Carl Andre Quotes

Yes, the more I go through life I realize that there's really no separation between practice and art at all. The two things more and more become one rather than two different aspects of my life.

But I'd be lying if I didn't say that every time you go to make a film, you're desperate to either do it better than you did it last time or to not repeat yourself.

I'm a perfectionist, and I like to do each scene slightly differently every time.

There's nothing more difficult than a line.

What I've learned from sketch is you can get it as perfect as you want, and it's never going to be perfect.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

I tend to write and record things quite quickly. You can tamper with things for years, and it's artistic laziness sometimes.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment.

The common, the quotidian, is so much more unyielding to me, really stubborn and hard to work with, and I like this because it makes me think and it makes me worry. I can't just plunge my hand into the meat of it. I need new approaches.

You have to make thousands and thousands of drawings before an illustration is perfected.

Writing fiction is... an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.

If you're an artist, you want to draw from real life; you want to draw from experiences, emotion, and it's something that a lot of musicians juggle with. I've always found it so fascinating.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

I'm not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, I'm rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.

Movie-wise, there is nothing I wouldn't do again. It's not possible to make one perfect movie every time.

Some people only work to recorded music because it's so reliable and exactly the same every time, which is exactly why I don't.

I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.

I never want to repeat myself. I can't imagine anything else as upsetting as realizing I'm redoing something I did before. For some reason, when it comes to film, I'm very good at not repeating myself. Even though in the rest of my life, I'm constantly repeating my mistakes.

Books and movies are never finished, only surrendered.

Seven days a week, I'm always drawing, doodling, or painting, whether I'm in the studio or on a plane.

That's the buzz for me, the creative process. An idea is never as good as when it's in your head. And then it's just how little you ruin it.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

So many of my paintings, people would be like, 'What more do you have to do?' But the smallest little things make all of the difference.

I doubt Picasso ever painted a picture in an hour, he took his time, looked at every detail and made sure it was perfect.

I had a studio visitor ask me when a piece was complete, and afterward, I realized I was kind of annoyed by the question. I wrote down to myself, 'Nothing's ever finished' as an operating value.