160 Quotes by Robert Rauschenberg

Understanding is a form of blindness. Good art, I think, can never be understood.

I had been working purely abstractly for so long, it was important for me to see whether I was working abstractly because I couldn't work any other way, or whether I was doing it out of choice.

My art is about paying attention – about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art,

And also the new excitement and variety of ways that the abstract expressionists were applying paint. You could put it on as though it were colored air and it would be painting.

One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone.

Curiosity is the main energy.

Basically painting is total idiocy.

A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil and fabric.

I am sick of talking about What and Why I am doing. I have always believed that the WORK is the word. Action is seen less clearly through reason. There are no shortcuts to directness.