Latest Georg Baselitz Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I would say for everyday I build buildings or houses like a bricklayer with canvas and paint.

  Georg Baselitz

  House, Everyday, Canvas

• I do not have a philosophy about retrospectives. Of course, I cannot change what I have done. What I am doing today, this I can change, in view of whatever I have done before. My retrospectives are like a series of ghosts.

  Georg Baselitz

  Philosophy, Done, Today

• As a human being, I am a citizen, but as an artist, I am asocial.

  Georg Baselitz

  Artist

• A citizen sticks to conventions, does whatever is social. Artists, of course, must reject all conventions. I see no differently in reconciling the best of both of these worlds.

  Georg Baselitz

  Artist, World

• We have seen so many exhibits in recent years where the exhibition design was aesthetically beautiful. In this case, if someone wants to get something out of the exhibit, they must neglect the aesthetics and look at my pictures.

  Georg Baselitz

  Beautiful, Design, Neglect

• In the beginning, the energy involved to create came from my reaction to the work of other artists. The force behind this was aggression. The art that I saw was great, but I had to reject it, because I could not continue in the same direction. So I had to do something entirely different. It had to be so different, so extreme, that those who loved pop art, for instance, hated me. And this was my strength.

  Georg Baselitz

  Art, Energy, Different

• In a place like the Guggenheim, I would like to be a representative of arte povera. This would be my ideal.

  Georg Baselitz

• When I began as an artist, I already did not like expressionism, or abstract expressionism, because abstract painting had already been done. I did not want to belong to any one group or the other, and I'm not one or the other.

  Georg Baselitz

  Artist, Done, Painting

• I am not a representative of anything. When art historians or critics or the public put somebody in a drawer like this, it has a tranquilizing, paralyzing effect. Artists are individuals. They have ideas, and the conventions for one's self as an individual are not for a group. There are always those who follow the group, but they belong in the margins. I refuse to be placed within, or added to, one particular school.

  Georg Baselitz

  Art, School, Individual

• I don't know who made up this sort of greatest-hits list for artists. If one artist isn't moving forward anymore, then it's assumed another one is going to take their place. With Francis Bacon's death, a whole genre of art died.

  Georg Baselitz

  Art, Moving, Moving Forward

• When Michael Werner saw a painting of mine, such as Die grosse Nacht im Eimer, which back then nobody wanted and everybody thought was ridiculous, he realized that this was the right provocation, that it represented the feeling of the times in the right way.

  Georg Baselitz

  Feelings, Ridiculous, Painting

• I remember that Michael Werner told me about a famous collector, and Michael set up an appointment for us to meet. This man looked around the room and at my pictures. Then he said, "Young man, why are you doing these horrible things? Look out the window. There are nice girls out there. It's springtime. Look at how beautiful the world can be. You'll ruin your health by smoking so much and doing such tortured things."

  Georg Baselitz

  Beautiful, Girl, Nice

• I started collecting my artist friends, artists like myself who nobody had yet noticed. In everything, all I am collecting, so to speak, are my friends - artist friends.

  Georg Baselitz

  Artist, Speak

• Nowhere in my collection do I, say, have a Auguste Renoir painting. Because everybody knows that this is a good painter without me having to demonstrate it.

  Georg Baselitz

  Painting, Painter

• I have always had the feeling that other people are too stupid to discover interesting things. That's why I do it myself. I think of collecting as a way to show that I understand what's important better than others do.

  Georg Baselitz

  Stupid, Thinking, People

• I have always been aware of different movements and directions in art. But, in general, I'm always bored by any kind of generalization when it comes to artists. I think that there are just single individuals, who are valuable, and they work outside of any group.

  Georg Baselitz

  Art, Thinking, Work Out

• That was in 1957. And there I found out that Germany is a kind of province. I didn't know anything about expressionism, about the Bauhaus and Dada and surrealism. I was uneducated, so to speak - and everybody else was more or less uneducated, too.

  Georg Baselitz

  Kind, Speak, Surrealism

• I did not always trust my teachers, because I found them too weak. I was looking for something that could take me in a new direction, for things that I could admire. And because it was so hard to find this, I became a sort of outsider. That's why I began to identify with the insane, "outsider" artists.

  Georg Baselitz

  Teacher, Artist, Insane

• Most of arts what comes from the States to Europe has something to do with entertainment. I can't imagine artists in the United States having the same kind of isolated position that we have here in Europe. I have a feeling one lives more publically in the States.

  Georg Baselitz

  Art, Feelings, Kind

• I became an artist because of the possibility it gave me to develop in another way, because I didn't want to follow the same lines the others around me did. I was educated in the former German Democratic Republic, which meant that an individual figure had to be... like a soldier in the army.

  Georg Baselitz

  Army, Artist, Soldier

• I don't see art as entertainment.

  Georg Baselitz

  Art

• Alfred Schnittke was an important contemporary composer, and he lived in Germany, but no one here has heard of him. Everyone has heard of Mozart, and many believe that he can still be found in that little house in Salzburg, which is why people stand there in line. I think that our music and our art belong to our era. If the public doesn't show up, it must be stupid.

  Georg Baselitz

  Art, Stupid, Believe

  "German Artist Georg Baselitz: 'My Paintings are Battles'". Interview with Susanne Beyer and Ulrike Knofel, www.spiegel.de. January 25, 2013.

• There's a market for art, and things are indeed going swimmingly, especially for German artists. But everything takes place in America and in London, where there are quite a few wealthy, engaged people. What motivates them to buy art is a different question, but they do.

  Georg Baselitz

  Art, People, Different

  "'My Paintings are Battles'". Interview with Susanne Beyer and Ulrike Knöfel, www.spiegel.de. January 25, 2013.

• I've painted, but I've also done graphics since as long as I can remember. So even people with little to spend could afford it. But even the graphic works are only bought by those who buy the big, expensive paintings. I think that's troublesome.

  Georg Baselitz

  Thinking, Long, People

  "'My Paintings are Battles'". Interview with Susanne Beyer and Ulrike Knöfel, www.spiegel.de. January 25, 2013.

• Despite all the taxes people pay, there supposedly isn't any money in this country for art. Of course, this makes an artist ask himself: "Well, then, what are you doing with the 100 million I pay each year? What happened to that money?" And he doesn't get an answer.

  Georg Baselitz

  Country, Art, People

  "My Paintings are Battles". Interview with Susanne Beyer, Ulrike Knöfel, www.spiegel.de. January 25, 2013.