Peter Schmidt (artist) - Quotes

Quotes

• "One of the functions of art is to offer a more desirable reality; a model as it were, of another style of existence with its own pace and its own cultural reference." Peter Schmidt

• "In a roomful of shouting people, the one who whispers becomes interesting." Peter Schmidt

• "My friend Peter Schmidt used to talk about ‘not doing the things that nobody had ever thought of not doing’, which is an inverse process – where you leave out an assumption that everybody has always made and see what happens (e.g. music has to be made of intentionally produced sounds was the assumption that Cage left out)." Brian Eno, in A Year With Swollen Appendices, p. 178

• "He was enigmatic and tried to get us to approach things from different angles. Not however, in an analytical way though he could be very analytical, it was more to do with looking for the mysterious invisible centre of experience." Linda Landers, former student

• "These cards evolved from our separate observations on the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognized in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack (a set of possibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case,the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident." Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt - Card #2 from Oblique Strategies, 1975

• "...During the past two years, Peter Schmidt has restricted his work almost exclusively to water colours, that curious medium which seems to stand on the borderline between 'Sunday painting' and 'serious painting'. I believe that this ambiguity itself has been a major reason for his continued use of the medium, for it allows pictorial events which can be light-hearted and ephemeral, and at the same time brooding and mysterious. The medium does not stipulate a particular emotional range, and presents itself to a perceiver in a kind of innocent and understated way - as if with a lowered voice. It seems that at a time when the currency of the day is to engage in productions that are in some way epic - be it in terms of scale, loudness or detail - that which is simple and quiet suddenly becomes relevant. It is talking in a new way..." Brian Eno, 1978

• "Travel was necessary to enable Peter to paint. He longed for solitude and sought to investigate the influence solitude had on his perception of the world about him. Painting itself was for him just a part of the creative process. He went for walks, submitting himself to the influence of whatever met his eye. He did not take with him a sketchbook or any paint-tools, but when he had finished his walk he emptied his mind of all superfluities and painted from memory what remained there." Eggert Pétursson, from the "Icelandic Landscapes" exhibition catalogue, 1995

• "Each year the students would create a book that was printed and bound in the college. Eduardo Paolozzi did his Abba Zabba there one year. ‘Printed In Watford’ was done by the year above me, our year was ‘Constructive Anachronisms For Supportive Analysis’(a book about Shelf Brackets)with Hansjorg Meyer. The following year, however I did a magazine with Peter Schmidt, The Foundation Course and Brian Eno called 'The Humble Meek'. It was like an up-market religious pamphlet spoofing an entire religion foisted onto the banal wise-words of a made-up Watford Housewife. There was a twist to it all as well. I have a pile of these still, I sold them in Record Shops and the right kind of bookshop, and we got rid of hundreds of the buggers. ‘Irene Williams’ she was called and we had just the one photo of her, rescued from a photo booth in London. The point of this is to show that Peter was amazingly playful and had a tremendous sense of humour, often quite wicked." Cally, a student, taken from a private correspondence, 2007