Quote

Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions.

Kiki Smith

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Kiki Smith
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: January 18
Artist
Illustrator
Installation Artist
Painter
Performance Artist
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Visual Artist
Nürnberg
Ḳiḳi Smit
Thinking
Expect
Contradictions
People
Creating
Convenient
Forever
Inherent
Art
Expecting
Work
Contradiction
Kind
Creates
Contradicting
Make
Narrative
Embody
Think
Kinds
Embodiment

More quotes by Kiki Smith

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I had stopped making figures, and then I began making images of animals in nature, which was a way to introduce the figure.
Kiki Smith
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When you get older, you're running out of time. You care more about trying to stay on the planet a little longer, so you can learn how to draw better!
Kiki Smith
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It was a very economically depressed time [the 80s] and because of that, there was a lot of space. Everything was relatively dilapidated, and one could live on a pretty low income. One could live well below the poverty line and not suffer immensely.
Kiki Smith
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I really love printmaking. It’s like a mystery and you’re trying to figure out how to rein it in.
Kiki Smith
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I'm in general a nostalgic person, but I don't know if I'm nostalgic for the 80s!
Kiki Smith
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Sometimes your personal life is much more significant. Sometimes your work life is more significant. Friends and family, or sometimes the general population, take precedence.
Kiki Smith
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The point isn't to know what you're doing. The point is to have an experience doing something.
Kiki Smith
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Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.
Kiki Smith
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I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.
Kiki Smith
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I first had no interest in figuration whatsoever.
Kiki Smith
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It's fun, in a way, to explore what's risky in one's life.
Kiki Smith
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I'm not moving from an ideological standpoint. Sometimes I'm trying to make my life better. Sometimes I'm trying to make my life worse! I'm trying to find a happy medium that I can make some sense of.
Kiki Smith
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We as beings are very contradictory, complicated creatures that work in our best interest and against our best interest. In a certain way, I want my work to have all that messiness.
Kiki Smith
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Stained glass enabled the modern world.
Kiki Smith
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The point of art is that it always has the necessity to expand because people are inherently expanding.
Kiki Smith
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When studio art started being seen as important, I joined Colab, and then I became very involved.
Kiki Smith
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Many people don't have relationships to their siblings in adulthood, or they have superficial ones. It's sort of unfashionable, particularly in America, to be close to your family.
Kiki Smith
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It’s one of my loose theories that Catholicism and art have gone well together because both believe in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world.
Kiki Smith
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It is very different when you age. The things that are significant, or what drives you, or the physical experience of being driven, changes over time.
Kiki Smith
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I like Betsy Ross as a model, too, the quilting bee, sitting around with your friends making art, asking what they think, so that you get the benefit of everyone's opinions and so it's not just about you in your you-dom.
Kiki Smith