Jacob Epstein Quotes

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

Artists have historically understood images better than anyone else. This is what we do.

Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists.

Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.

I'm an artist, therefore I think I am sensitive to human pain.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual reality. (On photographs by Helen Levitt)

A mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work of art, because he really looks without seeing, and though he may have noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without character... the artist on the contrary, sees; that is to say, his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of nature.

When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.

What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time.

Like the eagle, we (artists) must be able to see clearly.

An artist should have more than two eyes.

Art is not what most people think it to be. It is not an occupation of one-railed people.

Art doesn't reflect what we see; it makes us see.

You need intelligence, and you need to look. You need a gaze, a wide gaze, penetrating and roving - thats what's useful for art.

I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.

It seems to me that what the artist sees is the simple and obvious that is invisible to everybody else.

Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.

The eye of the poet sees less clearly, but sees farther than the eye of the scientist.

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him. ... The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well. ... Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order.

Poets and artists who speak of the mystery are rare.

What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see.

I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.

Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that.