Art revolves around creating something that isn't there. — Kathleen Hanna
Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. — Pablo Picasso
Great art picks up where nature ends. — Marc Chagall
Sculpture is the art of the intelligence. — Pablo Picasso
abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true vision of reality. — Piet Mondrian
Art is a spiritual, immaterial respite from the hardships of life. — Fernando Botero
The painter thinks in terms of form and color. The goal is not to be concerned with the reconstitution of an anecdotal fact, but with constitution of a pictorial fact. — Georges Braque
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. — Jackson Pollock
Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world. — Gwendolyn Brooks
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees — Mark Rothko
Painting and sculpture help other people to see what a wonderful world we live in. — Henry Moore
If I set out to sculpt a standing man and it becomes a lying woman, I know I am making art. — Henry Moore
Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. — Pablo Picasso
Art is the colors and textures of your imagination. — Meghan Trainor
Figurative Art Image Quotes
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.
Figurative Language Quotes
The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics...the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word. — Galileo Galilei
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology. — Roland Barthes
There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job. — Conrad Hall
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
Language becomes a prison house only poets can escape...if we do not reject any strict distinctions between ordinary usage and figures of speech. — Arthur Quinn
I think physical comedy is an amazing asset because it tells a story that's more universal than just language and dialogue. I grew up watching Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. They're very powerful figures in my life. — Sayings
Women are better at reading body language everywhere in the world. As a matter of fact, it's associated with the female hormone estrogen. Women are better at figuring out of tone of voice, reading your face and posture and gesture. — Helen Fisher
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
All too often, when people don't know where they are, have jet lag, don't speak the language, and can't figure out the money or maintain intestinal regularity, they get hostile. — Mary-Lou Weisman
It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it. — Steve McConnell
I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon. — Larry Niven
I'd say I dream in Esperanto. Sometimes I remember some dreams in another language, but dreaming in languages no, but figures yes, my psychology is this way. — Pope Francis
Figure Drawing Quotes
Survive first. Figure out crayon drawing of destiny later. — Rick Riordan
It is not bright colors but good drawing that makes figures beautiful. — Titian
Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions. — Evan Esar
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. — Flannery O'Connor
If it hasn’t worked yet… That’s okay! Get back to the drawing board and keep trying until you figure it out. — Russell Brunson
You can't teach charisma. You can draw it out of people if it's there and they haven't quite figured out how to utilize it yet, but it's just one of those things, that's why they call it the "X factor". — Stephanie McMahon
Painting figures is the hardest, certainly the most taxing genre, and you have to be the most on your game. If you have significant drawing problems, the figure will fall apart and it will read wrong emotionally. — Jacob Collins
When you draw a nude, sketch the whole figure and nicely fit the members to it and to each other. Even though you may only finish one portion of the drawing, just make certain that all the parts hang together, so that the study will be useful to you in the future. — Leonardo da Vinci
When sculpting the human figure in stone it is necessary to draw the whole form out of the content of the head. — Rudolf Steiner
The construction of the human figure, its tremendous variety of balance, of size, of rhythm, all those things make the human form much more difficult to get right in a drawing than anything else. — Henry Moore
Figure Painting Quotes
Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste. — William Shakespeare
The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively - because without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. — Frank Zappa
I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity. — Willem de Kooning
I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it - drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea. — Willem de Kooning
Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience. — Chuck Close
No painting can exist without the tension of what it figures and what it concretely consists of. The pleasure of what it could mean and the pain of what it's not. — Sayings
Monet's work would have been even greater if he had not abandoned figure-painting. — Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
You may name a bronze statue 'Liberty,' or a painted figure in a city hall 'Commerce,' or a marble form in a temple 'Athene' or 'Venus;' but what is really there is only a representation of a single woman. — George Edward Woodberry
When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out. — James Frey
What interests me is all the stuff that goes into abstract and abstract-figurative art. Not the styles, but the stuff that, in various combinations, make the styles: mixing and matching painting methods and ideas. — Ed Askew
Visual Art Quotes
The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design. — Massimo Vignelli
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. — Steven Pinker
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
The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age. — Marshall McLuhan
Our one goal is to give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding. Through the visual arts, the art of celebration of life. — Steven Spielberg
In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. — Walt Disney
I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality...to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not? — Storm Thorgerson
The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. — Jerry Saltz
Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves. — Julia Morgan
Narrative Art Quotes
Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions. — Kiki Smith
Nearly everything that defines much of our daily experiences is consummatory in nature. Yes, we consume products and services. But we also consume life experiences, religious narratives, art, literature, and ideas. — Gad Saad
Art brings a message into a room. It should make us perceive in a new way - either through color, form or narrative content - something we had not perceived before... and perhaps reveal something to you about yourself. — Gloria Vanderbilt
In art, scandal is a false narrative, a smoke screen that camouflages rather than reveals. When we don't know what we're seeing, we overreact. — Jerry Saltz
I'd have been a filmmaker or a cartoonist or something else which extended from the visual arts into the making of narratives if I hadn't been able to shift into fiction. — Jonathan Lethem
I love telling stories. And even in single images, I tend to have stories inside them. I've always loved film, but I was making drawings and paintings and photographs. And you put art and narrative together, and that really is comics. — Dave McKean
Be it sculpture, poetry, or narrative fraught with terrible insight... art does endure. It troubles and pleases, inspires, and reminds us that humanity is ever capable of adding to the sum of the world's grave beauty. — Stephanie Mills
The best way to truly understand narrative art is to experience it. — George Lucas
A turning point in the public's perception of the building art came with the publication of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'An Autobiography' of 1932, a picaresque narrative that captivated many who hadn't the slightest inkling of what architects actually did. — Martin Filler
Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry. — Eugenio Montale
Graphic Art Quotes
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist — Francis of Assisi
Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy. — Jan Tschichold
Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people. — Shepard Fairey
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
The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people. — El Lissitzky
The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects. — Wassily Kandinsky
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated. — Paul Rand
You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt... or in front of a piece of graphic design. — Stefan Sagmeister
The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail. — John Wesley Powell
The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness. — Massimo Vignelli
Painting And Art Quotes
Bodybuilding is an art, your body is the canvas, weights are your brush and nutrition is your paint. We all have the ability to turn a self portrait into a masterpiece. — Kai Greene
Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint. — Banksy
You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it — Faith Ringgold
Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential. — Wassily Kandinsky
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
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. — JeanLuc Godard
You paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. — Franz Kline
To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Simplify, slow down, be kind. And don't forget to have art in your life - music, paintings, theater, dance, and sunsets. — Eric Carle
Religious Art Quotes
I do believe that one way to bring cultures together, to develop trust between people and countries and religions, is through education. And through music and art and basketball and activities and joys that people share worldwide, regardless of ethnic background or religious orientation. — Steve Kerr
God does not ask for 'religious' art or 'Catholic' art. The art he wants for himself is Art, with all its teeth — Jacques Maritain
The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion - others pray in church. It's a banality, but you don't possess art, it possesses you. It's like falling in love. — Francois Pinault
[On the ancient Venus figurines:] If the central religious figure was a woman giving birth and not, as in our time, a man dying on a cross, it would not be unreasonable to infer that life and the love of life - rather than death and the fear of death - were dominant in society as well as art. — Riane Eisler
Art is viable when it finds elements in the surrounding environment. Our ancestors drew their subject matter from the religious attitudes which weighed on their souls. We must now learn to draw inspiration from the tangible miracles around us. — Umberto Boccioni
Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind. — Clive Bell
The Dance of the Future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, it is mere merchandise — Isadora Duncan
I really do think that art can save you in some sense. It's the last meaning, unless you're religious-and I'm not religious. It's the only secular vehicle for transcendence we have. It's an immediate self-validating experience. It lifts you beyond your mortal clay. — Sam Savage
Lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you’re just never the same. — David Foster Wallace
True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it. — Michelangelo
Christian Art Quotes
No one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labour, study, or inquiry. — William Wilberforce
As evangelical Christians we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life. The rest of human life we feel is more important. Despite our constant talk about the Lordship of Christ, we have narrowed its scope to a very small area of reality. — Francis Schaeffer
I’ve been in martial arts for so many years, so to hold the belt of UFC and be on top of the biggest organization, it will be represented in this belt. — Valentina Shevchenko
Be encouraged to be an encourager. It's a spiritual art that everyone can learn. And mostly you learn by practicing it. — Jill Briscoe
If Bible Christianity is to survive the present world upheaval, we shall need to have a fresh revelation of the greatness and the beauty of Jesus.... He alone can raise our cold hearts to rapture and restore again the art of true worship. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
Growing up going to Christian school and the concept that you're born a sinner and you don't really have a choice to change who you are has been hammered into my head and created the entire reason why I made art and made a band and made records called 'Antichrist Superstar.' — Marilyn Manson
People should fall in love with their eyes closed. — Andy Warhol
Education is the art of helping young people to completeness; for the Christian, this means education is helping a young person to be more like Christ, the model of all Christians. — Basil Moreau
Until cubism, all art, all pictures, could be 'read' by anybody. If this hadn't been so, the Christian message wouldn't have been seen by peasants and its importance would have been diminished. — David Hockney
Wherever...thou shalt be, pray secretly within thyself. If thou shalt be far from a house of prayer, give not thyself trouble to seek for one, for thou thyself art a sanctuary designed for prayer. If thou shalt be in bed, or in any other place, pray there; thy temple is there. — Bernard of Clairvaux
Renaissance Art Quotes
What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art — Leonardo da Vinci
If I am not mistaken, the word "art" and "artist" did not exist during the Renaissance and before: there were simply architects, sculptors, and painters, practicing a trade. — M. C. Escher
As one who loves literature, art, music and history, I've been deeply rooted in the Harlem Renaissance for many years. — Debbie Allen
Artists with a capital 'A' are at ease working in all areas of art, whether it is a contemporary abstract painting or work requiring methods and techniques of the Renaissance Masters. — Igor Babailov
When I was young, I was interested in Renaissance art. — Sigmar Polke
Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. — Mary McCarthy
I'm looking to evolve the concept of the new renaissance artist, taking the world by storm through the art of public display and demonstration, with technical savvy, using cell phones and computers. — Perry Farrell
As a non-Catholic, and since I was a child, I have been obsessed with the ritual and the beauty of Catholic art. I look at Renaissance art all the time. — Nan Goldin
I don't think I am going to do pictures which are anything like Renaissance art. — Nan Goldin
I rarely do autograph shows. Maybe two or three a year. Just to keep my price up. Also I've got too much other stuff to do. I have to teach Renaissance art. — Peter Weller
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet you're my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek, is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart? — Chet Baker
There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist. — Kara Walker
I did study the art of being a barber because I wanted to figure out what my routine would be. Do you start in the front or back? Top or bottom? Swivel the chair or walk around? What I did discover is there's no such thing as the perfect haircut! — Sean Patrick Thomas
I often told the fanatics of realism that there is no such thing as realism in art: it only exists in the mind of the observer. Art is a symbol, a thing conjuring up reality in our mental image. That is why I don't see any contradiction between abstract and figurative art either. — Antoni Tapies
It's just a combination of letters I liked. And when your whole art's based on the lettering you choose, you kinda figure out what ones work together. I just liked the shapes of the k, a, w, s. It has no meaning. — KAWS
Figure skating is a mixture of art and sport. — Katarina Witt
When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it. At a certain point I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. Basically, I would have to start over every day and figure out what art was going to be. — Bruce Nauman
Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures. — Henri Poincare
With Gnaw I was thinking about traditional sculpture, about carving. I was also interested in figurative sculpture. I put those two ideas together and decided that rather than describing the body, I would use the body, my body, as a tool for making art. — Janine Antoni
We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. — Salvador Dali
When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain. — Richard Wagner
What's important about the artists we learn about in art history and see in all the art books is that they have somehow pushed the boundaries of what people think art is or should be, and that's how they've made their work relevant. That's what I'm trying to figure out for myself. — Kadir Nelson
Desmond O'Grady is one of the senior figures in Irish
Literary life, exemplary in the way he has committed
himself over the decades to the vocation of poetry and
has lived selflessly for the art — Seamus Heaney
There is, literally and figuratively, not a gold standard. That's almost as big a problem in art as in the financial world. How do you affix a value to something that only has value because a certain number of people agree to believe in that value? — John Currin
Something impacts me emotionally, art is a kind of outlet, and I figure it's the same for a lot of artists. The way my mind deals with things is cinematic. — Ryan Coogler
Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms. Well then, think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affect us more or less intensely. — Pablo Picasso
The end (goal) of art is to figure the hidden meaning of things and not their appearance; for in this profound truth lies their true reality, which does not appear in their external outlines. — Joseph Conrad
Thou art figured blind, and yet we borrow our best sight from thee. — Philip Massinger
What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure. — Henri Matisse
We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art. — Salvador Dali
Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others: only the capacity for it is innate; the art itself must be learned and painstakingly practiced. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure. — Aristotle
When I do a record, it sounds more punk and raw. Or it will sound louder, or it will sound more shocking. Or mind-boggling. I'll be trying to figure it out, but once I've got it figured out I'll be like, I know this; I know where this came from. I think art is most interesting when the intention is not clear. — Bradford Cox
One meets the cat in nearly all forms of art...curiously enough she is not a conspicuous figure in Roman or Greek art. — Carl Van Vechten
China is important to the world in that they are a force and on the move. Exposing them to figurative art opens up a potential for artistic expression far greater than anyone would ever have dreamed possible until today. It is this very spirit of the struggle and determination to triumph that inspires creative expression. — Richard MacDonald
Our best teachers do more than impart facts and figures - they inspire and encourage students and instill a true desire to learn. That's a fine art in itself. — Sonny Perdue
I was a liberal arts junkie and I figured, well, I'll go work for somebody somewhere. All I knew was that I was going to have to come home and figure it out. — Mary Chapin Carpenter
No matter how brilliant, amusing or intelligent the creek of abstraction, Dadaism, Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 20th century was, it didn't much affect the historical river of figuration. I predict that in 50 years and in 300 years, figurative art will still be strong and important. — Mark Kostabi
Spatial art does not begin with a poetic mood or idea, but with construction of one or more figures, with the harmonizing of several colors and tones, or with the devaluation of spatial relationships and so on. — Paul Klee
There is a constant ebb and flow in art historical reputations. The reputation of even the greatest figures like Picasso are in flux. — Jeffrey Deitch
Ah, well, do I wish that we lived in a world where gender didn't figure so prominently? Of course. Do I even think about myself as a woman when I go to make art? Of course not. — Judy Chicago
I spend my time trying to figure art out. I was brought up to believe that the way one processes information is by making it into art. That's how I live my life. — Sean Lennon
I chose faces and figures as my subject matter simply due to the fact that the human form is already beautiful art. — Frank Bruno
The human face is the most deeply ingrained image in our brains. It is the two dots and a dash we connect with as babies. It is the focus of our attention in our relationships with each other. The face and the human figure express all we are. Everything else - architecture, art, even landscape - we usually understand in relation to us. — Dave McKean
Medical training taught me the art of breaking down the complex maze of stories, symbols and rituals into clear systems. You could say that it helped me figure out the anatomy and physiology of mythology and its relevance in a society more incisively. How is it that no society can, or does, exist without them? — Devdutt Pattanaik
When I graduated from high school, I had artistic and academic scholarships, and I was trying to figure out what to do. I decided to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Juilliard and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, Australia. — Deborah Kara Unger
"Freedom, individualism, authenticity and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: Sustained success comes only when you take what's unique about you and figure out how to make it useful!" — Marcus Buckingham
Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help. — Alice Hoffman
I've dedicated a lot of my life as a writer to understanding how to hear the divine voice, or the music of the spheres, or whatever it is that we do when we're making art, making something out of nothing. Figuring out how to do that is much more important than knowing how to execute a good line. I don't think about that anymore, I just write. — Ottessa Moshfegh
Beyonce is such a visual artist. This was just trying to figure out another side to her that could be fun and young and exciteful and a great video. — Bryce Wilson
Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the girls are young and their figures perfect; there's no hiccoughing or bad breath, no fatigue or boredom, no sudden recollections of unpaid bills or business letters unanswered, to interrupt the raptures. Art gives you the sensation, the thought, the feeling quite pure--chemically pure, I mean,... not morally. — Aldous Huxley
In Conclusion
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