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A canvas is never empty.

Robert Rauschenberg

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Robert Rauschenberg
Age: 82 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 22
Died: 2008
Died: May 12
Artist
Choreographer
Designer
Graphic Artist
Painter
Performance Artist
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Port Arthur
Texas
Milton Ernest Rauschenberg
Robert Milton Ernest Rauschenberg
Bob Rauschenberg
Matson Jones
Empty
Never
Canvas
Materials

More quotes by Robert Rauschenberg

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You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist.
Robert Rauschenberg
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Art is a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.
Robert Rauschenberg
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People ask me, 'Don't you ever run out of ideas?' In the first place I don't use ideas. Every time I have an idea it's too limiting, and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven't run out of curiosity.
Robert Rauschenberg
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I prefer images that are less specific, so there is room for everyone's imagination.
Robert Rauschenberg
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The only thing that I could get with chance, and I never was able to use it, was that I would end up with something quite geometric or the spirit that I was interested in, indulging in, was gone.
Robert Rauschenberg
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I think that in the last twenty years or so, there's been a new kind of honesty in painting where painters have been very proud of paint and have let it behave openly.
Robert Rauschenberg
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I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun.
Robert Rauschenberg
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Even at this late date, I go into my studio, and I think 'Is this going to be it? Is it the end?' You see, nearly everything terrorizes me. When an artist loses that terror, he's through.
Robert Rauschenberg
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I don't want a picture to look like something it isn't. I want it to look like something it is.
Robert Rauschenberg
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There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.
Robert Rauschenberg
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But I was in awe of the painters I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable
Robert Rauschenberg
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Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it.
Robert Rauschenberg
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Success is a worn down pencil.
Robert Rauschenberg
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This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.
Robert Rauschenberg
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I don't think there's anything really wrong with influence because I think that one can use another man's art as material either literally or just implying that they're doing that, without it representing a lack of a point of view.
Robert Rauschenberg
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I don't like masterpieces having one-night stands in collectors' homes between auctions.
Robert Rauschenberg
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One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone.
Robert Rauschenberg
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I used to think of that line in Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl', about the 'sad cup of coffee'.. ..I have had cold coffee and hot coffee and lousy coffee, But I've never had a sad cup of coffee.
Robert Rauschenberg
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I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.
Robert Rauschenberg
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There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself it revolved around words like 'tortured', 'struggle'. 'pain'.. .I could never see these qualities in paint - I could see them in life and art that illustrates life. But I could not see such conflicts in the materials and I knew that it had to be in the attitude of the painter.
Robert Rauschenberg