Quote

Asked what role he believes art plays in society, Baselitz replied, 'The same role as a good shoe, nothing more.

Georg Baselitz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Georg Baselitz
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: January 23
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Printmaker
Sculptor
University Teacher
Hans-Georg Kern
Georg Dern
G. Baselitz
Hans-Georg Baselitz
Georg Kern
Hans Georg Kern
Purpose
Replied
Art
Believes
Nothing
Plays
Play
Shoes
Believe
Role
Good
Asked
Roles
Society
Shoe

More quotes by Georg Baselitz

Image
As an artist, I have been a risk-taker. And I've done a lot of different things. I don't make it easy for people. Identification is difficult. One doesn't recognize my art right away.
Georg Baselitz
Image
We have seen so many exhibits in recent years where the exhibition design was aesthetically beautiful. In this case, if someone wants to get something out of the exhibit, they must neglect the aesthetics and look at my pictures.
Georg Baselitz
Image
I've painted, but I've also done graphics since as long as I can remember. So even people with little to spend could afford it. But even the graphic works are only bought by those who buy the big, expensive paintings. I think that's troublesome.
Georg Baselitz
Image
Most of arts what comes from the States to Europe has something to do with entertainment. I can't imagine artists in the United States having the same kind of isolated position that we have here in Europe. I have a feeling one lives more publically in the States.
Georg Baselitz
Image
I was always on the outside. It was the worst when I still wanted to be a professor, having to deal with colleagues and students, and having to listen to all that academic nonsense. It's really just a haze that keeps them busy. But all of that is fortunately over now, once and for all.
Georg Baselitz
Image
The reality is the picture, it is most certainly not in the picture.
Georg Baselitz
Image
When Michael Werner saw a painting of mine, such as Die grosse Nacht im Eimer, which back then nobody wanted and everybody thought was ridiculous, he realized that this was the right provocation, that it represented the feeling of the times in the right way.
Georg Baselitz
Image
I don't paint over my paintings with black paint. I paint black paintings. It isn't because I'm sad, just as I didn't paint red paintings yesterday because I was happy. Nor will I paint yellow paintings tomorrow because I'm jealous.
Georg Baselitz
Image
The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.
Georg Baselitz
Image
A painter doesn't need any talent. In fact, it's better not to have it.
Georg Baselitz
Image
Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker.
Georg Baselitz
Image
Nowhere in my collection do I, say, have a Auguste Renoir painting. Because everybody knows that this is a good painter without me having to demonstrate it.
Georg Baselitz
Image
A citizen sticks to conventions, does whatever is social. Artists, of course, must reject all conventions. I see no differently in reconciling the best of both of these worlds.
Georg Baselitz
Image
Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption.
Georg Baselitz
Image
In a place like the Guggenheim, I would like to be a representative of arte povera. This would be my ideal.
Georg Baselitz
Image
I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious.
Georg Baselitz
Image
That was in 1957. And there I found out that Germany is a kind of province. I didn't know anything about expressionism, about the Bauhaus and Dada and surrealism. I was uneducated, so to speak - and everybody else was more or less uneducated, too.
Georg Baselitz
Image
The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse.
Georg Baselitz
Image
Museums collect what's important in their respective countries. In Berlin's National Gallery, however, this isn't the case. They're interested neither in me nor the other usual suspects. It's simply a German reality.
Georg Baselitz
Image
Talent seduces us into interpretation. My sister could draw wonderfully, but she would never have hit upon the idea of becoming a painter. I never had that extreme talent.
Georg Baselitz