Gerhard Richter Quotes

When I record an album I'm trying to get as close as possible to that perfect moment.

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

I fight to take a good photograph every single time.

I'm a photographer, period. I love photography, the immediacy of it. I like the craft, the idea of saying 'I'm a photographer.'

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

The fact that my songs take a long time to write is no guarantee of their excellence.

The only time I judge an actor on set is if they're not failing; if they get it right all the time, I start to question it. I feel like it's too easy.

I can't make a perfect record. When I try to, I bleed all the feeling out of it.

The truth is that no matter how many retakes you do, each will be different and that is the nature of any creative medium. There's no such thing as perfection.

An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty.

The main thing I learned is that the more I can forget about being embarrassed when I make something, the more it is going to mean something to somebody else. I can't anticipate what it's going to be or how it's going to be perceived, so the quicker I let go of something I make, the better.

Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.

You know how you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it's real difficult in life

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.

To admire on principle is the only way to imitate without loss of originality.

My pictures are devoid of objects; like objects, they are themselves objects. This means that they are devoid of content, significance or meaning, like objects or trees, animals, people or days, all of which are there without a reason, without a function and without a purpose. This is the quality that counts. Even so, there are good and bad pictures.

Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.

The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from theconnection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought.

Unless you photograph what you love, you're not going to make good art.

Own what you are, and I mean whether that's art, or whether that's fashion, or whether that's music, or whether that's acting, or whether that's politics, or whether that's literature; it's own what you are, and grab it, and, you know, be as prolific as possible.

perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.

The fact that cartoons are reproduced doesn't mean anything to me as far as whether they are "real art" or not.

Nowadays, with digital printing, it's so easy to make everything perfect, which is not always a good idea. Sometimes the mistakes are really what make a piece.