Quotes About Art

A drawing of a tree shows not a tree but a tree being looked at

The bogus religiosity which now surrounds original works of art, and which is ultimately dependent upon their market value, has become the substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible.

Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself.

Having seen this reproduction, one can go to the National Gallery to look at the original and discover what the reproduction lacks. Alternatively one can forget about the quality of the reproduction and simply be reminded, when one sees the original, that it is a famous painting of which somewhere one has already seen a reproduction. But in either case the uniqueness of the original now lies in it being the original of a reproduction.

Oil painting, before anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.

The transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.

For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us in the same way as a language surrounds us. They have entered the mainstream of life over which they no longer, in themselves, have power.

It is a mistake to think of publicity supplanting the visual art of post-Renaissance Europe; it is the last moribund form of that art.

The real question is: to whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong ? To those who can app|y it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of relic specialtsts?

the more imaginative the work, the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist's experience of the visible.

You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure. The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.

Just after the Second World War Picasso bought a house in the South of France and paid for it with one still-life. Picasso has now in fact transcended the need for money. Whatever he wishes to own, he can acquire by drawing it. The truth has become a little like the fable of Midas.

Resmin ilk konusu hayvanlard?. Ve en baÅŸtan baÅŸlay?p Sümer, Asur, M?s?r ve ilk dönem Yunan resminde devam eden bir çizgide, bu hayvanlar?n tasvirleri olaÄŸanüstü derecede hakikidir. Ä°nsan gövdesinin tasvirinde eÅŸdeÄŸer bir 'gerçek-gibi'liÄŸe ula??lmas? için biny?llar?n geçmesi gerekmiÅŸtir. BaÅŸlang?çta insan?n yüzleÅŸtiÄŸi, varoland?." sayfa 30

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge. It is worth comparing this famous text of Bakunin's with one of Picasso's most famous remarks about his own art. 'A painting', he said, 'is a sum of destructions.

Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from an infinity of other possible sights. This is true even in the most casual family snapshot. The photographer's way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject.

the very basic theme of poetry is that of time passing, the very basic theme of painting is that of the moment made permanent.

The Photographer's way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. The painter's way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on canvas or paper. Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.

Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented ; it then showed how something or somebody had once looked - and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people. Later still this specific vision of the image-maker was also recognized as part of the record. An image became a record of how X had seen Y.

In this respect images are more precise and richer than literature. To say this is not to deny the expressive or imaginative quality of art, treating it as mere documentary evidence; the more imaginative the work, the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist 's experience of the visible.

been disturbed. This is why Rembrandt or Vermeer or Poussin or Chardin or Goya or Turner had no followers but only superficial imitators.

But in either case the uniqueness of the original now lies in it being the original of a reproduction. It is no longer what the image shows that strikes one as unique; its first meaning is no longer to be found in what it says, but what it is.

ANGELICA SAVED BY RUGGIERO 19TH CENTURY A ROMAN FEAST 19TH CENTURY PAN AND SYRINX 18TH CENTURY

Yet when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art. Assumptions concerning: Beauty Truth Genius Civilization Form Status Taste, etc.

You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting "Vanity," thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.