Figurative Art Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Non-figurative art is created by establishing a dynamic rhythm of determinate mutual relations which excludes the formation of any particular form. ~ Piet Mondrian

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

A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous. ~ Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Yes ... I love how the Irish are so comfortable with paradox that they revel in it. In fact, if you took it away from them, I suspect they would start gasping like fish out of water. No wonder their land's name, now removed from its Gaelic notions of abundance in 'eire,' evokes anger, or 'ire,' and yet also the rich, cooling green of a sea-colored jewel. A 'terrible beauty' indeed. They understand oppression and repression and explosion, but they remain a culture of faith-faith that creaks and groans and pulls, but is alive and never dull. And which urges them to art, to poetry, to song-these, too, are forms of action. Of passion. Of conviction. Yes, of love. ~ Carolyn Weber

It's difficult in Hollywood to be allowed to try anything. It's all a terrible compromise. There is no time for art. All that matters is what they call box office. ~ Greta Garbo

... Lyotard suggests that while discourse operates as a system of representation which defines meanings according to their relation to other concepts in that system, figure is the realm of the singular, of that which refuses to, or simply cannot, be captured and systematized by the concept. ~ Nicholas Gane

All art, like all love, is rooted in heartache. ~ Alfred Stieglitz

Painting is a form of incarnation. It is spirit made manifest in the world. ~ Jeffrey Smart

Magic: (n) The art of converting superstition into coin. ~ Ambrose Bierce

A standard saying among fly fishermen is that trout spend anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of their time feeding below the water's surface on the immature forms of aquatic insects. Some anglers are even more precise, but whatever the exact percentage , it's safe to say that to fully appreciate any tailwater fishery you will have to learn the fine art of nymphing. ~ Ed Engle

The visual and literary arts are of perennial interest to me, and these art forms have become more and more a part of my life; they have become companions of sorts. I cannot imagine my day to day experiences without the presence of these art forms. They're absolutely essential. ~ Michael Hersch

Life is the greatest art of all, and the master artist is the man who is living the beautiful life. ~ John Edgar Park

I stood in this unsheltered place, 'til I could see the face behind the face. ~ Peter Gabriel

The things that matter most are not things. ~ Art Buchwald

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? ~ William Shakespeare

Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed, dignity never been photographed. ~ Bob Dylan

In the first place you must study drawing for at least one year; then you must remain with a master at the workshop for the space of six years at least , that you may learn all the parts and members of the art ... drawing without intermission on holidays and work-days ~ Cennino Cennini

How often my soul visits the National Gallery, and how seldom ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures. ~ Georges Braque

Music and religion are as intimately related as poetry and love; the deepest emotions require for their civilized expression the most emotional of arts. ~ Will Durant

We've lost these qualities, these abilities to do something by hand. Some illustrators have it still, but it's just not art. We have photography. We have cameras and computers that do it better and faster. ~ Gerhard Richter

The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of knowledge and practice
all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole. ~ John Dewey

Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy. ~ Colum McCann

Deconstruction seeks neither to reframe art with some perfect, apt and truthful new frame, nor simply to maintain the illusion of some pure and simple absence of a frame. Rather it shows that the frame is, in a sense, also inside the painting. For the frame is what "produces" the object of art, is what sets it off as an object of art - an aesthetic object. Thus the frame is essential to the work of art; in the work of art. Paint a $5,000 abstract painting on a railroad boxcar and nobody will pay a cent for it. Take a torch, remove the panel of the boxcar, install it in a gallery, and it will be worth $5,000. It will be art because it is now framed by the gallery. But at the same moment that the frame encloses the work in its own protected enclosure, making it a work of art, it becomes merely ornamental - external to the work of art. Thus is the frame central or marginal? Is the frame inside the work of art, essential to it, or outside the work of art, extrinsic to it? ~ James N. Powell

Art is something special because it can come up with a way of approaching the truth that is a little to the side. ~ Rachel Kushner

A strange thing has happened - while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time. ~ Virginia Woolf

Trust not to friends and kindred, neither do thou put off the care of thy soul's welfare til hereafter; for men will sooner forget thee than thou art aware of. ~ Thomas A Kempis

I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart ~ Edvard Munch

I have had an interest in art since childhood. I loved to draw as a child and still do. ~ Dasha Zhukova

It's easy then we're just doing what's in front of us – without judging the hell out of ourselves. ~ Art Hochberg

I feel that tennis is an art form that is capable of moving the players and the audience - at least a knowledgeable audience-in almost sensual ways. When I'm performing at my absolute best, I think that some of the euphoria I feel must be transmitted to the audience. ~ Billie Jean King

To surround yourself with beauty isn't frivolous. It's a necessity. If it weren't, then our cities would not be surrounded with art museums and parks. ~ Charlotte Symonds

Come on let's see the degree."
Katherine unrolled her scroll displaying a long declaration in Latin affixed with a red seal proclaiming her a Master of Art.
"Imagine working for years to obtain a piece of paper we can hardly read " Katherine joked.
"And to officially declare you have talent " Suzy returned. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

The beginning of a friendship, the fact that two people out of the thousands around them can meet and connect and become friends, seems like a kind of magic to me. But maintaining a friendship requires work. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Good art requires work as well. ~ Charles De Lint

All the masters have those weak points that are called masterpieces; and besides, they do them as crowd pleasers
to prove that they have the know-how. ~ Paul Gauguin

An artist does not create the way he lives, he lives the way he creates. ~ Jean Lescure

American art, like America, must wait and live a while longer. ~ Raoul Dufy

To pray with others is good. To pray alone is even better. ~ Art Hochberg

When the Nazis took Paris, the director of the Toledo Museum of Art wrote to David Finley, director of the not yet opened National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to encourage the creation of a national plan, saying, I know [the possibility of invasion] is remote at the moment, but it was once remote in France. ~ Robert M. Edsel

Good art is art that allows you to enter it from a variety of angles and to emerge with a variety of views. ~ Mary Schmich

The path of Martial Arts begins and ends with courtesy. So be genuinely polite on every occasion. ~ Mas Oyama