More Quotes by Bash...

Kent in his studio with a current project

Bash Quotes and Comments

The visual world is powerful, and no matter how we hammer at it with words, trying to dissect it, words are merely symbols we use to convey the experience, but they are not the experience. (1995)

Modern Art is a refuge for the incompetents. (1997)

Schools of art are like schools of fish, composed of followers, with each follower trying to be more of a follower than the next. Schools of leaders would be a contradiction in terms. (1998)

As I see it, an artist has a couple of options, follow the trend of the moment or stay your own coarse. (1991)

To me, art is exploring the contents of my own mind. (1975)

When art has a theory, this usually means it sucks. (1980)

Those who spend their time trying to figure out what art is, are not artist. (1982)

All that exist are symbols,......Every circumstance is an allegory,....Every life a parable,.........
.....Every fact a metaphor,......Every incident, a co-incidence,.....Every letter, Every word,
Every sentence is a symbol of something that is itself a symbol. There is nothing left but symbols. They are the flags of our cowardice, the cornerstones of our mediocrity. But they are all that we have left with which to touch one another. (1979)

Critics are part of an effete core of do- nothing individuals, who march around criticizing everything meaningful and relevant and walking inextricably into the future spewing all kinds of existential duck shit all over humanity. (1989)

There is that old cliché, that "A Painting Is Worth A Thousand Words", well, I think that depends on the painting. (1978)

For me, painting is exploring the region between words and understanding. (1984)

My paintings spell out my life in pictures. (1979)

If art is a matter of opinion, I would say, hopefully an educated opinion. Art is not exactly a science, we can't use measuring devices to measure or find it, but some artistic knowledge needs to be evident. (1986)

Sometimes in trying to dissect a work of art, we lose it's magic. (1991) 

From the time I get up in the morning, until I go to bed at night, I believe life has become little more than a commercial, because every one in it is trying to sell you something. (1998)

I live in this slice of time, it is this time I am most capable of painting about. (1967)

I've never seen profound ignorance because my own ignorance stands in the way. (1988)

I've been pistol wiped with slogans. (1992)
 

To be ask to provide an explanation for a painting can be highly private request. The reasons and motives for many of the paintings are personal and not open for debate, still others are intended to be a bit illusive, as you the viewer have a part to play in unraveling the mystery. (2000)

Beyond the painting titles, if I offer some insight, it will be in the form of what was running through my mind at the time., or an overview to a particular series. If my comments about the paintings do not seem rock solid, or if my point of view is not shared by millions, that cant be helped, What ever insight offered can be only my personal slant. ( 1988)

At some point in time, a few artist took off from their normal duties and designed 26 characters and corralled them in to an alphabet, and writers have been bugging us ever sense. (1977)


It has been my long held conviction that there is more good art around than can be found within any single type or class. The power of human creativity is always larger than any of  our institutionalized labels or limits, and larger as well than any body's narrow minded definitions of what tools it is either possible or permissible to create with. To many of us, rather than exercising the prerogative of our individuality, instead allow the fractured world
around us to circumscribe and sanctify the limits of our creative appreciation. To often, with out even realizing that we are doing so, we sacrifice our individual taste for the seduction of the urge to belong, to be accepted by our friends and peers, our culture and our place within it, and by the vast array of cultural institutions that classify and broadcast to us our mass produced individuality. As it is with to many aspects of life, so it is with art, that we seem to believe more in the power, of the lines and limits that others have drawn for us, than we do in our own power to step across those lines and explore new territory on our own, to widen the world we live in. For it is true of art as it is true of nearly every aspect of our lives, that there is a larger picture than the ones that presently fill our television or computer screens, our radio airways, our minds, and if any of us our truly interested in living in that larger world we must teach ourselves to step beyond the limits and labels that imprison us. If, as individuals we are truly interested in understanding and appreciating art, the human part of art, what it is, and why it moves us, we must enter a larger realm of artistic knowledge, than the one that presently confines us. We must enter a realm where all types of art are part of a metabolism of something larger. For we can not fully appreciate art with a capital A, as long as our taste is limited to a single genre, any more than we can appreciate the subtlety of a chess game by watching what passes through a single square. (1989)

There are countless volumes written on art. The prognosticators, pontificators, critics, curators and freelance writers have been busy, but I'm afraid rather than helping us to understand art, they have only succeeded in helping us understand the art of writing. (2001)

Question all authority, especially the authorities you never question. (1974)

If you look through your asshole long enough it will become your minds eye. (1969)

Minimalist art lacks everything but a theory. (1983)

Conceptual art lacks content. (1983) 

My computer is in a perpetual state of upgrade until it becomes obsolete ( 2001)

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