Robert Rauschenberg

“One can see that a canvas is six feet by eight feet, say, quite accurately. But you can spend two minutes and think it's five, or thirty seconds and it's just a different bed for activities there.”

“I don't mess around with my subconscious.”

“I'm not so facile that I can accomplish or find out what I want to know or explore enough of the possibilities and a way of making a painting, say, in just one painting or two paintings.”

“Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made - I try to act in the gap.”

“Steichen bought my first photographs that I ever sold. He recognized the style from the school of Black Mountain. After that, it was about twenty years before I sold another photograph.”

“The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.”

“But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.”

“Photography has always been a major part of my vision: my excuse for meddling with what the world looks like.”

“You begin with the possibilities of the material.”

“I don't think any one person, whether artist or not, has been given permission by anyone to put the responsibility of the way things are on anyone else.”

“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they're surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”

“I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.”

“I feel as though the world is a friendly boy walking along in the sun.”

“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.”

“Every time I've moved, my work has changed radically.”

“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop. At the time that I am bored or understand - I use those words interchangeably - another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I'm not one. I'd rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can't ignore.”

“I got so I was really just sick of sculpture.”

“You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist.”

“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.”

“And all of this, all these physical aspects of painting at that time excited me very much. You could do a picture in just black and white. I mean all the things, whether you're soliciting permission or not, do give you permission.”