Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
Robert RauschenbergRead
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.
Interpretation
Artists reflect and document the essence of their era through their work.
Robert Rauschenberg emphasizes the significant role of artists as observers and recorders of the societal and historical context in which they live. Their creations serve as a mirror that captures the feelings, events, and changes of their time, allowing future generations to connect with the past through the lens of creativity and expression.
In practice
This quote can be shared during an art exhibition to highlight the role of artists.
Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
I never allowed myself the luxury of those brilliant, beautiful colors until I went to India and saw people walking around in them or dragging them in the mud. I realised they were not so artificial.
I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.
My art is about paying attention - about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.
There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.
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.
Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm still analyzing people.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
History has proven that art depicting black people cannot be disentangled from the political implications that such art has on their lives. As Africans were being stripped from the continent and sailed across the Atlantic to the Western world, depictions of black people in Western art changed in order to further render them racialized caricatures.
Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do. I don't wanna get ideas above my station, but why shouldn't this be comparable? Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later, and it means something to us, and it always will do. It's incredibly important.
I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!
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