Rachel Whiteread Quotes

Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist who primarily produces sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She was the first woman to win the annual Turner Prize in 1993.Whiteread was one of the Young British Artists who exhibited at the Royal Academy's Sensation exhibition in 1997. Among her most renowned works are House, a large concrete cast of the inside of an entire Victorian house; the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, resembling the shelves of a library with the pages turned outwards; and Untitled Monument, her resin sculpture for the empty fourth plinth in London's Trafalgar Square.

✵ 20. April 1963
Rachel Whiteread photo
Rachel Whiteread: 5   quotes 0   likes

Famous Rachel Whiteread Quotes

“I became aware of Louise Bourgeois in my first or second year at Brighton Art College. One of my teachers, Stuart Morgan, curated a small retrospective of her work at the Serpentine, and both he and another teacher, Edward Allington, saw something in her, and me, and thought I should be aware of her. I thought the work was wonderful. It was her very early pieces, The Blind Leading the Blind, the wooden pieces and some of the later bronze works. Biographically, I don't really think she has influenced me, but I think there are similarities in our work. We have both used the home as a kind of kick-off point, as the space that starts the thoughts of a body of work. I eventually got to meet Louise in New York, soon after I made House. She asked to see me because she had seen a picture of House in the New York Times while she was ironing it one morning, so she said. She was wonderful and slightly kind of nutty; very interested and eccentric. She drew the whole time; it was very much a salon with me there as her audience, watching her. I remember her remarking that I was shorter than she was. I don't know if this was true but she was commenting on the physicality of making such big work and us being relatively small women. When you meet her you don't know what's true, because she makes things up. She has spun her web and drawn people in, and eaten a few people along the way.”

Rachel Whiteread, " Kisses for Spiderwoman http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/oct/14/art2," The Guardian, 14 Oct. 2007: on Louise Bourgeois

“I don't want to make plop art — sculpture that just gets plopped down in places. I wouldn't want to litter every corner of the world with my sculpture.”

As quoted in "Boxing clever" by Lynn Barber inThe Guardian (16 October 2005) http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1593050,00.html

“I think the difference between me and some of the other YBAs [Young British Artists] was that I was ambitious for the work, and not ambitious for myself.”

As quoted in "Still breaking the mould" by Gordon Burn in The Guardian (11 October 2005)

“We still have prostitutes standing on our corner, and people crapping round the back of buildings. The charms are still there.”

On her home-studio in Bethnal Green, as quoted in "Still breaking the mould" by Gordon Burn in The Guardian (11 October 2005) http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1589344,00.html

Similar authors

Jimmy Carr photo
Jimmy Carr 20
British comedian and humourist
Joanne K. Rowling photo
Joanne K. Rowling 29
British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series
Brian Molko photo
Brian Molko 2
musician
Courtney Love photo
Courtney Love 66
American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and art…
Patxi Xabier Lezama Perier photo
Patxi Xabier Lezama Perier 1
sculptor and writer
Tibor Fischer photo
Tibor Fischer 6
British writer
Mark Getty photo
Mark Getty 2
British businessman
Anthony Capella photo
Anthony Capella 2
British writer
Nadeem Aslam photo
Nadeem Aslam 3
British writer
Thomas Cohen photo
Thomas Cohen 2
British singer