A Quote by Willem de Kooning

If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not. — © Willem de Kooning
If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not.
What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?
You are right in demanding that an artist approach his work consciously, but you are confusing two concepts: the solution of a problem and the correct formulation of a problem. Only the second is required of the artist.
I decided that the whole idea of what it means to be an artist was that somehow you are ontologically oriented toward poverty : "As an artist, you don't make money." I had to figure out some kind of way to guarantee that I'd be able to continue doing the work that I wanted to do, whether I made money from the work I was doing or not.
When an artist paints a picture he does not want you to consider his personality as represented in that picture - he wants you to look at the beauty of that picture. No one cares who has painted the picture as long as it is beautiful.
A real artist may create his picture in a lonely desert... gods look over his shoulder; he creates in their company. What does he care whether or not anybody admires his picture?
It's the artist's duty to have an artist's life, somehow to obtain time and freedom and then to muster the desire and discipline to make good work out of the life, whether that goodness is in the world's aesthetics, its radicalism, its candor, its singularity, or its universality.
How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art.
I don't see myself as a movie maker only. When I can do a picture, I do. But I don't work like a business, in pictures. I am not obliged to make one picture after the other in order to live. I write books, I write for comic books, I give lectures... I live. And when the opportunity comes to do a picture, I do a picture.
You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly.
I invest because I'm really a firm believer in letting the artist make their work, if you choose to work with an artist then you give them the go-ahead.
As an artist, the work that I have done in my career has always and will always make me happy.
You have to have a sound that inspires you to play because, if not, you won't be able to make the sound you have work. You won't be able to make magic with it if you're not happy with it, so it's important that you at least please yourself to the level where you can just relax and be an artist.
Really the truth is just a plain picture. A plain picture of, let's say, a tramp vomiting in the sewere. You know, and next door to the picture Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. C. W. Jones on the subway going to work. You know, any kind of picture. Just make a collage of pictures.
I think that no matter what you do, whether you rodeo, whether you work in an office, you work in the oilfield or you play music for a living, eventually if you do enough of it, the devil in the back of your head tries to turn it into work. You have to find new ways to make it new and make it exciting to keep that drive there.
I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.
Being able to hear an artist and emulate them has been a huge part of being successful as a producer and co-writer. I think it's a problem when a producer comes in to work with an artist, and you can't hear the artist as well anymore. It's very important to me to be invisible.
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