Quotes About Art

Ballet is not just movement, not simply abstract. It's something beautiful. Sometimes there's this feeling in the movement that makes me want to cry.

I don't think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it.

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.

If you want something to look interesting, don't light all of it.

If you think a man draws the type of hands that you want to draw, steal 'em. Take those hands.

The hidden child wants to be able to participate and to co-create in art, rather than being simply an admiring viewer.

The people that I photographed allowed me to photograph them because they didn't want to be alone, and the truth is I didn't want to be alone making the pictures.

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose.

I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.

Even Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were entertainers. In that way, I am an entertainer and want to make art that is fun.

I paint a woman's big rounded buttocks so that I want to reach out and stroke the dimpled flesh.

I have a confidence in my understanding of formal aesthetics and I don't want to be aware of it or make that my problem.

What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.

Words are such a poor medium when you really want someone to feel something.

It's all the unwordable things one wants to write about, just as it's all the unformable things one wants to paint - essence.

I could be going through something in my life that I might not want to talk about in my music because my music is the way that I escape some of those things.

But usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what for me is inexpressible by any other means.

I am often asked at what point in my love affair with films I began to want to be a director or a critic. Truthfully, I don't know. All I know is that I wanted to get closer and closer to films.

Heavy metal drives me bonkers, it makes me want to vomit, heavy metal really is a pile of puke.

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.

We do this for the art, not the adulation. I'd rather our music get liked and we get ignored. I don't want to be adored for anything other than the music.

Music has an intrinsic value that touches Americans - they love their music, and want more.