Quotes About Art

As an actor, technically, when you are off a film, you are out of a job. An actor goes from job to job. By virtue, acting is an unsure profession.

Much good art got made while money ruled; I like a lot of it, and hardship and poverty aren't virtues. The good news is that, since almost no one will be selling art, artists - especially emerging ones - won't have to think about turning out a consistent style or creating a brand. They'll be able to experiment as much as they want.

Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.

What is the best music is impossible to define. Just because it's played by a virtuoso player, doesn't mean it's great music. It might not reflect the soul of a people, which is really my criteria for great music.

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

People say to me now, 'Oh, you've given up the piano.' How can you? Music is a virus.

Critics in particular treat CGI as a virus that's infecting film.

These days, newish art can be priced between $10,000 and $25,000. When I tell artists that a new painting by a newish artist should go for around $1,200, they look at me like I'm a flesh-eating virus.

Most of the time, I can't listen to the song after the video's done. Sometimes I'll hear a song that I've worked on at a restaurant or on the radio, and I'll have this visceral physical reaction.

Egon Schiele is my favorite painter. There's just something about art - photography, painting, music, plays - whatever you see, sometimes there's a gut reaction that's more important or more visceral than what your brain is thinking about. You can't explain that reaction. It's like what happens when you fall in love.

I wasn't always totally interested solely in music as a sort of visceral expression of people in unison and synchronized, a federated expression of a group of people. I loved it as a wallflower, as a fan, but when I was in it, I always felt like I wasn't built for it.

When I'm sitting writing, I know that something works if I've made myself cry, or laugh, or have a visceral emotion.

You never really know why you become an actor: it's a visceral thing, an emotional thing.

A musical, in its true form, is where emotions reach a height where true spoken word cannot be enough, and you must sing. That's all it is. It's not posh; it's not out of your reach. It's the most visceral way to tell a story.

It's all well and good to turn in a beautiful poetic phrase that ends up on a pillow but I want there to be a visceral response to what I write.

I try not to obfuscate or to be to obscure or to be too cerebral. I like to work on a visceral, emotional level.

Art is so valuable that I think its misuse is really dangerous. When it's used well, when it's telling a story well or creating representation or visibility for something that's really lacking, it can really save lives.

My painting is visible images which conceal nothing... they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

On the videos for '1234' and 'My Moon My Man' I wanted to make the songs visible. And, really, what way can you make sound visible other than good old naive dancing? I was working with a choreographer, but I'm not a dancer. Any notion of elegance is impossible with me.

How are things visible? Can you see an egg against a white background? Not by drawing a line around it can you make it evident.

Even the Impressionists, the most innovative artists of their time, sought to paint realistically. They believed that their freer way of portraying the visible world was truer to life than the literal realism of the 'salon painters' who dominated French art throughout the 19th century.

A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.