Quotes About Art

Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks.

For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.

In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.

Art is a subject that is inundated with opinions. In fact, that's all it is about is opinions.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Music is not a subject to be discussed. It has to be experienced.

I talk as I sketch, too, in order to keep their minds off what I'm doing so I'll get the most natural expression I can from them. Also, the talking helps to size up the subject's personality, so I can figure out better how to portray him.

I never know what it's going to look like. Wouldn't be much point in painting if I already knew the outcome. I have a subject in front of me and I start flooding colour and making marks, I don't know, it's improvisation isn't it?

Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself.

I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject.

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.

It's a choice - there are two different sorts of photographer: those obsessed with the technicalities and those obsessed by the subject.

Sometimes it's difficult directing yourself on film because you can't quite separate yourself from the subject.

What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not.

The style depends on the subject.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

Conducting! A subject, truly, concerning which much might be written, yet scarcely anything of real importance is to be found in books.

The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.

It's not the act of arrogance to draw, it's humbling - you must use your God-given talent. And of all the people I sketch, in most cases I feel I have to measure up to the subject.

The songs are definitely all about me. I am my favourite subject.

Art usually only makes the news in America when the subject is money.

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

When I criticize Joseph Beuys or Francis Bacon, nobody calls those opinions anti-male. Putting female artists or their subject matter off-limits is itself sexist and limiting.