Fh Quotes & Sayings

I had given up ( around 1950, fh) any ambition of making a career as an artist ... ..I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure. — Jean Dubuffet

I describe it ( the new aesthetics) 'radically': I say aesthetics = human being. That is a radical formula. I set the idea of aesthetics directly in the context of human existence, and then I have the whole problem in the hand, them I have not a special problem, I have a "holography" (reacting on a former suggestion of the public as a slight joke, fh) I don't know exactly what a holography is.. (1973 — Joseph Beuys

Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
(on Lillian Hellman) — Mary McCarthy

Brooks understood more than ever that she was the star of his life. — Lauren Kate

I'm in favor of animal liberation. Why? Because I'm an animal. — Edward Abbey

(Jean) Fautrier's exhibition (in Paris 1945,fh) made an extremely strong impression on me. Art had never before appeared so fully realised in its pure state. The word 'art' had never before been so loaded with meaning for me. — Jean Dubuffet

You would not have the wisdom and knowledge you now possess were it not for the setbacks you have faced, the mistakes you have made and the suffering you have endured. — Robin Sharma

But my knowledge of Marxism was limited to knowing that Marx was a Jew, and that he had a long white beard. I said to Lunatcharsky (the political communist commissar for Education, 1918, fh) 'Whatever you do, don't ask me why I painted in blue or green, and why you can see a calf inside the cow's belly, etc. On the other hand you're welcome: if Marx is so wise, let him come back to life and explain it himself'. I showed him my canvases. — Marc Chagall

Peter Kropotkin described Anarchism as the extreme left wing of socialism - a view with which I completely agree. One of my deepest concerns today is that the libertarian socialist core will be eroded by fashionable, post- modernist, spiritualist, mystic individualism. — Murray Bookchin

I still have a struggle reading (dyslexia, fh) and so I don't read much ... Probably the only reason I'm painter is because I couldn't read yet I love to write, but when I write I know what I'm writing, but when I'm reading I can't see it, because it goes from all sides of the page at once. But that's very good for printmaking. — Robert Rauschenberg

FH: All these ... weirdos, and me ... getting a little better every day right in the middle of 'em. I had never known ... I had never even imagined for a heartbeat that ... there might be a place in the world for people like us ... Jesus' Son — Denis Johnson

I expected a nod and maybe a handshake, but Dan clasped his hand to his chest, whispered something like "Chthulhu fh'tagn!" and spit into a urinal. — Brian Katcher

I don't think he (Joseph Albers, fh) ever realized that it was his discipline that I came for. Besides, my response to what I learned from him was just the opposite of what he intended ... I was very hesitant about arbitrarily designing forms and selecting colors that would achieve some predetermined result, because I didn't have any ideas to support that sort of thing - I didn't want color to serve me, in other words. — Robert Rauschenberg

Do you only think you love me? Are you pretty sure you love me? Or are you absolutely positive?" I asked. "Because it's kind of an important distinction."
"I think I'm pretty positive I love you." He grinned down at me. — Ripley Patton

The place (Dogtown, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, fh) is forsaken and majestically lovely as if nature had at last formed one spot where she can live for herself alone.. (it) looked like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge - essentially druidic in it appearance, it gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there. — Marsden Hartley

[When you meet a swordsman/ meet him with a sword Do not offer a poem to anyone but a poet] — Dan Simmons

With respect to the use of this sparkling coloured material (butterfly wings around 1955, fh) - the constituent parts of which remain indistinguishable - with the aim of producing a very vivid effect of scintillation, I realised that, for me, this responds to needs of the same order as those that formerly led me, in many drawings and paintings, to organize my lines and patches of colour so that the objects represented would meld into everything around them, so that the result would be a sort of continuous, universal soup with an intensive flavour of life. — Jean Dubuffet

For the first time, I wasn't embarrassed by the look of beauty, of elegance, because when you see someone who has only one rag as their property, but it happens to be beautiful and pink and silk, beauty doesn't have to be separated ... I have always said that you shouldn't have biases, you shouldn't have prejudices. But before that (his trip to India around 1975, fh) I'd never been able to use purple, because it was too beautiful. — Robert Rauschenberg

Already in 1915, Sophie Tauber divides the surface of her aquarelle into squares and rectangles which she then juxtaposes horizontally and perpendicularly as Mondrian, Itten and Paul Klee did in the same period, fh). She constructs them as if they were masonry work. The colors are luminous, ranging from the raw yellow to deep red or blue. — Hans Arp

I have always directed my attempts at the figurative representation of objects by way of summary and not very descriptive brushstrokes, diverging greatly from the real objective measurements of things, and this has led many people to talk about childish drawing ... this position of seeing them (the objects, fh) without looking at them too much, without focussing more attention on them than any ordinary man would in normal everyday life.. — Jean Dubuffet

We play some of my stuff and we play some Beatle covers. — Lou Gramm

The idea (for the painting 'Room in New York', 1932, ed.) had been in my mind a long time before I painted it. It was suggested by glimpses of lighted interiors seen as I walked along city streets at night, probably near the district where I live (Washington Square, New York, fh) although it's no particular street or house, but is really a synthesis of many impressions. — Edward Hopper