Pat Steir Quotes

• Painting is an object, but it's also a voice. I don't see them as objects; I see them as voices.

  Pat Steir

  Voice, Painting, Objects

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• The spiritual in my art is giving up control. My paintings are based on what I can do, and what I can do is not controlled. So I give up control, and that's the spiritual aspect of the work - taking what comes and relinquishing control. Although they look very controlled, they're really not, because it's all poured paint.

  Pat Steir

  Spiritual, Art, Giving Up

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I consider my work non-objective and I think abstract is an abstraction of something, like a landscape. Abstraction means something is abstracted. It relates to something. Non-objective relates to nothing. It has no object.

  Pat Steir

  Mean, Thinking, Landscape

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• I have a friend who says a beautiful painting can cure headaches, but I want it to cure a little bit more! I want it to cure the society of voting for Donald Trump.

  Pat Steir

  Beautiful, Voting, Want

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• I have my moods, but I can always see something beautiful.

  Pat Steir

  Beautiful, Mood, Something Beautiful

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• An artist needs to become familiar with that which is most hidden from the self by the self. For this one thing which one fears to know is often the driving force in one's life. These recognitions seen in art are the difference between decent, extraordinary and great.

  Pat Steir

  Art, Differences, Self

  4 Copy quote

• Art is the most important way of recording history.

  Pat Steir

  Art, Important, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• We live in a time when people are afraid of beauty, because beauty passes; you can't hang on to it. And even if you see something or someone beautiful, the next time you hear it, it sounds different. So you can't cling to beauty; beauty passes and when that passes, you realize you pass too, and you will die. And that's why people cry at a beautiful view, a beautiful lecture, a beautiful painting, a new baby.

  Pat Steir

  Beautiful, Baby, Views

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm purposeless. I'm making art because I want you to look at that painting and I want it to affect you in some way, to change what you see, to change how you see it. To change how you see something, whatever.

  Pat Steir

  Art, Looks, Want

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I want art to affect the viewer and for the viewer to take it away to enhance, embrace, and elevate life. That's the spiritual aspect. Painting is a spiritual practice, but sometimes it is hard to give up control!

  Pat Steir

  Spiritual, Art, Giving Up

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• To handle paint the way Pollock did, you need the muscularity of a ballet dancer.

  Pat Steir

  Dancer, Ballet, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• Everything you do on Earth is political.

  Pat Steir

  Political, Earth

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• Art as a political gesture is committed to making something beautiful, and then understanding what beauty is in your own time, because what we think of as beauty changes with time. The notion of beauty everywhere changes.

  Pat Steir

  Beautiful, Art, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  11 Copy quote

• Art is a way you discover the past, and so it brings the past into the present and the future. That's why we have anthropologists who dig up the art from the past. You can see the refinement in the society by the art. And people will see our lack of refinement when they dig up our art.

  Pat Steir

  Art, Past, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• When you see the holy halo around the holy heads on holy paintings - the halo is a bright light so you can't see the face. The face comes in darkness because it would be too beautiful to see. If there were such a thing as a holy person, a god, with a halo around his head, you wouldn't be able to see his face because the beauty would be terrifying.

  Pat Steir

  Beautiful, Light, Darkness

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Every piece of art will be if it's lucky enough to be dug up, if there's anything to dig up.

  Pat Steir

  Art, Lucky, Pieces

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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