Spiritually I am wherever my spirit allows me to be, and that is not necessarily in the future... Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the complex relationship between spirituality and art, suggesting that art does not always provide the peace or clarity one seeks.
Willem De Kooning's quote reflects on the fluidity of spiritual existence and the inherent struggles within the artistic process. He acknowledges that while his spirit can transcend temporal boundaries, the act of creating art may not lead to the tranquility or purity often anticipated. This hints at the dissonance artists experience, where the pursuit of art can be fraught with internal conflict rather than the serene resolution they might hope for.
In practice
In an art class discussing the emotional struggles behind creative expression.
I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.
The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.
I don't paint to live, I live to paint.
Im not someone whos ever said anything definitive about his work. In my life also I have very little fixed form. I can change overnight.
Art should not have to be a certain way.
My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.
On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It's very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from the notion of a lifelike quality. You see, actually lifelike, tape-recorded dialogue like this has very little to do with good novel dialogue. It's a matter of getting that awful tyranny of mimesis out of your mind, which is difficult.
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
More varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose against a background of many shades of turquoise and azure.
To me, a song is not finished. To me, there's no such thing as a finished anything. All of Beethoven's nine symphonies, to me, are one. I think of it as having no beginning and no end.
I try to stay a civilian, to live as a human, not as a poet.
Art has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with the taste of the moment or what's expected of you. That's a formula for dead art, or fashionable art.
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