Quotes About Art

One of the great artists of this period, Barnett Newman, wrote about his response and that of his fellow artists: "We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been devices of Western European painting." In their attempt to

The discovery by Hubel and Wiesel of cells that respond to linear stimuli with specific axes of orientation may partly explain our response to Mondrian's work, but it does not explain the artist's focus on horizontal and vertical lines to the exclusion of oblique lines. Vertical

Art is an institution to which we turn when we want to feel a shock of surprise. We feel this want because we sense that it is good for us once in a while to receive a healthy jolt. Otherwise we would so easily get stuck in a rut and could no longer adapt to the new demands that life is apt to make on us. The biological function of art, in other words, is that of a rehearsal, a training in mental gymnastics which increases our tolerance of the unexpected.

Children seem to need, then, a delicate balance between the realistic and the fantastic in their art; enough of the realistic to know that the story matters, enough of the fantastic to make what matters wonderful

The reality of life is chaos; the fantasy of man is order. (..) The world of art, the world of games, the world of politics, so many worlds men make for themselves, are in a very fundamental way fantastic.

If you can understand the humor in the drawing part you'll probably get the humor in the audio part.

Any outstanding dramatic, musical, literary or visual work invariably draws upon powers far beyond our own to lift us onto a plane that is more imaginatively powerful, emotionally thrilling and intellectually stimulating than the mundane one we normally occupy.

Directing has only increased my admiration and respect for what it is that actors do.

A world of possibilities is revealed in this gallery of bread.

haragei—the art of balance and power emanating from the lower belly. Haragei was the basis of all Japanese martial arts, from sumo to karate to the almost extinct harakei. The

Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said.

You only really discover a masterpiece after a third or fourth reading, don't you agree?" "And how can you tell something is a masterpiece?" "I don't skip over the same passages".

The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.

Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.

Thus the hero's rescue of the captive corresponds to the discovery of a psychic world. This world is already of vast extent as the world of Eros, embracing everything that man has ever done for woman, everything that he has experienced and created for her sake. The world of art, of epic deeds, poesy, and song which revolves round the liberated captive spreads out like a virgin continent that has broken away from the world of the First Parents.

But let us be careful! We are speaking of ourselves. If this art is degenerate, we too are degenerate, for innumerable individuals are suffering the same collapse of the cultural canon, the same alienation, the same loneliness – the rising blackness with its shadow and devouring dragon. The disintegration and dissonance of this art are our own; to understand them is to understand ourselves.

As long as our laws and ethical codes allow it, they will be able to construct human beings with quite specific characteristics---real works of genetic art. People say that this is 'playing at God'; but they forget that the God (or better, the gods) of the Old Testament created man 'in his image'. He programmed him in the way he wished, and clearly also kept tinkering with his descendants.

Could it be that God was an extra-terrestrial? What do we mean when we say that heaven is in the clouds? From Jesus Christ to Elvis Presley, every culture tells us of high-flying bird men who zoom around the world creating magnificent works of art and choosing willing followers to share in the eternal glory from beyond the stars. Can all these related phenomena merely be dismissed as coincidence?

With art, when you're making something completely fucking useless, you can lose your sense of play. But for me everything is fun. If I lose that sense of play, I would just die or fade away. I love it because it's so useless. It's the most indulgent thing you can do, to make art. It's so fucking selfish and I love it. I reckon I'm worth eight thousand dollars an hour, and the rest.

Bulletin a decade earlier, his definition of art: "It's the only profession in the world where your employer wants you to die." I think, in this strangely griefless church, it is perhaps the most honest description he gave of his career. I count up the art dealers in the room: there are four.

Adam Cullen was a unique and larger-than-life figure in contemporary Australian art," it began. "His public persona obscured to a certain extent his significant contribution to art practice … The pathos of his subject matter also has a form of abject beauty, the beauty of the decayed and coming apart, of a humanity that is to be found in failed endeavours, misunderstandings and missed connections.

Adam almost never painted from life. His pictures were transcriptions. The text was harvested from popular culture, lifted from late-night television: phrases repeated aloud, over and over, until they had either shed or gained meaning. There was no judgement and little empathy.

Many watch paintings with their ears, ever since they judge art by the sound of the money. ( "When is art? " )

Perhaps life is an art, an enchantment, a fairy tale, an adventurous story trimmed with alluring episodes, an act with players who seem to be what they are actually not. We cannot, however, expect people to accept the make belief which some actors try to fool into believing. ( " He did not know that she knew " )