QuoteProject
Art is, for me, the process of trying to wake up the soul. Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.
Bill Viola
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Art aims to awaken the deeper emotions and consciousness of individuals amidst a busy and automated society.

Bill Viola suggests that art serves as a crucial tool for awakening the human spirit in a world that often prioritizes speed and efficiency over personal depth and emotional connection. In this fast-paced, industrialized environment, where people may become desensitized or disengaged from their inner selves, art becomes a means to stimulate and revive the soul, encouraging a deeper appreciation for life and existence.

Themes

ArtSoulAwakeningEmotionsIndustrializedSociety

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the importance of creativity in education, you might quote this to highlight the transformative power of art.

More from Bill Viola

A lot of what making art is, is just being open, and empty. And putting yourself in the right place for things to, literally, come together.
Bill ViolaRead
You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.
Bill ViolaRead
Art has always had as its test in the long term the ability to speak to our innermost selves.
Bill ViolaRead
The fundamental aspect of video is not the image, even though you can stand in amazement at what can be done electronically, how images can be manipulated and the really extraordinary creative possibilities. For me the essential basis of video is the movement - something that exists at the moment and changes in the next moment.
Bill ViolaRead

Similar quotes

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.
Anne LamottRead
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
W. H. AudenRead
Because for whatever reason, even though I want to stay home all the time and be left alone, I want to tell the world who I am now.
Fiona AppleRead
In a way, editing is not unlike the movies. The best books, just like the best movies, are a collaboration. They're only as good as the compromise made between the artists involved.
Viggo MortensenRead
I don't resent being a female painter. I don't exploit it. I paint.
Helen FrankenthalerRead
Beauty is produced by the pleasing appearance and good taste of the whole, and by the dimensions of all the parts being duly proportioned to each other.
Marcus Vitruvius PollioRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.