“To an artist, a picture is both a sum of ideas and a blurry memory of 'pushing paint,' breathing fumes, dripping oils and wiping brushes, smearing and diluting and mixing.” IdeasArtistMemoriesPaintOilBreathingPushingBrushesMixingDrippingBlurry Book:What Painting Is Source: What Painting Is
“I'd like to understand why it seems normal to look at astonishing achievements made by unapproachably ambitious, luminously pious, strangely obsessed artists, and toss them off with a few wry comments.” LooksMadeSeemsArtistNormalAchievementCriticsObsessedCommentAmbitiousAstonishingPiousTossWry Book:Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings Source: Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings
“If paintings are so important - worth so much, reproduced, cherished, and visited so often - then isn't it troubling that we can hardly make emotional contact with the artists? Few centuries, it seems, are as determinedly tearless as ours.” IfsImportantSeemsArtistCenturyEmotionalPaintingImportanceContact Author:James Elkins
“Water and stones. Those are the unpromising ingredients of two very different endeavors... painting, because artists' pigments are made from fluids... mixed together with powdered stones to give color... and the other is alchemy, the stone the ultimate goal.” GivingMadeTwoDifferentTogetherArtistGoalWaterColorPaintingMaterialsStonesUltimateIngredientsEndeavorFluidAlchemyUltimate GoalPigment Author:James Elkins
“Painting is an unspoken and largely unrecognized dialogue, where paint speaks silently in masses and colors and the artist responds in moods.” ArtistSpeakColorPaintingMassPaintMoodDialogueUnspoken Author:James Elkins
“In the context of a question regarding what an artist might be, I would want to raise the question of what a theorist might be, to signal how inextricably linked these existences and practices might be.” WantMightArtistExistencePracticeRaisesSignalsLinkedTheorists Author:James Elkins
