Painting Quotes

"Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people"

Kathryn Bigelow, Director

"My movement from painting to film was a very conscious one"

Kathryn Bigelow, Director

"But I was in awe of the painters; I mean I was new in New York, and I thought the painting that was going on here was just unbelievable"

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

"I have sworn to die painting"

Paul Cezanne, Artist

"Painting and music were the only things I worked at industriously and faithfully"

Pierre Loti, Writer

"And I think a painting has such a limited life anyway"

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

"I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong"

Lucian Freud, Artist

"Very quickly a painting is turned into a facsimile of itself when one becomes so familiar with with it that one recognizes it without looking at it"

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

"Pollock also... wanted one to be wrapped in the painting"

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

"I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out the real world"

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

"And also the new excitement and variety of ways that the abstract expressionists were applying paint. You could put it on as though it were colored air and it would be painting"

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

"I am more a friend of art than a producer of painting"

Paul Cezanne, Artist

"Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin"

Lucian Freud, Artist

"Well, let's say we acknowledged the School of French Painting - the Paris School of painting as the leading force and vitality of the time. I think that was understood and felt and experienced"

Lee Krasner, Artist

"You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting"

John Malkovich, Actor

"I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock"

Howard Stern, Entertainer

"If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush"

Dawn French, Comedian

"The paintings are transferred from my computer to a disk, and I can hand it to the printer this way; or I can modem the painting to the printer over the phone lines from my house in Hawaii"

Buffy Sainte-Marie

"As a teenager I started painting and playing guitar"

Buffy Sainte-Marie

"The key is in remaining just aloof enough from a painting so that you know when to stop"

Buffy Sainte-Marie

"I don't understand it. Jack will spend any amount of money to buy votes but he balks at investing a thousand dollars in a beautiful painting"

Jackie Kennedy, First Lady

"To the humblest among them, who may be listening to me now, I want to say that the masterpiece to which you are paying historic homage this evening is a painting which he has saved"

Andre Malraux, Author

"The crucial discovery was made that, in order to become painting, the universe seen by the artist had to become a private one created by himself"

Andre Malraux, Author

"I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money"

Andy Warhol, Artist

"Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself"

Truman Capote, Novelist

"Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal"

E. O. Wilson, Scientist

"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery"

Mao Tse-Tung, Leader

"Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great"

Edward Hopper, Artist

"It is this research into pure painting that is the problem at the present moment. I do not know any painters in Paris who are really searching for this ideal world"

Robert Delaunay, Artist

"A painting that is well composed is half finished"

Pierre Bonnard, Artist

"Every milieu has something ridiculous about it - film-making, the music world, painting - because people who take themselves seriously become funny pretty quickly"

Rebecca Miller, Director

"Well, I have a very simple method of painting"

Edward Hopper, Artist

"Well, I am not interested in the kind of expression that you have when you paint a painting with brush strokes. It's all right, but it's already done and I want to do something new"

Donald Judd, Artist

"The older painting - well, it does have an effect all at once, I suppose, but it's of a lesser intensity than a lot of the American work in the last ten or fifteen years"

Donald Judd, Artist

"Nature engenders the science of painting"

Robert Delaunay, Artist

"Language is much closer to film than painting is"

Sergei Eisenstein, Director

"For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents - as an element - the greatest difficulty in manipulation"

Sergei Eisenstein, Director

"God comes to us in theater in the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It's a way of expressing our humanity"

Julie Harris, Actress

"Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does"

John Berger, Artist

"Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately"

Edward Weston, Photographer

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