Quotes About Art

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

All persistent practices in art have a creative function. They may serve several ends, but the chief one is the shaping of the work.

The thing about art for me is that you can go on theorising your work forever, because it's open to interpretation.

In my work, I construct texts and images. Between those two points the blur occurs. Each is altered by the other again and again, back and forth.

You can't work on a film without being changed in some way.

I never consciously do any work directly influenced from any movie, unless I'm doing a parody.

A critic should always strive to recapture the sense of wonder and surprise with which he first beheld a now-familiar work of art.

The work of art still has something in common with enchantment: it posits its own, self-enclosed area, which is withdrawn from the context of profane existence, and in which special laws apply.

So much work went into this book [ "The Thorn & The Blossom"] - you can probably tell from looking at the art and overall design.

Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done.

The art market does represent a sort of hyper-capitalism: it produces added value without any actual work being done.

Chicago was where I realized that improv is its own thing, its own art form. And through that, you kind of develop a work ethic of not selling it short.

It's like getting into film - I didn't say early on, 'I'm going to become a filmmaker,' 'I'm going to show my work at MoMA.' When you start to think those things, you're in trouble.

Photographs are two-dimensional. I work in four dimensions.

If you accept the idea that photographers, or some of them, are actually artists, then you have to look at their work less as a document of something than as a personal vision of the world.

I don't want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day.

I get my sticks and go out to the shed, and I pound on that drum like it was my boss's head.

Work in the theater is more fun than fun.

When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work.

Lot's and lot's I am a proud man having so many fans of my work: (Paintings and films)

You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.

In the time it takes American literary titan William H. Gass to write a novel, other artists have been born, completed their life's work and died. That may be an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

Well, I have a lot of food references in my work.