Think Like an Artist by Will Gompertz #Goodreads

 

The Book in One Sentence

Creativity is a human nature, a crucial need for personal place, democracy and civilization of a society. 

Think Like an Artist quotes

• If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative. 
• There's got to be something countering acts of destruction with acts of creation.
• In art, the hand can never execute anything higher tham the heart can imagine.
• When it comes to creativity, failure is as inevitable as it is unavoidable.
• If at first you don't succeed, don't try exactly the same thing again. 
• I proceed by trial and error.
• In art one is either a plagiarist or a revolutionary.
• Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. 
• The only decision to make is what we want to say.
• Big ideas come from the unconciousness. But your unconcious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. 
• Human beings are born to be creative. We must express ourselves. What it is we want to say and through which medium?
• There's no new thing under the sun.
• Often the 'new' element in really big ideas comes in the form of a disruption.
• Good artists copy, great artists steal.
• I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.
• It's not where you take things from, it is where you take them to.
• I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.
• Creativity isn't about making addtions, it's about making substractions. Ideas need honing, simplifying and focusing.
• Creativity is a surprisingly violent act. There is no creation without destruction. And there's no such thing as a wholly original idea. But there is such a thing as unique combinations, which take place in the mind's eye and often start with two or three unconnected mental images that seem somehow pleasing when aligned. - the rest, as Picasso ably demonstrated, is hard work. 
• Human instinct, is a friend to be trusted, not doubted.
• Creativity is not about what somebody else thinks, it is about what you think.
• Socratic method. - assuming nothing and questioning about everything in pursuit of absolute truths.
• The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. 
• There is a form of courage, a courage that is based on the same principle - personal vulnerability - but does not put the protagonist in any immediate physical danger. It is unbidden - and express your feelings and ideas in public to a potentially hostile audience.
• The unexamined life is not worth living.
• The unexamined idea is not worth realizing.
• Educated guesses give our work its individuality and soul.
• In the creativity game you are not a player unless you have something to say. 
• Our point of view is our signature.
• Artists think big picture and fine detail.
• Spend too much time on the fine detail and you will get lost. But if you only think about the big picture you won't create or connect to anything.
• An artwork should point in more than one direction.
• Creativity is more than just being different. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. 
• Every painting has a point of entry. A small detail that catches your eye and draws you in. When the point of entry to the picture changes, it alters our reading of it.

• What makes menof genius, or rather what inspires their work, are not new ideas; instead they are pressed by the idea that what has been said was not been said enough. It is not the core idea or subject that is important, but what an individual is inspired to say about it that is new or different.
• Peter Doig, the Artist, had arrived. He now had something to run with. "I have to leave somewhere before I can paint it."
• Change of scene = change point of view; disruption = activates senses, stimulate by unfamiliar.
• Mind's eye = memories / the melancholic of ageing.
• Once we discover what we want to say, everyday life can become a potential source of creative stimulation.
• It is the artist's job to pay attention to prompts, to trust their feelings and instincts.
• We have to comfirmally be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
• We are not robots: life is more exciting when you have an option.
• Peter Doig found inspiration in physical spaces, Rembrandt in personal place; Marshall in the politics of race.
• I don't paint things, I only paint the difference between things. - Henri Matisse

• Artist + Patreon = aesthetic status quo.
• Creativity gives voice to democracy, and shape to a civilization. 
• It is a platform for ideas and an agent of change. We should treat it with respect, and as both creators and citizens always try to be open-minded and generous-spirited.
• Art in all its shapes and forms is soft.
• Perhaps all schools should be art schools - at least in attitude rather than curriculum? After all, if our future is indeed going to be based on a creative economy, and more of our spare time dedicated to making, then it would appear sensible to prepare young people accordingly.
• Art school teaches you how to think, not what to think.
• Art is about 'breaking rules' and 'discovering new stuff'.
• Reward New and Interesting rather than Right or Wrong would help develop more of the skills needed for a creative economy.
• Students shall learn how to be critical and criticized, a process that taught him intellectual rigour and emotional resilience. Both of which are absolutely essential in any sphere of creativity. 
• All students should leave education self-aware and self-assured.
• Art school or not, students need to leave education as independantly minded, intellectually curious, self-confinded and resourceful individuals who feel prepared for, and excited by, the future and what they might be able to contribute to it.
• You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go for it with a club.
• A creative economy needs independantly minded individuals with the freedom and capacity to think imaginatively. 
• The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.