I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress.
Kara WalkerRead
There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being an artist is a self-declared identity, not a formal title earned through education.
Kara Walker emphasizes that artistry is not confined to formal education or credentials; rather, it is a self-driven pursuit where individuals can claim the title of 'artist' and learn through experience and practice. The essence of being an artist lies in the personal journey and the commitment to creating rather than waiting for external validation.
Themes
ArtistSelf-DeclarationCreativityIdentityArtistry
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop on creativity, to encourage participants to embrace their artistic identity.
More from Kara Walker
All quotes →I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful
Kara WalkerRead
Sugar crystallizes something in our American Soul. It is emblematic of all Industrial Processes. And of the idea of becoming white. White Being equated with pure and ‘true’ it takes a lot of energy to turn brown things into white things. A lot of pressure.
Kara WalkerRead
I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.
Kara WalkerRead
It feels like a game, this work I do. It is totally heartfelt, and I love the sticky terrain, the straight-up cartoons, how the irrepressible and icky rise to the surface. But I am not just trying to call forth bugaboos and demons for the sake of it, for fun.
Kara WalkerRead
Once you open up the Pandora's box of race and gender... you're never done.
Kara WalkerRead
Similar quotes
Aestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life.
Oscar WildeRead
At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.
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Everything a director does must help the story and the performances. Otherwise, it is useless.
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A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.
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But music, don't you know, is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself.
Claude DebussyRead