William Baziotes Quotes (22 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

from his letter to Alfred H. Barr, Jr. 6 November, 1955; as cited in the text of 'The Baziotes Memorial Exhibition' and its accompanying catalogue by Lawrence Alloway; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1965, p. 11
1950s

William Baziotes Quotes about painting

“I can not evolve any concrete theory about painting. What happens on the canvas is unpredictable and surprising to me.”

William Baziotes

Source: Posthumous quotes, Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, (1983), p. 135 : original source: 'Willem de Kooning', in 'Moma Bulletin' pp. 6,7

“Contact with other artists has always been of great importance to me. When the artists I know best used to meet.... the talk was mostly of ideas in painting. There was an unconscious collaboration between artists. Whether you agreed or disagreed was of no consequence. It was exciting and you were compelled to paint over your head…. If your painting was criticized adversely, you either imitated someone to give it importance, or you simply suffered and painted harder to make your feelings on canvas convincing... What does happen when artists meet is that we are able to see more clearly the unfolding of character as time goes on.”

William Baziotes

Quote from Baziotes' text for the symposium 'The Creative process', Art Digest Vol. 28, no 8, 15; January 1954, p. 33
Baziotes is referring here to the many art-debates and exchanges between the New York Abstract Expressionist artists
1950s

“I consider my painting finished when my eyes goes to a particular spot on the canvas. But if I put the picture away about thirty feet on the wall and the movements keep returning to me and the eye seems to be responding to something living, then it is finished.”

William Baziotes

Source: 1950s, Artists' Session at Studio 35, (1950), p. 213

“Each painting has its own way of evolving. One may start with a few color areas on the canvas; another with a myriad of lines, another with a profusion of colors... Once I sense the suggestion I begin to paint intuitively. The suggestion then becomes a phantom that must be caught and made real. As I work, or when the painting is finished, the subject reveals itself.”

William Baziotes

I Cannot Evolve Any Concrete Theory, William Baziotes, in Possibilities, Vol. I, no. 1, New York, winter 1947-48, p. 2
William Baziotes is referring in this quote to Surrealist automatism originally a surrealist art concept
1940s

“Whereas certain people start with a recollection or an experience and paint that experience, to some of us the act of doing is the experience; so that we are not quite clear why we are engaged on a particular work. And because we are more interested in plastic matters than we are in matters of words, once can begin a painting and carry it through and stop it and do nothing about the title at all. All pictures are full of association.”

William Baziotes

Source: 1950s, Artists' Session at Studio 35, (1950), p. 217

“Today it's possible to paint one canvas with the calmness of an ancient Greek and the next with the anxiety of a Van Gogh. Either of these emotions, and any in between, is valid to me... I work on many canvasses at once. In the morning I line them up against the wall of my studio. Some speak, some do not. They are my mirrors. They tell me what I am like at that moment.”

William Baziotes

I Cannot Evolve Any Concrete Theory, William Baziotes, in Possibilities, Vol. I, no. 1, New York, winter 1947-48, p. 2
1940s

William Baziotes Quotes about feelings

“I think when a man first discovers that two and two is four, there is 'beauty' in that; and we can see why. But if people stand and look at the moon and one says 'I think it's just beautiful tonight' and the other says 'The moon makes me feel awful' we are both 'clear'. A geometric shape – we know why we like it; and an unreasonable shape; it has a certain mystery that we recognize as real; but it is difficult to put these things in an objective way.”

William Baziotes

as cited in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 221: Remark in the 'Artists' Session' at Studio 35, 1950.
1950s

“I think the reason we [Baziotes himself and Richard Lippold ] begin in a different way, is that this particular time has gotten to a point where the artist feels like a gambler. He does something on the canvas and takes a chance in the hope that something important will be revealed.”

William Baziotes

Source: 1950s, Artists' Session at Studio 35, (1950), p. 219

“The emphasis on flora, fauna, and beings makes the exhibit a most intriguing and artistic one for it brings forth those strange memories and psychic feelings that mystify and fascinate all of us.”

William Baziotes

his remark in 1957
as cited in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 34
1950s

“In the beginning I drew and painted from nature in order to know her. Then later, only to fall under her spell. And today, to let her mirror my thoughts and feelings.”

William Baziotes

from the catalog of the traveling exhibition 'Nature in Abstraction', Whitney Museum of modern Art, 1958, p. 61
1950s