A Quote by Alex Katz

My mother thought I would have a hard life as a painter. My father thought the highest thing a person could be was an architect. Below that was a painter. So he thought it was much better than being, say, a doctor.
The day I went to see my father to say I wanted to become an architect, he was a bit surprised, because for him being a builder is much more than being just an architect. He was very angry, and I never thought I could do something else.
I thought, oh, I'm going to be a painter. And eventually my family had moved near Chicago, and when I graduated from high school, I went to the Chicago Art Institute, and it was there that I thought, well, now I'm going to be a painter.
The idea of being a painter, I've always thought, is better than being an artist or a sculptor.
Until 1954, I'd only ever thought of being a painter, but I earned my money when and where I could. You could say I drifted into writing.
I thought, enough of this, I'm not an abstract painter, what the hell am I going to do? Should I get a job in a shoe store, sell real estate, or what? I was really depressed by the whole thing, because I felt like a painter, yet I couldn't make paintings.
The student's ambition should be to become a painter's painter, rather than a popular painter. The approbation of fellow artists based on sympathy and understanding is manifestly better than the fickle or fast homage of the greater public.
Beethoven was so hard of hearing, he thought he was a painter.
When the kids were growing up, I think they thought the worst thing about me being a mom is that I would laugh at them. They would say something that they thought was serious and intense and I would laugh. I thought it was funny, but they don't want to be laughed at.
I began photographing in 1946. Before that, I was a painter and drawer, with my mother and father's support. They were a bit pissed when I went into photography. They thought photographers were guys who took pictures at weddings.
Their thought is India is a beehive (Madhumakhi Ka Chhata) but our thought is India is our Mother (Maata). Their thought is poverty is a state of mind, our thought is that the poor are manifestation of Almighty. Their thought is to divide and rule, our thought is to integrate and do development. Their soch is Vanshvaad, our soch is Rashtravaad. They say Rajneeti is everything, we say Rashtraneeti is everything. Your thought is to save the chair, our thought is to save the nation.
No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
Every time somebody writes a theory about where literature's going, that person is not only contributing thought but nudging things to happen in one way or the other. Just as in painting, there's much more interest in the American scene painters and the early American... like the Ashcan school of painters. Who would have thought, 50 years ago, that Norman Rockwell would again be considered a serious painter? And yet, there are a lot of people who are saying Rockwell was a very accomplished technician. These things are constantly moving.
The highest praise we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or feeling with which he has inspired us.
Michelangelo's contemporaries thought him the greatest artist who ever lived and called him 'divine.' His reputation as sculptor, architect, painter and draughtsman has not subsequently been surpassed, and who is to say his contemporaries were wrong?
I thought I would make so much money and be the next Ray Leonard. Maybe it was farfetched, but I thought I could be a megastar. I could fight, and I had a lot of crossover appeal that was necessary to promote myself. I thought I'd make a ton of money and live off of it the rest of my life.
In my late teens and early twenties, I thought having children was possibly the most irresponsible thing you could do because I thought that the world was a dreadful place; I thought the sooner we all got off the planet, the better.
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