Chris Sullivan Quotes

What moves me in art is how we question who we are as people.

The beauty of any artwork is that it becomes the person that's watching it: What do you take out of it?

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.

There isn't any art until some creature sees and consumes it. And has a reaction.

I have no interest in making a work that doesn't elicit a feeling.

How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?

If someone stands in front of one of my paintings and says, 'This is just a mess', the word 'just' is not so good, but 'mess' might be right. Why not a mess? If it makes you say, 'Wow, I've never seen anything like that', that's beautiful.

All good art, to me, is uncertainty.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

I do like how the music can be misunderstood.

When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.

We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.

A picture's beauty does not depend on the things portrayed in it.

What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting.

Understanding is a form of blindness. Good art, I think, can never be understood.

Much of appreciating art or music is really the interpretation of the listener. To a certain extent it's projection - it's what people need or lack in themselves that they then put upon these people that they admire.

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

I think every movie changes me and is life changing, especially movies you direct.

Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

Any artist, the work you do, if it's a painting or if it's a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else's life. That's what's fun about sharing art.

My films are like clouds: their meaning keeps changing every minute.

To me, art's highest purpose is to entertain, to enlighten, to inspire, to evoke emotion and to change an audience in some way, big or small.

What you look for in a picture is a metaphor, something that means something more, that makes you think about things you've seen or thought about.

All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.