Carolina QuotesAll art that is expressive has to be illusionistic. The raw material out of which art is built is not necessarily in itself potent; you must transform it. Contours, tactility, touch, color, intervals, that's all part of the concreteness of art. You have to make the concreteness expressive. That way you don't cater to taste. You resist sentimentality. Things in a picture can't remind you too much of anything else. You have to resist all that.
Kenneth Noland Carolinian
Source
Kenneth Noland, p. 24
- work
- "Conversation with Karen Wilkin" (1986-1988)
- year
- 1986
- locator
- p. 24
Cite this record
“All art that is expressive has to be illusionistic. The raw …” Kenneth Noland. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-41405A430F. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/41405a430f
More from Kenneth Noland
These things [cutting, cropping and shaping] always happen in strange ways. You can say after the fact what you're doing, but, believe me, you can't project it ahead. It has to be worked through before you can recognize what it was that you were looking for. It's a search; it's not like getting a brainstorm.. .It's work, yes; it comes out of the practice of painting, the practice of your art.
I have to work things out by painting them. I can't just imagine what will happen. I have to do it and see it. That's the only way I find out if it will go anywhere.
We tend to discount a lot of meaning that goes on in life that's non-verbal. Color can convey a total range of mood and expression, of one's experience in life, without having to give it descriptive or literary qualities.