William Baziotes: Artist

“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

Feeling , Idea , Suffering , Time

“There is always an unconscious collaboration among artists.... the artist who imagine himself a Robinson Crusoe is either a primitive or a fool.”

William Baziotes

from Baziote's text for a symposium in 1954; as quoted in William Baziotes – paintings and drawings, ed. Michael Preble, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2004, p. 18
1950s

Fools , Imagination

“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

Feeling , Memory

“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

Hope , Way , Feeling , Thinking

“One hundred artists introduce us to one hundred worlds.”

William Baziotes

Source: Posthumous quotes, Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, (1983), p. 136 : in Artists Club, January 8, 1952

World