Brice Marden Quotes

When you’re not smoking anymore, you don’t have to carry around a pack of cigarettes, a lighter – all this paraphernalia. So you’re liberated in a certain sense. It’s the same with drinking.

When you’re using a long brush, you have your arm at full length. Basically, it exaggerates the movement of your body. But I always start far away and end up really close.

These days people believe they can go into art and make a living. We didn’t have that. The abstract expressionists were older, by the time they even got a show. Now people come right out of school and sell.

Remember that an artist’s life is an intense search for truth. This search takes many forms. Everyone of these forms demands its own disciplines. I learned and adapted to my search. I expect nothing from you. Question the truth of anything you confront. How does it apply to yourself and the trail you are pursuing?

Every time I open the paper, there’s some symphony orchestra collapsing somewhere in the United States. What the hell is going on? And then you find out that the board members try to run these things as businesses.

Painters are amongst the priests – worker priests of the cult of man – searching to understand but never know.

Being an artist is very independent thinking, although there’s always going to be a lot of doubt.

A work of art is a renewable source of energy.

You can’t say I’m going to become a painter in the same way you say I’m going to become a dentist. Or maybe you can nowadays. But it’s an endeavor.

I don’t remember any dream. All I remember is waking up and feeling that there had been a change while I was sleeping.

A painting, you know, it’s all dirty material. But it’s about transformation. Taking that earth, that heavy earthen kind of thing, turning it into air and light.

I consider myself lucky to have had wonderful teachers. They expose you to a lot and basically teach you how to paint. I think of my career as a series of lucky incidents.

The possibilities of thought training are infinite, its consequences eternal, and yet few take the pains to direct their thinking into channels that will do them good, but instead leave all to chance.

I’m very much involved with Asian art and its theory and practice, mainly Chinese because that was quite sophisticated. I tend to look at that more than I look the Western.

In this kind of super-capitalistic society, everything is turned into money. And one of the great things about art is it isn’t worth anything. It’s absolutely free. It’s going to get made no matter what.

I think abstraction is a very rich area. And it is upsetting that people seem to have some fear of it. I’m constantly making these statements about how you should just look at it and react to it on your own; just relax and let go.

I love the healthy exchange of information.

I’ve always worn a hat when I work. I think it also comes from a picture of Rothko I saw with a painter’s hat on.

I’m an abstract painter not just for myself, but because I really believe in abstraction.

Holding together a kind of tension. When you see a painting that’s really good that’s what it’s doing.

Western artists stand as humans looking at nature; Asian artists try to be in nature. You become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That’s a big shift.