Georg Baselitz Quotations

I always feel attacked when I'm asked about my painting.

I dont want to create a monster; I want to make something which is new, exceptional, something that only I do...something that references tradition, but is still new.

Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art.

The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse.

There is no communication with any public whatsoever. The artist can ask no question, and he makes no statement; he offers no information, and his work cannot be used. It is the end product which counts.

My Paintings are Battles.

I love my old paintings as postulates as fresh starting points but I have to destroy them. I have to make a new manifesto.

I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious.

Museums collect what's important in their respective countries. In Berlin's National Gallery, however, this isn't the case. They're interested neither in me nor the other usual suspects. It's simply a German reality.

In Germany, we often hear the absurd complaint that museums don't have the money to buy paintings. Of course, I'm not talking about me and my paintings. There are, after all, more popular painters in this country.