Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. — Robert Frost
Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time. — Harold Pinter
People have the idea that an image must stand for something else, that the real meaning needs to be described with language. Instead it is the image itself that is the meaning. — Mark Ryden
I am not in front of my body, I am in it or rather I am it... If we can still speak of interpretation in relation to the perception of one's own body, we shall have to say that it interprets itself. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty
People who look for symbolic meaning fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the images. — Rene Magritte
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. — Oscar Wilde
Read not only between the lines, but also what is not written. — Vijay Kedia
Art Interpretation Quotes
The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it. — Ellsworth Kelly
The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. — Marcel Duchamp
Black and white is a very minimalist art form and unlike color photographs does not pretend to mimic the world in a manner similar to the way the human eye might perceive...
Black and white is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality. — Roger Ballen
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world. — Elliot W. Eisner
Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain. — Childe Hassam
Ideally, brewers interpret history, and through science they create art. — Don Spencer
The Maxim, "Nothing but perfection", may be spelled "Paralysis".
I like keeping my work so open that it can be interpreted on different levels. Art can't be compared with journalism; it can't discuss concrete issues. — Mona Hatoum
For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif. — William-Adolphe Bouguereau
The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. — Matthew Arnold
Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh. — Allen Ginsberg
It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach. — Paul Ricoeur
There are many possible interpretations of what it means to create dangerously, and Albert Camus, like the poet Osip Mandelstam, suggests that it is creating as a revolt against silence, creating when both the creation and the reception, the writing and the reading, are dangerous undertakings, disobedience to a directive. — Edwidge Danticat
Arlen Specter is the man who voted in favor of Bill Clinton during impeachment, voted against Robert Bork for the Supreme Court, voted against school choice for the District of Columbia, endorses an absolutist interpretation of abortion rights. He is bright and he is tough and he belongs elsewhere. — William F. Buckley, Jr.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
An aggravating feature of this post-9/11 atmosphere is to cast suspicions on Muslims and on Islam as a religion that is interpreted as either inherently violent or death-oriented, with a particular animus against America and Americans. — Richard A. Falk
St. Augustine explicitly warns against a very narrow perspective that will put our faith at risk of looking ridiculous. If you step back from that one narrow interpretation, what the Bible describes is very consistent with the Big Bang. — Richard Dawkins
It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog. — George Eliot
[On The Waste Land:] Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling. — T. S. Eliot
Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property. — Tim LaHaye
The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing -- and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality. — Soren Kierkegaard
In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council could sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state are inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression. — Vladimir Putin
Obviously these [white-guard] emigres enjoy the right of asylum existing also in the U.S. So far as we are concerned we would never tolerate a single terrorist in our territory regardless against whom he would contemplate his crimes. Apparently the right of asylum receives broader interpretation in the U.S.A. than in our country. — Joseph Stalin
One influential philosophical position about the use of probability in science holds that probabilities are objective only if they are based on micro-physics; all other probabilities should be interpreted subjectively, as merely revealing our ignorance about physical details. I have argued against this position, contending that the objectivity of micro-physical probabilities entails the objectivity of macro-probabilities. — Elliott Sober
I argue against literal interpretation of religious doctrines. Religions make progress when they emancipate themselves from literalism, and take their doctrinal statements to be metaphors or allegories. — Philip Kitcher
The marquee scrolling across our minds trying to reinterpret life reads: "God-Against-Us." This becomes the dominant lens through which our flesh interprets life. We no longer give our loving Father the benefit of the doubt. Instead, we view every event as conclusive proof that God is against us. — James MacDonald
Muslim leaders around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and al Qaeda promote. To speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity. — Barack Obama
It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all other drives to accept as a norm. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Values are shaped and refined by rubbing against real problems, and people interpret their problems according to the values they hold. — Ronald A. Heifetz
I don't feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting. — Lydia Davis
[On the New Testament:] I ... must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the men who did that work, and against the perverted interpretation by the men who undertook to write commentaries thereon. I am inclined to think, when we [women] are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have. — Sarah Moore Grimke
The line is "So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past." We've interpreted it as the meaning of us [when we] went against the current, against the grain and did what felt natural to us...regardless of what we thought we were supposed to be doing. We threw all of that out the window. We existed how we wanted to. — Chrissy Costanza
When Nietzsche praises egoism it is always in an aggressive or polemical way, against the virtues, against the virtue of disinterestedness (Z III "Of the three evil things"). But in fact egoism is a bad interpretation of the will, just as atomism is a bad interpretation of force. In order for there to be egoism it is necessary for there to be an ego. — Gilles Deleuze
We must be on our guard against giving interpretations which are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers. — Saint Augustine
Some devout Christians are among the most fervent advocates of the death penalty, contradicting Jesus Christ and justifying their belief on an erroneous interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," their most likely response, overlooks the fact that this was promulgated by Moses as a limitation- a prohibition against taking both eyes or all of an offender's teeth in retribution. — Jimmy Carter
I am often accused of being childish. I prefer to interpret that as child-like. I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things. I tend to exaggerate and fantasize and embellish. I still listen to instinctual urges. I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind. I never water my garden without soaking myself. It has been after such times of joy that I have achieved my greatest creativity and produced my best work. — Leo Buscaglia
It is a sound interpretive rule...that anything that cannot be accomplished except with the aid of threats or the actual exercise of violence against unoffending persons cannot be beneficial to one and all. — Robert Higgs
One has to guard against a formula that is good for everything, that can interpret reality in addition to the other arts, and that rather than creating can only result in a style, or a stylization. — Georges Braque
Because the union of a man and woman deserves an honored place in our society, I support the protection of marriage against activist judges. And I will continue to appoint federal judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law. — George W. Bush
I do not exclude this, but I would like to draw your attention to one absolutely key aspect: In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council can sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state is inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression. — Vladimir Putin
Don't be too quick to interpret the moment. Just keep quiet. My encouragement would always be: never think anything is against you, everything is blessing. Why should it be different? Just be quiet. Let it all work itself out. — Mooji
It falls apart now. They used to be intrinsically linked. Now they've been driven so far apart that I don't think the one has anything to do with the other. Even more so: I think that there is almost a reaction against style, that brute ugliness somehow has been interpreted as being the way to go. — Louise Wilson
In Conclusion
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