that fights for its own life. — Georg Baselitz

Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker. — Georg Baselitz

The U.S. government doesn't build your computers, nor do you fly aboard a U.S. government owned and operated airline. Private industry routinely takes technologies pioneered by the government and turns them into cheap, reliable and robust industries. This has happened in aviation, air mail, computers, and the Internet. — Peter Diamandis

You dig in and you find something. — Georg Baselitz

You're safe, Lauren," he murmured and my eyes came back to his.
"You weren't safe with him but, honey, swear to God, you're safe with me. — Kristen Ashley

When I'm riding my bicycle I feel like a Buddhist who is happy just to enjoy his mundane existence — Robin Williams

An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object. — Georg Baselitz