Donald Sultan Quotes
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The oppressed becomes the oppressor. Look at Russia, it’s heading back to Stalin.
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I don't think anybody ever makes any money buying and selling stock. They have to make money by keeping the stock.
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People asked me why I quit and it was because the imagery I was using became pervasive. That’s not why I did them. I did it because that was the way the world was going. Part of the American way of painting was industrial. I never was comfortable with illustration; I was interested in the way paintings were made.
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Artists don't compare themselves to each other based on money. Nobody really knows what money other artists have. They don't care that much. The measure is the work and how you think your work is perceived. How the museums are. How you are doing.
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The closer you work from reality the more abstract things can get. Like if you just did a cigarette with smoke in a painting than that’s very abstract.
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The destruction depicted in them was mostly caused by unknowable or unseeable things. You don’t see the actual executioner; like shelling from artilleries 100 miles away. The destruction of the earth by oil rigs and refineries. And the poisoning of the waters. So you don’t see the direct result of the event but the fall out from the carrying of the wind.
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I don’t want [my paintings’ subject matter] to be seen as a just a button. So they have to be read as not a button or a flower but something abstracted from which you can derive meaning.
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I wanted more control. Painting was the only way to do it yourself. Movies require too many people. You can have an auteur vision but there’s a lot of money involved. And there’s a lot of people telling you what to do.