100 Art Director Quotes

Following is our list of art director quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about art direction.

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Famous Art Director Quotes

I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad. — Joe Wright

I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move! — Howard Hawks

A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense. — Bruno Munari

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard. — Billy Wilder

A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist, moving an audience... making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark. — Gordon Willis

I am an animator. I feel like I'm the manager of a animation cinema factory. I am not an executive. I'm rather like a foreman, like the boss of a team of craftsmen. That is the spirit of how I work. — Hayao Miyazaki

A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist. — Richard Buckminster Fuller

The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator. — Ken Loach

The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being. — Sergei Eisenstein

Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas. — Chip Kidd

Whether you're a cameraman or a director, you should ask yourself every now and then, 'What am I trying to do?' Be honest and keep things very simple. — James Wong Howe

A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly. — Kevin Bacon

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. — John Huston

Providing, meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures - it is the designer's job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting. — Paul Rand

I provide the bricks and mortar with the words and situations - the director and the actors and the designers build the house. — Eric Bogosian

Short Art Director Quotes

  • The best director is the one you don't see. — Billy Wilder
  • Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact. — Michael Bierut
  • A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should. — Frank Darabont
  • In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director. — Alfred Hitchcock
  • Subversive, ethical, ecological, political, humorous ... this is how I see my duty as a designer. — Philippe Starck
  • A film is a director's vision... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have. — Natasha Richardson
  • The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How. — Peter Brook
  • Design is thinking made visual. — Saul Bass
  • Design is everything. Everything! — Paul Rand
  • Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle. — Robert Bresson

Art Director Image Quotes

Art director quote You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.

Directors Quotes

Time is a precious thing. Never waste it. - Gene Wilder

Time is a precious thing. Never waste it. — Gene Wilder

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple — Gene Wilder

Remember, success is a journey not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine. — Bruce Lee

Art director quote The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.

I believe in the truth of fairy-tales more than I believe in the truth in the newspaper. — Lotte Reiniger

God may allow us at times to hit rock bottom, to show us He's the rock-at the bottom. — Kirk Franklin

When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in. - Sam Shepard

When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in. — Sam Shepard

Art director quote Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. — James Allen

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't. — Jean-Luc Godard

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite. — Sergio Leone

And Later I Thought, I Can't Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography. — Gus Van Sant

Art Direction Quotes

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions. — Winston Churchill

Judo should be free as art and science from any external influences, political, national, racial, and financial or any other organized interest. And all things connected with it should be directed to its ultimate object, the benefit of Humanity. — Kano Jigoro

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. — Ingmar Bergman

Art director quote There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation. — Oliver Sacks

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. — Ingmar Bergman

Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes. — John Ford

Divinity of art, it's such a mystery. How to convince people that no matter how much money you can spend on education and art education especially, that it implants, it directs a young person for the rest of their lives, and always in the most humane and positive and dignified manner. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. — Albert Einstein

Technically, I direct, I’m a writer, and I do all these things, but I never went to school for them. It’s just something you pick up; it’s like its own art, basically. — Ryan Higa

If reality impacted directly on our senses and our consciousness, if we could have direct communication between the material world and ourselves, art would be unnecessary. — Henri Bergson

Film Director Quotes

There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness. - Frank Capra

There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness. — Frank Capra

A director standing by his film rejected by the audience is like him telling a girl 'I love myself and I don't care if you don't love me'. — Ram Gopal Varma

To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script. — Alfred Hitchcock

Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I'd say that film is the sculpting of time. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Film is a dramatised reality and it is the director's job to make it appear real... an audience should not be conscious of technique. — David Lean

The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money. — Tom Hooper

Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers. — Steven Spielberg

Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens. — Satyajit Ray

All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance. — Francois Truffaut

My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while framing a better shot. — A. A. Gill

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More Art Director Quotes

God gave me a great body and it's my duty to take care of my physical temple. — Jean-Claude Van Damme

I don’t create art to get high dollar projects, I do high dollar projects so I can create more art. — Chase Jarvis

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life. — Helmut Newton

My background was art school, documentary director and surfer with a keen interest in thrilling acts of life threatening stupidity. — Yahoo Serious

I steal from every single movie ever made. I love it - if my work has anything it's that I'm taking this from this and that from that and mixing them together. If people don't like that, then tough titty, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal; they don't do homages. — Quentin Tarantino

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. — Jean-Luc Godard

A lot of times there were big mistakes, but I would show the art director and he'd say, Yeah, let's go with it. There would be a strange cropping or one girl in focus and three out or a blur. But I would end up liking the mistakes and incorporating them into my work. And I became known for it. — Deborah Turbeville

Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble. — Dennis Hopper

It is only the untalented director who imagines him or herself in every part, wants his or her own thoughts and emotions portrayed; it is only the untalented who make their own limitations those of the actors as well. — Liv Ullmann

I'm a person of the arts. I love the arts very, very, very much. And ah, I'm a musician, I'm a director, I'm a writer, I'm a composer, I'm a producer, and I love the medium. I love film very, very much. I think it's the most expressive of all of the art mediums. — Michael Jackson

We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers. — Damian Loeb

I've learnt so much from every film and every director - a new perspective, a greater appreciation of the art. — Sally Menke

I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that's all they do, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, that's great! — Paul Rust

I've worked with more than 50 directors and I've paid attention since day one. That's pretty much been my education, apart from studying art history and shooting with my own cameras. I've seen 50 different sets of mistakes and 50 different ways of achieving. — Tommy Lee Jones

When museums are built these days, architects, directors, and trustees seem most concerned about social space: places to have parties, eat dinner, wine-and-dine donors. Sure, these are important these days - museums have to bring in money - but they gobble up space and push the art itself far away from the entrance. — Jerry Saltz

It was a movement that had all the art critics, all the museum directors in its thrall. — Jack Levine

I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years. — Jane Haddam

If it gets to the Supreme Court, I'll have the directors of every museum in the country as expert testimony that my work is legitimate art. — Jock Sturges

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film. — Jeff Bridges

Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher. — James Franco

I pay tribute to the writing always. The writer is a creative artist and the director is an interpretive artist and the actors are interpretive. You take zero and make it into something, that's always amazing to me. — Clint Eastwood

The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says. — Chuck Palahniuk

Obviously in Art of Noise, I'm just part of the group, and when I do film scores, it's always in collaboration with the director and other people involved. — Anne Dudley

The one thing about program television that's absolutely incompatible with any concept of art is that all decisions have to be made by program directors, whereas art is autonomous. It may be dependent, but it knows no superiors. — Alexander Kluge

I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I went to art school and tried a bunch of different things, but I knew I wanted to do something in the visual arts. And I'd always been around my dad's film sets, so the interest was there. But I didn't have the guts to say, "I want to be a director," especially coming from that family. — Sofia Coppola

No matter what, when you major in theater arts whether you want to write or be a director or design scenery or whatever, when you are a freshman at UCLA then - I guess it's still the same way - you had to take an acting class. — Carol Burnett

It's an extreme to go from an artist like myself to a commercial artist with art directors looking over your shoulder, or any other knucklehead telling you what your art should look like. — Raymond Pettibon

Being movie director you've got the art department, you've got the actors, you've got the camera department, you've got make-up and hair, and props. You've got your finger in all these pies, and you're making sure that everything cooks at the right temperature. — Michael Fassbender

My parents, and especially my mother, encouraged by the director of the local school which I was attending, wanted in spite of everything to send me to a National School of Arts and Crafts so that I could later become an engineer. — Leon Jouhaux

Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord in humans everywhere. — Maurice Saatchi

In Hong Kong, particularly, we craft this art for decades. The action choreographer actually is the action director. He takes over and he choreographs with - by himself or with his team, and place the camera where he feels cinematic effect to bring out that choreography. — Donnie Yen

I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something - a great success. I'm very proud of it. — Helmut Newton

It's hard for new directors to find good tracks because we don't usually get to choose good music by good artists. I honestly think music videos will slowly die out. There will always be a few directors who do cool things. But look how many great videos there were in the '90s, and then look at the 2000s. It's depressing. — Romain Gavras

I was the enemy of the major studio. I believed in one man - one film. I believed one man should make the film. And I believed the director should be that one man. One man should do it - I didn't give a damn who. I just couldn't accept art as a committee. I could only accept art as an extension of an individual. — Frank Capra

I went to Cal Arts and AFI, and I worked on 'Bonfire Of The Vanities.' I got this grant from the Academy to be Brian De Palma's apprentice director. And it was such a harrowing, disillusioning, awful experience. — Douglas Rushkoff

In time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board of directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press despatches. — O. Henry

Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters. — Arthur C. Clarke

Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments. — Jason Reitman

I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that. — Olafur Eliasson

I think that artists don't make art - the art makes itself through us. I'm not the doer. I'm just along for the ride. Acting really reminds me of that because I don't write the words; I don't make the decisions. That's the director. Narcissism is a tragic condition. It must be so miserable to live trapped in a reflection that only includes the smallest version of our identities. Our true identities should have no bounds and no limits. — Ezra Miller

Ask anyone who makes a full-length movie that's shown in the art world if they'd rather have a career as a film director or as an artist. Invariably, they'd rather be known as a film director, because that's what they are. But there's not really a system of independent distribution anymore that allows for that, and so the art world has kind of become all-enveloping. It's absorbed all of these disciplines that don't have a home anymore. — Chris Kraus

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