Global Creative Leadership Summi
Insights into the clash of art in a networked world.
from ArtInfo
Quotes from Chuck Close & Francesco Clemente at the Global Creative Leadership Summit for
Chuck Close:
“artists are notoriously poor organizers; we normally don’t join groups, and when we do, it’s a disaster. We work alone in our studios. The stand-in for an organization for us is the [artistic] community: We send what we produce into the world and that’s how we exchange ideas with other artists.”
“I try to remove anxiety,” he said “It’s almost like raking gravel in a Zen monastery—when I commit to a painting, I know it’s a four-month project, and I tell myself, today I’m going to do what I did yesterday and tomorrow I’m going to do what I did today. ... You have to back yourself into a corner where you are asking questions that no one else has asked, so no one else but you has the answers. That forces you to be more creative.”
“a contrarian attitude is key to rising to the top. If money is your end [goal], you’ll make all the wrong decisions; you’re doomed to failure.”
Close continued that if money had been his aim, “I wouldn’t have painted a nine-foot painting of someone else; I would have painted CEOs or college presidents, at a size that fits over the couch. If I’d done anything [career-wise] that made ‘good sense,’ I wouldn’t be sitting here.” The irony, Close concluded, “I don’t care about money and [that’s why] I’ve made a whole hell of a lot of it.”
“Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up;”
“The trouble with living in New York City is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but the light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey.”
Francesco Clemente
“If I have to be honest, I have to bring bad news,” Clemente said. “The bad news is that I believe that an artist is an artist because he chooses not to tamper with reality; he chooses not to better reality. The creative mind comes at a price, so ultimately, an artist makes an ethical choice—he deals not so much with the world of ideas, but with the world of forms. And the world of forms does does not make deals.
