I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life. Frank Stella More Quotes by Frank Stella More Quotes From Frank Stella I want to make exalted art. A successful image has pictorial lift. I am looking for whatever is up there Frank Stella successfulwantart One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters. Frank Stella imitating-othersimitationpainting I get cranky real easily. So the honor of it and the wonder of it all and everything has a hard time overcoming the petty annoyances; I mean, that's simply the reality of being alive, I guess. Frank Stella hard-timesrealmean Once I really started to understand Frank Stella's work and follow it, there's a certain type of invention and playfulness and extreme rigor with which he kept going forward. Frank Stella rigorstellainvention Any artist can't get away from the way the world works, which is that it wants to know what you did, and you're only interested in what you're doing right now. Frank Stella artistwantworld I never noticed competing with other generations. There's competition within your own generation, but that competition is good. Maybe you're annoyed that somebody's getting more money than you are, but what's really annoying is if someone's painting a better painting than you're making. So it's something to think about and work toward and stay focused on. Frank Stella competitionannoyedthinking I had to find a way to paint abstractly, which is what I wanted to do. I couldn't forget Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, I mean that was the basis. Frank Stella forgetmeanway You couldn't forget Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Joan Miro either. And it had to be, you know, at least as good or better. Frank Stella matissebe-youforget The integrity of being an artist for Frank Stella means going into the unknown.A great artist is somebody who's not scared to reinvent themselves and to start all over again. And some artists do it once, twice, three times in their career. He's done it probably a dozen times or more. Frank Stella artistintegritymean I was worried in the '80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the wall. Frank Stella abstract-paintingwallartist When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out. Frank Stella thrilltechniquemeat I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you. Frank Stella goes-onworldart I think for a lot of artists, if you're lucky enough to have a kind of career, especially toward the end, you start to think about what the whole ensemble looks like. It's the whole that counts. The parts are given, but you don't know how the whole thing's going to look when it's all put together. Frank Stella careersartistthinking Abstract paintings must be as real as those created by the 16th century Italians. Frank Stella abstract-paintingcenturyreal Scarlatti [Kirkpatrick] started writing sonatas when he was 66 and the idea that he ran off 500 or so after he was 66 was just too much for me to resist. It's just great. Frank Stella too-muchwritingideas
