Quotessence
Home / Topics / Painting Quotes

Painting Quotes

Browse 4325 quotes about Painting.

Related topics

ArtIfsThinkingArtistPeoplePainterWayKnowsWorldLooksWantWritingIdeasColorTryingFormDrawingKindMeanSculptureGivingWellsFeelsPhotographyMenMadeI CanDoneDifferentBookFirstsDoeEyeShouldYearsStillsLittlesRealMindNeedsAbstractMaySubjectsLightCanvasUseSometimesPhotographArt IsFeelingsObjectsHumansImportantFilmBeautifulSeemsSpaceLandscapeMomentsWantedCertainShowsMatterHas BeensBelieveWallTwoReasonLiteraturePortraitsWholeEndsPiecesSaidColourFactsFinishedLongRealityLanguageSongStoriesSchoolWould BeEmotionPersonsProcessFiguresMovingTogetherUsedEnoughInterestMightArchitectureCoursesHandsMuseumsCreativeMediumsmore

Painting Quotes

“The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world ofits own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited.”

WorldWayHumanityChoicesImaginationCommonCreativityNovelSubjectsCreationPaintingGeniusExerciseIntellectArtisticAtmosphereRejoiceUnlimitedImaginativeTransformingTransmitConceivingArtistic GeniusPainting And Poetry
Book:The Renaissance
Create image

“This is the essential distinction--even opposition--between the painting and the film: the painting is composed subjectively, thefilm objectively. However highly we rate the function of the scenario writer--in actual practice it is rated very low--we must recognize that the film is not transposed directly and freely from the mind by means of a docile medium like paint, but must be cut piece-meal out of the lumbering material of the actual visible world.”

WorldMindMeanFilmPracticePiecesCuttingPaintingMaterialsEssentialsLowsFunctionPaintRateMediumsCinemaMealsVisibleDistinctionOppositionScenariosDocile
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“People's live are expressed in little details....The soap in the bathroom, the flowers in the garden, the books on the bedside table are all strong symbols of a life in progress. You look at these details and a world unfolds - here are their books, the paintings they cherish, the music that soothes their souls.”

PeopleWorldLooksLittlesBookSoulStrongProgressDesignPaintingFlowerGardenTablesDetailsSymbolsCherishBathroomSoapInterior Design
Author:Charlotte Moss
Create image

“I don't have a very high opinion, actually, of the world of criticism - or the practice of criticism. I think I admire art criticism, criticism of painting and sculpture, far more than I do that of say films and books, literary or film criticism. But I don't much like the practice. I think there are an awful lot of bad people in it.”

PeopleThinkingWorldArtBookFilmOpinionPracticePaintingCriticismAdmireAwfulSculptureBad PeopleFilm Criticism
Author:Tom Robbins
Create image

“A culture that gave the world the spiritual creations of the Classical Music of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert, the paintings of Michelangelo, and Raphael, Da Vinci and Rembrandt, does not need lessons from societies whose idea of spirituality is a heaven peopled with female virgins for the use of men, whose idea of heaven resembles a cosmic brothel.”

MenWorldNeedsDoeIdeasUseSpiritualCultureSpiritualityHeavenCreationPaintingLessonsFemaleCosmicVirginsClassical MusicWagnerRaphaelBrothelsSchubert
Book:Virgins? What Virgins?: And Other Essays
Create image

“Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.”

WorldNeedsMadeStillsPoliticalDealsCenturyPaintingIntellectualModelsObjectivesNeverthelessRejectedAffirmationTransformingDissentNineteenth CenturyTransforming The WorldPainting And Poetry
Book:The Shock of the New
Create image

“We are not simply intellectual creatures. We wish to make love, to enjoy a gourmet dinner, to jog in the park, to cheer lustily at a ball game, to engage in spirited conversation with our friends, to play bridge or tennis, travel to exotic places, struggle with others to build a better world, and to enjoy the arts. The arts are so vital because they help to make life worth living. Music, poetry, literature, paintings, dance, and the theater are among our richest joys...The fine arts contribute immeasurably to the good life and that is why we cherish them.”

WorldArtPlayHelpingJoyLiteratureGamesWishEnjoyStrugglePaintingFineConversationCreaturesIntellectualBallsTheaterDinnerBridgesParksTennisCherishCheerGood LifeMaking LoveWorth LivingExoticFine ArtsSpiritedLife Worth LivingBall GamesGourmetExotic Places
Author:Paul Kurtz
Create image

“The real people who hold our civilization together are the maintenance people. If it weren't for them - pumping water out of subways, painting bridges to keep from rusting, fixing a steam pipe that is 70 years old - we'd be sunk. If we got rid of all the politicians and the policymakers in the world, the world would keep going. If you get rid of maintenance people, the whole thing breaks down.”

PeopleIfsWorldYearsRealWholeTogetherWaterBreakPaintingPoliticianCivilizationBridgesKeep GoingBreaking DownPipeSteamMaintenanceFixingSubway
Author:Alan Weisman
Create image

“I don't believe in art like I used to. I believe in something beyond it, something that contains art and everything else. But I just don't quite have the nerve to chuck drawing and painting. Part of it is that I enjoy it too much, and part is that I don't have the courage to renounce the world. I don't want to move out of this nice neighborhood so that I can live in a shed and devote myself to meditating and touching something I can't feel. I'm addicted to the fun of playing in the world.”

WorldWantFeelsBelieveArtI CanMovingUsedFunI BelieveEnjoyToo MuchNicePaintingArt IsDon't BelieveI Believe InDrawingNeighborhoodNervesTouchingShedMeditatingRenounceChuckDrawing And Painting
Author:Jim Woodring
Create image

“But in order to survive in this foreign world, I had to teach myself that love was very much like a painting. The negative space between people was just as important as the positive space we occupy. The air between our resting bodies, and the breath in our conversations, were all like the white of the canvas, and the rest our relationship- the laughter and the memories- were the brushstroke applied over time.”

PeopleWorldImportantBodyOrderMemoriesSpaceWhiteTeachAirPaintingConversationLaughterNegativeBreathsOur RelationshipCanvasSpace BetweenNegative Space
Book:The Lost Wife
Create image

“The problem with success is that you lose the capacity to fail and the capacity to surprise people. So, if I'm able to surprise myself every day, I can surprise you as well. If I enjoy someone's work and they offer me their project, I do it. So what's the point of the supposed creativity? If Mona Lisa could be made by anyone, then it wouldn't have been the most beautiful painting in the world. The knowledge that you can fail can make you come first.”

PeopleIfsWorldFirstsWellsHas BeensMadeI CanProblemAbleBeautifulEnjoyLosesCreativityFailingPaintingOffersProjectsCapacitySurpriseMona LisaBeautiful Paintings
Author:Shahrukh Khan
Create image

“...if photos can reproduce the world more perfectly than any painter, can capture an instant, a look, a gesture, then what makes a painting good anymore? Painting subverts this subversion of its traditional nature by redefining itself - art is idea, not simply skillful execution. So, a work can be crudely made, or even machine made - but it has to be practically and functionally useless.”

IfsWorldLooksArtMadeIdeasPaintingArt IsMachinesTraditionalPainterUselessInstantCaptureGesturesExecutionSkillfulSubversionRedefining
Author:David Byrne
Create image

“... photography is an imprint or transfer off the real; it is a photochemically processed trace causally connected to the thing in the world to which it refers in a manner parallel to fingerprints or footprints or the rings of water that cold glasses leave on tables. The photograph is thus generically distinct from painting or sculpture or drawing. On the family tree of images it is closer to palm prints, death masks, the Shroud of Turin, or the tracks of gulls on beaches.”

WorldRealWaterTreePaintingColdPhotographyTablesPhotographGlassesTrackConnectedDrawingRingsBeachMaskPrintPalmsSculptureParallelsTransfersFootprintFingerprintsShroudsGulls
Author:Rosalind E. Krauss
Create image

“So far as photography satisfied a wish, it satisfied a wish not confined to painters, but a human wish, intensifying since the Reformation, to escape subjectivity and metaphysical isolation - a wish for power to reach this world, having for so long tried, at last hopelessly, to manifest fidelity to another... Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting, one which does not so much defeat the act of painting as escape it altogether: by automatism, by removing the human agent from the act of reproduction.”

WorldWayHumansLongDoeLastsWishThis WorldPaintingPhotographyDefeatSatisfiedPainterAgentsIsolationManifestMetaphysicalConfinedFidelityReformationReproductionSubjectivity
Author:Stanley Cavell
Create image

“There were some types of sanctions that happen in the public world that made my work acceptable, where someone looks at the paintings and they don't - they may go, "okay," and then look at it in a different sort of way. Instead of just looking at it as some type of wild art, they look at it in a historical perspective or context.”

WorldWayLooksMayArtMadeDifferentHappensPaintingPerspectiveTypeOkayHistoricalAcceptableSanctionsHistorical Perspective
Author:Julian Schnabel
Create image

“The narrative image has more dimensions than the painted image - literature is more complex than painting. Initially, this complexity represents a disadvantage, because the reader has to concentrate much more than when they're looking at a canvas. It gives the author, on the other hand, the opportunity to feel like a creator: they can offer their readers a world in which there's room for everyone, as every reader has their own reading and vision.”

WorldGivingFeelsHandsReadingLiteratureOpportunityRoomsVisionPaintingReaderOffersComplexesCreatorNarrativeComplexityDimensionsCanvasDisadvantages
Author:Dumitru Tepeneag
Create image

“I was trying. I was crawling. I was coming into myself. I was trying to in some ways get beyond - what is the word that I'm looking for? - metaphorical language in painting, and to create something that was more indexical. And what I mean by that is that when you go to the library there's an index card that refers to a book that's actual and real in the world. So that index relates to something real.”

WorldWayTryingMeanBookRealLanguagePaintingLibraryCardsRelateCrawlingMetaphoricalSomething Real
Author:Kehinde Wiley
Create image