Art since 1940/Strategies of Being

 

„Every intelligent painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head. It is his real subject, of which everything he paints is both an homage and a critique, and everything he says a gloss.“ – Robert Motherwell

„I´ll tell you what´s going to happen: The public will keep on buying more and more art, and husbands will start bringing home little paintings to their wives on the way home from work, and we´re all going to drwon in a sea of mediocrity. Maybe Tinguely and a few others sense this and they are trying to destroy art before it is too late.“ – Marcel Duchamp

„Painting has reached a point where youngsters can only add a footnote. It depresses me a little tot hink that what was once Indian territory is now pretty thoroughly mapped out.“ – Robert Motherwell

„I pursue no objectives, no system, no tendency; I have no program, no style, no direction. I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes, or variations that lead to mastery. I steer clear of definitions. I don´t know what I want. I am inconsistent, non-commital, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty.“ – Gerhard Richter

„Cobra is a form of art which heads toward childhood, tries to recover folk art and child art for itself with the means available to adulds, non-naive means“ – Pierre Alechinsky

„The art audience is the worst audience in the world. It´s overly educated, it´s conservative, it´s out to criticize, not to understand, and it never has any fun. Why should I spend my time playing to that audience? … I´ll play with the street audience. That audience is much more human, and their opinion is from the heart. They don´t have any reason to play games.“ – David Hammons

 

(Quotes from: Jonathan Fineberg: Art since 1940 – Strategies of Being, London, 2000)