Quotes About Art

I can't understand Urdu, Bahasa or Russian, but when the Pakistani Faiz, the Indonesian Rendra and the Russian Rosdentvensky declaim, I can feel the living throb of rhythm and music, the warmth and passion of their poetry, as do the hundreds, not a mere roomful, of poetry lovers in the audience.

We all want recognition and validation to an extent for our art, but greatness as a trade for decency is a risky proposition. In my life, I try to leave the people I encounter with the feeling that they have been respected and treated with warmth and appreciation.

I've realized I've become a bit reactive to each film I do. After 'The Road,' I was desperate to do something that had color and warmth to it and a stronger sense of community.

I like the machinery of poems, especially when they have human warmth.

I had been warned by other directors that opera is hell. The singers don't want to do what you want.

I think more influential than Emily Dickinson or Coleridge or Wordsworth on my imagination were Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies, and Loony Tunes cartoons.

I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice.

I wish theater criticism in this country could be more of a companion piece to the experience than a warning about where not to spend your money.

I don't necessarily make much art myself, but after I wrote 'Warped Passages,' I was fortunate to get involved a little in the art world. I got invited to write a libretto for what we called a projective opera, and I also got invited to curate an art exhibit.

The creative process taps into our deepest subconscious, and we are each of us sex-crazed - products of a shame-based Judeo-Christian culture that has irrevocably warped us all to varying degrees.

Against expectations I was charmed by Gehry's Edgemar development, which housed the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and positively awed by the Bilbao Guggenheim. That Gehry is a great artist I have no doubt, but talent and determination are no warrant against confusion, nor are they a guaranty to produce great art.

I collect firearms, and I've got a Winchester, an Indian rifle. It has tacks for every warrior that was shot, like notches on a pistol, and it's got feathers and beads hanging off it. It's like a work of art.

I would have to say that working on 'Warrior' felt more like working on a play than any other film I've ever done.

All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.

Nothing will turn you into more of a 'Star Wars' fan than being on a 'Star Wars' set. When you see how lovingly that world is rendered by the set designers, costume designers, props department, art department, they genuinely build an actual world. That is not an exaggeration. They build a world.

I mean listen, ultimately I'm positive George Lucas was inspired by 'Dune' when he made 'Star Wars.' I don't know if that's sacrilegious to talk about, but there are a lot of similarities in some areas, so you could tell he was definitely influenced by that.

'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you're being honest, you realize that, as an artist, you're not a policy maker.

If I rewind back to that period, I was 8 in 1977 when 'Star Wars' was in theaters. I saved up money, or my parents got me the 'Art of Star Wars' book.

I've spent most of my life embracing violence in wars and revolutions. Even a famine is a form of violence. Because I photograph people in peril, people in pain, people being executed in front of me, I find it very difficult to get my head around the art narrative of photography.

I think a lot of times, in a lot of modern-day movies, a lot of things are CGI, but so much of the stuff in 'Star Wars' is built and created by these artists.

'The Art Student's War' is, at its core, a traditional American wartime love story. As such, it is timely and engrossing. By the end, all its principal characters 'have been to Hell and back.'

Even if I had $200 million, I'm very wary of overusing CGI. I think it's a great tool and it can be used really effectively, but I feel like it does tend to be overused and especially in sci-fi stuff.

After leaving college, I was in a show called Sculpture by Women where I was asked to talk about my history of victimisation in art, and I genuinely didn't think I had been victimised. Although I obviously believe in a lot of the feminist aspirations, I was wary about being dragged down by the politics of it.