Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain. — Childe Hassam
Art revolves around creating something that isn't there. — Kathleen Hanna
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. — Edgar Degas
An artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual willing to say something new, something not quite familiar. — Maya Lin
Artmaking is making the invisible, visible. — Marcel Duchamp
Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world. — Gwendolyn Brooks
Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings — George Tooker
Art is the colors and textures of your imagination. — Meghan Trainor
Art is a line around your thoughts. — Gustav Klimt
Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness. — Mark Rothko
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. — Jackson Pollock
To an artist, a picture is both a sum of ideas and a blurry memory of 'pushing paint,' breathing fumes, dripping oils and wiping brushes, smearing and diluting and mixing. — James Elkins
I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary. — Barbara Kruger
Great art picks up where nature ends. — Marc Chagall
Short Art Interpretation Quotes
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. — Aristotle
The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees — Mark Rothko
Art is subject to arbitrary fashion. — Kary Mullis
Art is what you can get away with. — Andy Warhol
Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret. — Camille Pissarro
You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt... or in front of a piece of graphic design. — Stefan Sagmeister
Fine art is knowledge made visible. — Gustave Courbet
It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap. — Marcel Duchamp
Art is an intersection of many human needs. — Carl Andre
Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit. — Mark Rothko
Art Interpretation Image Quotes
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.
What Art Means To Me Quotes
But what does interest me is the notion that if you do a lot of work it means there's a potential for other people to understand that a lot of things are possible with a sustained effort and that the broadening of experiences is possible and I think that's all art can be. — Richard Serra
For me with art and all that stuff - I like abstraction. I like contortion. I mean, it's still truth. But it's truth through the center of the individual. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's fallacies or falsehoods. It just happens to be one perception of what's happening. — Q-Tip
I write about what I know: sex, pornography, art, fame obsession, drugs, and alcohol. I mean, why would anyone care to listen to me if I wasn't an expert in what I write about? — Lady Gaga
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
I have art. I have music. I have the history, this legacy behind me that I can look up to. This is what I believe in. If you want to call it God or spirituality, that's all up to you. Basically I believe in something that's bigger than myself, and that gives my life meaning. — John Zorn
It's funny, people often ask me, "Why do you do bike tours where it takes three times the effort and you make one-third of the money?" My answer is that I'm trying to do it ethically. What does that mean, exactly? That conflict is a big part of my art. — Ben Sollee
What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing. — James Frey
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
I got into pastoring because of the art form. I started a church, but I felt the art form needed to be freed for all people. A particular religion over others was never interesting to me. I wanted to talk to people about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human. — Rob Bell
Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me. — Georgia O'Keeffe
I don't pretend to know anything about art. I make pictures for entertainment, and then the professors tell me what they mean. — Walt Disney
I'm never really sure what that word means, but however inaccurately I use it, 'classical' was always my ideal, as long as I can remember, and something of that has always stayed with me, to this day. Of course, there were difficulties, because in comparison to my ideal, I didn't even come close. — Gerhard Richter
Understanding Is An Art Quotes
The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world. — Rick Rubin
An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. — Carl Jung
Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits. Is not that all an artist should wish for? — Camille Pissarro
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made. — Andy Goldsworthy
Poetry is not an end in itself but in the service of life; of what use are poems, or any other works of art, unless to enable human lives to be lived with insight of a deeper kind, with more sensitive feelings, more intense sense of the beautiful, with deeper understanding? — Kathleen Raine
Aristotle can be regarded as the father of logic. But his logic is too scholastic, full of subtleties, and fundamentally has not been of much value to the human understanding. It is a dialectic and an organon for the art of disputation. — Immanuel Kant
I believe that every human being has an understanding of art. What is separating us is smaller than what is unifying us. — Thomas Hirschhorn
It's about communication, no matter how impossibly hard your art is to understand and how much of an ivory tower or high horse you get on, it's still basically communication or why are you doing it? — Wayne White
What is the universe? Is it a great 3D movie in which we are the unwilling actors? Is it a cosmic joke, a giant computer, a work of art by a Supreme Being or simply an experiment? The problem in trying to understand the universe is that we have nothing to compare it to. — Heinz Pagels
I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating analogies. Almost every work of art is an analogy. — Gerhard Richter
Seeing Art Quotes
Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture. — Rudolf von Laban
You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa. — Dave Barry
At the very least, participatory involvement with the many forms of art can enable us to see more in our experience, to hear more on normally unheard frequencies, to become conscious of what daily routines have obscured, what habit and convention have suppressed. — Maxine Greene
In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it. — Michelangelo
For me fashion is an expression of art that is very closely related both to me and to my body. I see it as an expression of identity combined with desire, moods and a cultural setting. — Iris van Herpen
Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time, with eyes of a child, fresh with wonder. — Joseph Cornell
To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. — Elliott Erwitt
I can get obsessed by anything if i look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer. — Irving Penn
Start your day with a quote that you love. Start your day by looking at a picture of someone that you love. Start your day with a work of art that inspires you. Make the first thing that you see so closely connected to your purpose that your monk-mind naturally comes alive. — Jay Shetty
Never stop looking, no matter where you are, everywhere there are good photographs — Art Wolfe
Music Interpretation Quotes
I always like to leave art and music open to interpretation. — Dan Reynolds
I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition. — Henri Matisse
Conducting" is when you draw "designs" in the nowhere-with a stick, or with your hands-which are interpreted as "instructional messages" by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing. — Frank Zappa
Music does not live until it's interpreted - with all of its flaws, mannerisms, etc. It needs to be incarnated to be something. — Helene Grimaud
Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness. — Robert Bringhurst
Maybe it's just me being lazy but I just don't like describing my music or style or anything, I just like letting people interpret it. — BØRNS
Too many students who are technically quite far advanced do not properly interpret the technically less difficult pieces they play, because they regard them as beneath serious consideration. This is a fundamental error in musical taste and judgment. — Leopold Auer
I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people. — Eberhard Weber
There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying. — John Philip Sousa
In classical music, love is based on bitin' -- imitation. It's not based on interpretation. A jazz musician, if he plays someone else's song, has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement. — Todd Boyd
Meaning Of Art Quotes
The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things. — Miyamoto Musashi
Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system. — Le Corbusier
The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive. — Vladimir Lenin
Always remember that the true meaning of Budo is that soft overcomes hard, small overcomes large. — Mas Oyama
Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up or on man's hope in love. In life, just as on the artist's palette, there is but one single colour that gives meaning to life and art–the colour of love — Marc Chagall
For one thing, Judo in reality is not a mere sport or game. I regard it as a principle of life, art and science. In fact, it is a means for personal cultural attainment. — Kano Jigoro
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. — Robert M. Sapolsky
There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within. — Morihei Ueshiba
Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. — Bell Hooks
In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love. — Marc Chagall
Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it. — Ella Baker
It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one. — Antonin Scalia
What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean? — Antonin Scalia
For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect. — Mahatma Gandhi
Sometimes you search so hard for words. You look for a way to interpret the language of this heart and the unspoken bond you feel. But in the end you are left with nothing but silence. And deep down you hope it’s understood. — Yasmin Mogahed
As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can". — John Muir
Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible. — Karl Barth
Secularism is a term interpreted in many different ways by different people. For me, it has always been something very simple - putting India First — Narendra Modi
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. — John Locke
Art History Quotes
After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture. — Jeffrey Deitch
Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves -- or desires. — Jacquetta Hawkes
How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions? — Polly Toynbee
I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years. — David Rockefeller
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is. — David McCullough
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world. — Dave Barry
Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. — Oscar Wilde
The study of History is the beginning of wisdom. — Jean Bodin
That's what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead. — Samuel Beckett
Against Interpretation Quotes
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
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.
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
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
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
Art Appreciation Quotes
Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird? — Pablo Picasso
Art provides the language we need to appreciate life. — Oscar Wilde
'Understanding' art is like having a sense of humour - if you don't have one, no amount of explanation is going to make you laugh. — Michael Craig-Martin
Appreciation of works of art requires organized effort and systematic study. Art appreciation can no more be absorbed by aimless wandering in galleries than can surgery be learned by casual visits to a hospital. — Albert C. Barnes
Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art. — Kurt Cobain
I would love to be able to share my artwork with as many people as possible so that I can help spread an appreciation for art in general. — Yusaku Maezawa
Personally, I experience the greatest degree of pleasure in having contact with works of art. They furnish me with happy feelings of an intensity that I cannot derive from other sources. — Albert Einstein
In any period it is upon a very small minority that the discerning appreciation of art and literature depends ... They are still a minority, though a larger one, who are capable of endorsing such first-hand judgement by genuine personal response. — F. R. Leavis
Art that imposes conditions - human or otherwise - on the receiver for its appreciation in my eyes constitutes aesthetic fascism. — Lawrence Weiner
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
What's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters. — Federico Fellini
In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable. — Susan Sontag
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
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
Ideally, brewers interpret history, and through science they create art. — Don Spencer
I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty. Which provokes answers but doesn't give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine, beyond ideology, beyond authority. — Sherrie Levine
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 truth is, the way you write music, it's a code. It has to be very precise. It's scientific, but ultimately it also depends on interpretation. It's very similar to how you grow a master plan: it's an objective document, but at the same time it is a lyrical document which allows through interpretation to become a harmonious work of art. — Daniel Libeskind
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
The primary function of art is not to imitate or represent or interpret, but to create a living thing; it is the reduction of all life to a perfectly composed and dynamic miniature - a microcosm where there is perfect balance of emotion and intellect, stress and strain resolving itself, form rhythmically poised in three dimensions. — Lawren Harris
Only in black and white can I see the design and textures. I don't consider color photography art. Black and white is an interpretation. Color is a duplication. — Clyde Butcher
Art is life's dream interpretation. — Otto Rank
Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical. — E. O. Wilson
I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts. — W. Eugene Smith
"Look into thy heart and write!" is good advice, but not if interpreted to mean, "Look nowhere else!" The poet should know his world and, so far as his art is concerned, any kind of battering from his world is better than his own self-indulgent brooding. — Harriet Monroe
Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. — Gerhard Richter
...in our time art is encrusted with a noisy, opaque, logorrhea of theory that prevents a work from coming into direct, media free, non-interpreted contact with its viewer (its reader, its listener) — Milan Kundera
Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle. — Ray Bradbury
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. — Susan Sontag
The interpretation of dreams is a great art. — Paracelsus
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
Life is like art - it is all about interpretation. — Robert Holden
I think art is the only thing that's spiritual in the world. And I refuse to forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means. — Marilyn Manson
Of course, art in and of itself gives me some feeling of elation or power and is in some way curative. But actually what's interesting at the end of the day is the various interpretations and conversations between us. Something that exists between us is probably better than you and better than me. — Sarah Morris
And I think that's a singer's job. You know, to really interpret a lyric. There's an art to it, and I think some people are really great at it, like Tammy Wynette and George Jones and Tony Bennett. — Lee Ann Womack
Art is the ability to communicate through an intermediary and to convey one's feelings through an isolated object. It's inspiration and incubation. Putting my subjective feelings into an objective form and then on to you for a subjective interpretation. — Sylvester Stallone
For me, the canvas is an abstract interpretation of a wall. It's a piece of art with its own history, one that alludes to the passage of time and to the theater of life. — Jose Parla
That your own interpretation of a work of art is flagrantly subjective seems to be regarded as an arrogant attitude. But the truer view is that the interpretative artist can only make his own comment upon the work. — Tyrone Guthrie
Today, we're encouraged to believe that we should have a verbal interpretation for what we view as art - when in fact the words are an intrusion on the experience. — Ken Danby
Art is Nature made by Man, To Man the interpreter of God. — Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton
Whatever you do in life, there's content and form; only those two put together create special meaning of a great work of art or great interpretation of music or a great story that you tell. — Itay Talgam
I'm glad I made a piece of art that can be interpreted so widely. Art is always interpreted subjectively — Paula Cole
Painting, like music, has nothing to do with the reproduction of nature, nor interpretation of intellectual meanings. Whoever is able to feel the beauty of colors and forms has understood nonobjective painting. — Hilla von Rebay
From my personal experience I can conclude that many dreams are clearly written but there are some in which one meets distortions to decipher. And it is really in knowing when one must prefer the one or the other approach, or a combination of the two, that remains one of the important elements of the art of dream interpretation. — Erich Fromm
The feat of superbly imitating a muscle, as Michelangelo did, or a face, as Raphael did, created neither progress nor a hierarchy in art. Because these artists of the sixteenth century imitated human forms, they were not superior to the artists of the high periods of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indochinese, Roman, and Gothic art who interpreted and stylized form but did not imitate it. — Fernand Leger
One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence. — Harold Rosenberg
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings. — Susan Sontag
I'm not naive. Sometimes interpretation is more of an art than a science. There are those who would label interpretation absolutely anything a judge might do or, two, the text of a statute or the Constitution. But it seems to me there comes a point where a judge is using his own creativity and purpose and crosses the line between interpreting a text written by somebody else and in a sense creating something new. — Orrin Hatch
I like the boundaryless potential you get when you make work for a context that is open to interpretation. Thinking about an art context is too claustrophobic, though. I always hope that at least half my audience is not directly related to the art world. I use art as a balancing act. It's a good way of avoiding everyday chores and social obligations. — Josephine Meckseper
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