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Painting Quotes

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Painting Quotes

“Is there in painting an effect which arises from the being together of repose and energy in the artist's mind? - can both repose and energy be seen in a painting's line and color, plane and volume, surface and depth, detail and composition? - and is the true effect of a good painting on the spectator one that makes at once for repose and energy, calmness and intensity, serenity and stir?”

Mind Together Artist Energy Lines Effects Color Painting Depth Details Surface Arise Planes Intensity Serenity Volume Composition Spectators Calmness Repose Being Together

Author:Eli Siegel

“The peculiarity of sculpture is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space. Painting may strive to give on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of space, but it is space itself as a perceived quantity that becomes the peculiar concern of the sculptor. We may say that for the painter space is a luxury; for the sculptor it is a necessity.”

Giving May Two Three Space Objects Painting Illusion Concern Strive Painter Luxury Planes Peculiar Quantity Sculpture Sculptors

Author:Herbert Read

“In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active. It was in that space, paradoxically, the painting 'took place.' Then, little by little, and to some extent deliberately, I made it go the other way, opening up an interior space... so that there was a layered, shallow depth.”

Way Littles Made Wanted Space Painting Depth Active Opening Made It Planes Shallow Interiors Spectators Space Between Opening Up Interior Space

Book:The Eye's Mind: Collected Writings 1965-2009

Source: The Eye's Mind: Collected Writings 1965-2009

“Painting, like water, takes any form. Paint is a film of pigment on a plane. It is not real in the way that gravity-bound sculpture is real. It is, however, real.”

Way Real Film Form Water Painting Paint Bounds Planes Gravity Sculpture Pigment

Book:Squeak Carnwath, recent paintings: September 8-October 8, 1994, John Berggruen Gallery

Source: Squeak Carnwath, recent paintings: September 8-October 8, 1994, John Berggruen Gallery

“The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see.”

Mind Moving Pieces Magic Painting Illusion Surface Planes

Book:Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations

Source: Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations

“Art lives on the mental plane (the real painting is not the set of dry pigments on the canvas nor is a symphony the sequence of sound waves that convey it to our ear) but, as the post-modernists insist, is reinterpreted in new contexts by each appreciator. As for gossip, which includes the vast majority of our thoughts, its essence is its relation to a unique local part of time and space.”

“Some people... cling to the idea that the photograph is an inherently real or honest image and as such is always on a different plane from an obviously subjective form of visual communication such as painting.”

People Ideas Different Real Form Honest Painting Communication Photograph Planes Visuals Subjective

Author:Tibor Kalman