Top 47 Quotes & Sayings by Damian Loeb

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American artist Damian Loeb.
Last updated on December 22, 2024.
Damian Loeb

Damian Loeb is an American artist best known for contemporary realist painting, though he has also exhibited digital collage and photographic prints. He has shown in New York at Mary Boone and Acquavella Galleries and internationally with White Cube in London and Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, among others. He is currently co-represented by Acquavella Galleries and Pace Gallery. Loeb has also exhibited at institutional art venues including the Kunsthalle in Hamburg and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

When I'm not painting, I'm Oujia-boarding with my photos. I'll sort through my pictures, put them in different folders, and come back months later to one in particular and try to figure out why I took it.
I'm interested in visual vocabulary, like Warhol was interested in that vocabulary of advertisements and television and pop culture.
'Star Wars' came out when I was seven. It was so different from anything else, like peeking into the land of Oz. All you wanted to do was see it again and go back and see more of it. That feeling is not easy to reproduce.
The advent of the digital age and the immediacy and convenience of digital video and photography allows people to become an integral part of the feedback loop which actively shapes the content we are fed.
I don't think I talk to anybody the same way I talk to Moby.
You just can't control your art in the future.
I take a lot of pictures.
Ironically, my paintings don't photograph well. — © Damian Loeb
Ironically, my paintings don't photograph well.
I always thought being an artist was a lazy job. I was wrong.
Our memories are convenient lies we create, cribbing images from others' experiences. We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.
I can't work without music.
I have always been interested in having people fall into the image and be aware of their reaction first, and then think about the style.
When we as a society lose the ability to comment on what we see and to have an opinion on what we are exposed to, then we have all lost what makes us unique on this planet.
The vocabulary I use has to reflect the people I'm trying to communicate with.
I read that prior to the advent of color TV, most people dreamed in black and white.
I found that if I don't paint for around a week, I get practically suicidal. It took a long time to figure out why I had these mood swings, and I finally figured out it's because I haven't painted.
I had no interest in high school besides art.
Artists talk in 'art speak.'
If it weren't for how esoteric the art world likes to be, I would love actually to play the music in the shows, painting the music that influences me most.
I have to assume that everybody interprets a piece of art they're exposed to as if it's already perfect in its wholeness, without knowing any backstory. — © Damian Loeb
I have to assume that everybody interprets a piece of art they're exposed to as if it's already perfect in its wholeness, without knowing any backstory.
Photorealism's goal is to reproduce a photograph. The best photorealism can't beat a printer, and I have a really nice printer.
Star Wars came out when I was seven. It was so different from anything else, like peeking into the land of Oz. All you wanted to do was see it again and go back and see more of it. That feeling is not easy to reproduce. Eventually, you give up and try to recreate that feeling yourself.
Every time I have people over, I watch how long they look at every part of the painting, or pictures on my computer. I have a few close friends and people that are constants. Whether I like their opinion or not, I've been hearing it for a long time and I can use it as this constant. I mentally pay attention to how long they look at every image, which ones they pause on and what parts of it they look at.
I try to write art theory down and understand it but I'm not a writer. I don't want to impress people with my writing. I'd rather impress people with my ability to see and feel it and then share that.
I love seeing things that work in the micro and work in the macro.
I don't try to force-feed it or put any things on the images until I'm making a painting. It's not photorealism. Photorealism's goal is to reproduce a photograph. The best photorealism can't beat a printer, and I have a really nice printer. I don't want to go blind doing what a printer can do.
I'm a painter, I'm an artist. I take things too far sometimes. I really need some comfort. — © Damian Loeb
I'm a painter, I'm an artist. I take things too far sometimes. I really need some comfort.
Every show I've done, I've just wanted to understand something of this weird life that I woke up in. I've never woken up in anyone else's life, so I've got to understand this one. The only skill I was given is this painting.
Photorealism says: to fool your eye. That isn't what I've been interested in doing.
There's the people who have one of these cell phones in their pockets and don't have a clue how it's made. But I really want to understand.
The landscape is one of the kinds that I think, at least this body of work is the least selfish of the stuff that I've done. It's all selfish. It is making images of things that I want to see, that turn me on, that make me happy, that satisfy me.
Fondness for people can be terrifying, because it's intangible and it can disappear, or it can be taken away, or you can say the wrong thing. A million things, so it's so uncomfortable. So when you suddenly become aware of it because they don't call you or something for half an hour or whatever, you lose it.
Every single painting is different. I'm always trying to figure out what I'm interested in. Usually when I go through and I make the collages or the images for ideas that I want to paint, it's like an Ouija board. Each painting I do is trying to understand what the hell I'm looking at, or want to look at.
Photorealism was this fantastic movement in like the late '60s and '70s, because photography finally became something that everyone could produce. Photorealism was and should've been a very short element. But the thing is, photography is so satisfying. Certainly when it's well done.
I'm interested in visual vocabulary, like Andy Warhol was interested in that vocabulary of advertisements and television and pop culture. I do a great deal of tropes. This past decade has seen a new term, "meme," which is exactly what I'm studying.
All I want to do is realism and follow the tradition of realism. And explore what realism should be now be after the ubiquity of smartphones. I'm trying to answer the question. I don't think I'll ever have the words, but hopefully I'll have a few images.
It's been so much a part of my life the thinking that I go through is crucial. I found that if I don't paint for around a week, I get practically suicidal. It took a long time to figure out why I had these mood swings, and I finally figured out it's because I haven't painted.
Every art critic and every writer doesn't have a frame to start off from. If I made a statement saying, "This is Abstract Expressionism," they could go, "Well, he failed miserably," or, "Fantastic, this is a new genius!" But in art history, I don't see any of the artists I like spewing bullshit. I don't see anyone recording it or pronouncing what they were doing.
I started getting afraid of dying. I don't have any religion and I wanted to understand something about these greater powers without anthropomorphizing it. — © Damian Loeb
I started getting afraid of dying. I don't have any religion and I wanted to understand something about these greater powers without anthropomorphizing it.
I wanted to finally feel better about understanding. I painted my wife because I wanted to understand her. I can talk to her, but I didn't understand why I was so compelled.
Beauty has became a pejorative word in art. It was not something one should aspire to, because it was pedestrian. Beautiful things became cheap and easy. If it's cheap and easy, then upper classes aren't going to aspire to it. So, they have to find something more esoteric. I wanted the paintings to be realistic enough that you would have the ability to forget that I'm showing them to you.
We're making so many images today and it's unbelievable. I shoot stuff all the time. I try to figure a lot out before I paint. I do a tremendous amount of shooting.
Now that I'm a father of three kids, suddenly the whole world seems different. I don't want to take anything for granted. If you gaze on something and you appreciate it, you become a part of that circle. That seemed to me to be the only relevance I could understand. The space, the time and the vastness of it all was overwhelming. I needed to understand it or I just was lost.
Each painting, I feel like I kind of might have gotten something. If I feel like I totally got it, there's probably something wrong and it's not finished. And if I really feel like I understand it then I'm done with these paintings and I'll have to do something else.
We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.
I've always wished that I had a great ability to verbalize art theory and find a way that I fit in to the whole lineage, but I don't have a clue.
I dont think I talk to anybody the same way I talk to Moby.
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