He was the most astonishing contradiction of components I’d ever encountered. Shy yet fiercely communicative when putting an idea into your head. Vocally astringent regarding his own abilities but not to the point that he couldn’t produce–he was as prolific an artist (yes, an artist, and I never use the term, especially regarding people I like) I’ve ever seen. But I could feel it. Everything he sketched, penciled, inked, made–was a payment, one he could scarcely afford; as if it physically hurt him to put pencil to paper. Yet that only seemed to spur him on, to live far beyond his means. He was unable not to. For Sketch, to draw was to breath, and so the air became lead–silvery in the right light, dark soot in the wrong; heavy, slick and malleable–into shapes he brought together in glorious orchestration, with a child’s eye and a rocket scientist’s precision, all fortified by a furious melancholy, a quiet engine of sourceless shame and humility. When it came to another’s work, he longed to praise it but then couldn’t resist critiquing it all within an inch of its life, analyzing deficiencies with uncontrollable abandon and laser accuracy. He was sharp as his Radio 914 pen nibs, and as pointed. And then he’d apologize. Oh, he would apologize: Oh my GOD, forgive me, please don’t hate me, I’m SORRY, don’t listen to me, why am I saying things, what do I know, I don’t know anything, why do you listen to me you should just tell me to shut UP, I’m awful, forgive me, you hate me, don’t you? Tell the truth. Please don’t hate me. Please don’t. Please. Chip Kidd
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures....
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Oscar Wilde
What we do see depends mainly on what we look for.... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same...
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John Lubbock
The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails
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James Joyce
In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is...
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Edward Carpenter
Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning– We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love.
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Joy Harjo
More Quotes By Chip Kidd
Nothing worth knowing can ever be taught in a classroom.
Never let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash.
(...) I'm not much of anything, (...) besides bored and boring, punctuated by fits of scant self-amusement. And you are. ..?
(...) photography opened up quite a little Pandora's box, kiddies. (...) Once we no longer had to depend on drawing and painting to record our existence – once they became an option – they mutated .. . into a form of expression. And Art for...
He was the most astonishing contradiction of components I’d ever encountered. Shy yet fiercely communicative when putting an idea into your head. Vocally astringent regarding his own abilities but not to the point that he couldn’t produce–he was as prolific an artist (yes, an artist,...
