Quotes About Interpretation

Art does what reality cannot.

A work of art cannot be satisfied with being a representation it should be a presentation.

Artists by definition innocent don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting with the gift of speech

We must grant the artist his subject his idea his donnee: Our criticisms apply only to what he makes of it.

A picture lives by companionship. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling.

A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

Art isn't something you marry it's something you rape.

It's not what you see that is art art is the gap.

An artist has to take life as he finds it. Life by itself is formless wherever it is. Art must give it form.

Drawing is speaking to the eye talking is painting to the ear.

Art for art's sake.

The artist does not see things as they are but as he is.

Picasso created blank spaces through which an imagination could fly.

It's not a science when you are judging art, but we'd be remiss to say you can't look at something and say, 'This is more well done than that.'

Art is about imagination. When you look at a picture from Salvador Dali, that's about imagination. When you look at Picasso, that's about imagination. Doing stuff from your heart.

For me, good films and good books are irreducible to a lesson. You can't just kind of translate them into one statement. On the contrary, the more you do that, the less wisdom in art there is.

To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.

Poetry is not an art or a branch of art: it's something more.

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

Attitude is the mind's paintbrush; it can color any situation.