Quotes on Art

Art is the only thing you cannot punch a button for. You must do it the old-fashioned way. Stay up and really burn the midnight oil. There are no compromises.

In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that cannot be explained.

When you have a large space to conquer, the curve is the natural solution.

If architecture had nothing to do with art, it would be astonishingly easy to build houses, but the architect's task - his most difficult task - is always that of selecting.

Even the most powerful human being has a limited sphere of strength. Draw him outside of that sphere and into your own, and his strength will dissipate.

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.

Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male drive in western culture. The movie projector is an Apollonian straight-shooter, demonstrating the link between aggression and art. Every pictorial framing is a ritual limitation, a barred precinct.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which.

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

To draw you must close your eyes and sing.

Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.

The true artist does not create art as an end in itself; he creates art for human beings. Humanity is the goal.

Everything too fast is not good but everything too slow is also not good. You need balance. That's why I like martial arts: it always tells you how to control your body, your mind, your heart. Balance. Balance can keep the world's peace. I think that's a very good thing.

Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

No art is any good unless you can feel how it's put together. By and large it's the eye, the hand and if it's any good, you feel the body. Most of the best stuff seems to be a complete gesture, the totality of the artist's body; you can really lean on it.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things. A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy. If then two or three natural accents can be added, obviously no harm is done. The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

The main function of the museum has been to serve as a pedestal upon which a clique of socialites pose as patrons of the arts

It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to Him.

Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.

I never approved of talkies. Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form. It was not just pantomine, but something wonderfully expressive.