Which writers or artists most influenced your work?

Originally asked

The Paris Review, to novelists and poets, The Art of Fiction

A durable Art of Fiction question asked through named literary influences and artistic models.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Frank O. Gehry said elsewhere, not written here
I spent time with Rauschenberg a lot during the combine period. I think just around the combine period. He had a big influence on me because he was very free and not full of philosophy and why I’m doing this and that. Some of the artists had this anchor of having to be — relate sometimes to Hegel and Kant and Nietzsche. It was sort of baggage that they brought to the table that was irrelevant. I mean it was in their head and it was relevant, but it was irrelevant to this moment of truth. So I found the artists that were kind of “dumb smart,” that were really smart but didn’t parade it, that were willing to take the risks and stuff.

Academy of Achievement interview, Los Angeles, California, 27 September 2016 source ↗

Others on this question

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Wayne Thiebaud Painter; winner of the National Medal of Arts
Very much, because he’s interested in that same kind of process. Bonnard, Matisse, Indian miniature paintings, which he collected. That’s where the light comes from, a spectral relationship within the painting itself.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Sacramento, California, 27 May 2011 source ↗

Adam Gopnik Staff writer at The New Yorker; essayist
Well, it certainly influences my manner of writing, because I always see Darwin as a model of the act of explanation and of argument; the morality, the ethics of explanation, maybe.

Recorded On Being, interviewed by Krista Tippett, 21 December 2017 source ↗

John Pawson Architect and designer known for minimalism
Well, I saw Mies van der Rohe and then I was introduced to Shiro Kuramata’s work and that brought me even further into this world. I’m interested in everything. I mean, Peter Zumthor is obviously very talented, he does interesting work — but I don’t study my contemporaries in architecture and design so much.

Recorded The Talks, published interview, 3 May 2023 source ↗

Robert Wilson Theatre director and designer; creator of Einstein on the Beach
Well, if I had studied theater, I would not be making the kind of theater that I’m making. My theater came about by living. My first play that had text was written with another 13-year-old young man named Christopher Knowles who spent 11 years of his life in an institution for brain damaged children and was composing text that were arranged mathematically and had to do with geometry. I was fascinated by his mind and the way he was putting words together. Not only was it interesting to hear, but it was also very interesting to see. It wouldn’t be necessarily right for someone else, but for me it was something I was drawn to. It came about by living, not by reading a book.

Recorded The Talks, published interview, 17 September 2014 source ↗

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Adam Gopnik, adrienne maree brown, Amy Tan, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles H. Townes, Clare Smyth

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