Quotes About Essence

If the real world is orange juice, then art is like orange-juice concentrate.

...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water.

One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much.

The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.

What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.

The real art is knowing what to leave out, not what to put in.

Everybody who cares for his art seeks the essence of his own technique.

The essence of drawing is the line exploring space.

It is not what an artist does that counts...but what he is.

A Locanian having plucked all the feathers off from a nightingale and seeing what a little body it had, "surely," quoth he, "thou art all voice and nothing else.

More matter with less art.

Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things.

True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind.

Thou art in the end what thou art. Put on wigs with millions of curls, set thy foot upon ell-high rocks. Thou abidest ever--what thou art.

All art does but consist in the removal of surplusage.

Art is far feebler than necessity.

Art is the splendor of reality before everything has become meaning.

The art of acting presupposes three phases: understanding a part, intuiting a part, and contemplating the essence of a part.

But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.

What thou art, that thou art.

Notice I did not say what people can do--what we can do is merely a consequence of what we can be.

Anything that is not necessary to the painting damages it." Henri Matisse

If you judge art by its cover, you efface the very essence of it