Every normal human being (and not merely the 'artist') has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious, it is merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures ... of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light. 

Max Ernst

The piece of white marble that the Magi is kneeing on, is from the original San Francisco City Hall that was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake & Fire. The building stood on the site of today's Main Library at Grove and Hyde. The piece of wood on the Magi's back is from the foundation of the famous 1851 Belli Building, located a half block from the Transamerica Pyramid. The building stood on the shoreline of Yerba Buena Cove during the Gold Rush. The contents in the jar are also from the site of the Belli Building.

The Belli Building and Yerba Buena Cove

I succeeded in simply attending at the birth of all my works. 

Max Ernst

We are a landscape of all we have seen.

Isamu Noguchi

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.

Giorgio de Chirico

The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development. 

Max Ernst

There is much more mystery in the shadow of a man walking on a sunny day, than in all religions of the world. 

Giorgio de Chirico

Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition. 

Max Ernst

The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word. 

Marcel Duchamp

A section of the attic.

There are 600 jars on the floor of the attic.

When I adjust materials of different kinds to one another, I have taken a step in advance of mere oil painting, for in addition to playing off color against color, line against line, form against form, etc., I play off material against material, for example, wood against sackcloth.

Kurt Schwitters

When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one. 

Paul Brunton

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination. 

Marcel Duchamp

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. 

Marcel Duchamp

Before he goes into the water, a diver cannot know what he will bring back. 

Max Ernst

Everything has two aspects; the current aspect, which we see nearly always and which ordinary men see, and the ghostly and metaphysical aspect, which only rare individuals may see in moments of clairvoyance and metaphysical abstraction. 

Giorgio de Chirico

Color is the fruit of life. 

Guillaume Apollinaire

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.

Hans Arp

Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life.

Giorgio de Chirico

To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams. 

Giorgio de Chirico

I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and rubbish heaps should not serve well as materials for paintings; they suited the purpose just as well as factory-made paints It is possible to cry out using bits of old rubbish, and that's what I did, gluing and nailing them together.

Kurt Schwitters

I never knew what I was doing until I was done. 

Man Ray

It's the viewer that makes the work. 

Marcel Duchamp

Every morning is like a new reincarnation into this world. Let us take it then for what it is and live each moment anew. 

Paul Brunton

My works were designed to amuse, annoy, bewilder, mystify and inspire reflection.

Man Ray

Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art. 

Man Ray

Collage is a supersensitive and scrupulously accurate instrument, similar to a seismograph, which is able to record the exact amount of the possibility of human happiness at any period. 

Max Ernst

Your self is sacred; be true to it. 

Paul Brunton

All good ideas arrive by chance. 

Max Ernst

Memories are hunting horns whose sound dies on the wind. 

Guillaume Apollinaire

When an artist stopped being a child, he would stop being an artist.

Isamu Noguchi

The piece of white marble that the bear is holding, is from the original San Francisco City Hall that was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake & Fire. The building stood on the site of today's Main Library at Grove and Hyde.

Music Of Cathedrals and Forgotten Temples

Dada is not modern at all, it is rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada puts an artificial sweetness onto things, a snow of butterflies coming out of a conjurer's skull. Dada is stillness and does not understand the passions. 

Tristan Tzara

I believe in the relation between photography and music; And that's my inspiration. 

Man Ray