Fashion designer Haider Ackermann: "My creativity used to come from a dark place… When you are young, you are very tormented and very insecure. I never did analyze, I never went to see a shrink and deal with any of that. I should have, but I never did. I’m not all about analyzing. I don’t like to dig into things. You don’t want to sound like the artist that just goes through pain to be able to produce, but I used to be quite dark — trust me. I used to be quite dark. But now I try to be more optimistic and to move forwards. There’s a little bit more confidence; my creativity comes from happiness."
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Photo by Baptiste Mourrieras
NEW INTERVIEW with producer, musician, and @bleachersmusic frontman Jack Antonoff: "I could sit down and write lyrics and make music all day long, spend a lot of time chipping away, speed it up, slow it down, play it live, program it, whatever it is… You do all these things that are learned skills, but they’re kind of irrelevant, because with songwriting, you’re trying to hear that thing that you can’t really describe. I just try to put myself in the position where I’m ready to grab it if I hear it."
Read the full interview on The Talks, link in bio
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Discover more quotes in our book, No Idea is Final, published by Phaidon, available now
Galleriest Thaddaeus Ropac: "I’ve seen artists trying so hard to be great artists, trying very hard for years, dedicated to it every day, but just not making it. I think you don’t learn to be an artist, and you don’t learn to create a great work of art. It’s a gift. You can study – I’m a strong advocate of art schools... But nobody can tell you to create great art. Nobody. If it is not within you, forget it."
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Photographer Brigitte Lacombe: "My work and my life are the same thing to me. I don’t have a life on one side and work on the other side. My entire life has been my work. I don’t have a family, I am by myself, I have made very strict choices. Like, no kids. I am not so interested in possessions, either. So really I am either working or I am sleeping – there are not many things in between. That’s what I do and everything is folded into that: my friendships and love stories. I have always been within the world of my work."
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Photo courtesy of Brigitte Lacombe
Actor and playwright Jesse Eisenberg: "If I just wrote plays I could not make a living. They all take years to get produced and when they finally get produced you make very little money anyway. So it is important to act. I like acting for it’s own sake, but I do have to think about my career too. I’m doing many different things to prepare for the inevitable failure of one of them."
Read the full interview on The Talks, link in bio
Read these interviews and more in our art section, link in bio.
Discover more quotes in our book, No Idea is Final, published by Phaidon, available now
Jazz icon Arturo Sandoval: "You never know what’s going to happen! My philosophy is to concentrate on today. Whatever’s going to happen in the future, we have no control. And whatever happened in the past, it’s history already, it’s gone… So focus on today, do the best you can, because the rest is in the hands of God."
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Artist Claudia Comte: "I really love to create joy through my installations. I love when people feel good and appreciate the environment I’ve created for them. What is the best for me is to hear from the museum or the gallery is that they have some visitors that stay for an hour or two. For the Copenhagen Contemporary, for example, I created this collapsing forest where people could carve their name or even mark on the trunks. The museum was telling me that a family would come and stay for a long time; the kids were running around, it was as if you could have a picnic there. That’s really what it is about for me: to make art about sharing and having emotion, sometimes in a more humorous way, too, to contrast what we have learned or what we have seen for so long with male artists that played it so seriously."
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Record producer and former Island Records executive Darcus Beese: "My journey, my trajectory took two decades, and I had to learn the art and craft of making records, I had to learn the art and craft of managing people. I had to have the most significant failures to have these spectacular successes. And that can only happen if you have life and work experience."
Read the full interview on The Talks, link in bio.
Read these interviews and more on The Talks, link in bio.
Discover more quotes in our book, No Idea is Final, published by Phaidon, available now
