Robert Rauschenberg Art Quotations

I don't think any one person, whether artist or not, has been given permission by anyone to put the responsibility of the way things are on anyone else

Understanding is a form of blindness. Good art, I think, can never be understood.

My art is about paying attention – about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art,

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made - I try to act in the gap.

This was my first encounter with art as art (he saw 'Pinky' painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and 'The Blue Boy" painted by Thomas Gainborough).. ..somebody actually MADE those paintings.. ..(it) was the first time I realized you could be an artist.

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself; it revolved around words like 'tortured', 'struggle'. 'pain''.. ..I could never see these qualities in paint - I could see them in life and art that illustrates life. But I could not see such conflicts in the materials and I knew that it had to be in the attitude of the painter.

This telegram is a work of art if I say it is.

I don't think there's anything really wrong with influence because I think that one can use another man's art as material either literally or just implying that they're doing that, without it representing a lack of a point of view.

Most artists try to break your heart, or they accidentally break their own hearts.But I find the quietness in the ordinary much more satisfying.

I always have searched for a point of view that a participant could change.

For me there is no difference between art and life.

(Art is) a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.

You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting.

My concern is never art, but always what art can be used for.

Even at this late date, I go into my studio, and I think 'Is this going to be it? Is it the end?' You see, nearly everything terrorizes me. When an artist loses that terror, he's through.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.

It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.

And if I see in the superficial subconscious relationships that I'm familiar with, cliches of association, I change the picture.

I don't think that we have the strength over a period of years to see things always as though we hadn't ever looked at them before to see them new.

One can see that a canvas is six feet by eight feet, say, quite accurately. But you can spend two minutes and think it's five, or thirty seconds and it's just a different bed for activities there.

Pollock also... wanted one to be wrapped in the painting.

Oracle was I had started it I guess two and a half years ago, maybe even longer than that, closer to three.

But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.

I did a twenty foot print and John Cage is involved in that because he was the only person I knew in New York who had a car and who would be willing to do this.

I think maybe chance works better in a situation like music because music exists over a period of time, and you don't maintain constantly the you can't refer back from one area to another area.

I feel strong in my belief, based on my widely traveled collaborations, that a one-to-one contact through art contains potent peaceful powers, and is the most non-elitist way to share information, hopefully seducing us into creating mutual understandings for the benefit of all.