It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.
Mark RothkoRead
Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art reflects the inner spirit and gives shape to its dynamic and tranquil essence.
Mark Rothko's quote suggests that art serves as a manifestation of the human spirit, capturing both its vibrant energy and its moments of calm. Through artistic expression, individuals can articulate the complexities of their inner emotions and experiences, providing a tangible representation of the intangible qualities of life.
Themes
ArtSpiritExpressionPurposeEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In an art class, to encourage students to express themselves, a teacher might say this quote.
More from Mark Rothko
All quotes βLook, it's my misery that I have to paint this kind of painting, it's your misery that you have to love it, and the price of the misery is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars.
Mark RothkoRead
We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.
Mark RothkoRead
The artist invites the spectator to take a journey within the realm of the canvas... Without taking the journey, the spectator has really missed the essential experience of the picture.
Mark RothkoRead
The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.
Mark RothkoRead
If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.
Mark RothkoRead
Similar quotes
Literature is like any other trade; you will never sell anything unless you go to the right shop.
George Bernard ShawRead
If I wanted to play the violin, I had to work. Because anything that one wants to do really, and one loves doing, one must do everyday. It should be as easy to the artist and as natural as flying is to a bird. And you canβt imagine a bird saying well, Iβm tired today, Iβm not going to fly!
Yehudi MenuhinRead
Im interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think its the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really cant be this way.
Roy LichtensteinRead
It's no accident that my first novel was called Americana. This was a private declaration of independence, a statement of my intention to use the whole picture, the whole culture.
Don DelilloRead
There are other singers of ranchera music who sing very beautifully, but you can tell from the way they sing that they never lived on a ranch. They never knew what it was to milk a cow, to birth a calf, to shoe a horse. I've lived all that.
Vicente FernandezRead
works of art feel towards human beings exactly as we do towards ghosts. The transparency of spectres, the diffuseness in space which lets them drift through doors and walls, and their smell of death, disgust us not more than we disgust works of art by our meaninglessness, our diffuseness in time which lets us drift through three score years and ten without a quarter as much significance as a picture establishes instantaneously.
Rebecca WestRead