Ned Rorem Quotes

Art is pattern informed by sensibility.

What one person might see as violent, someone else may see as beautiful. Maybe even art.

To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by the concept of 'art'. What one person considers to be 'art' is often not 'art' to another. 'Beautiful' and 'ugly' are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only 'kitsch' is not art - we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is 'kitsch'? If only I knew!

But of works of art little can be said.

Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

I try to figure out - intellectually, philosophically, psychologically - what the experience of beauty is.

I think art is more glorious than life but not more real.

If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.

There are no actions involved in 'beautiful.' It's such an inactive thing, and it's so subject to each individual's taste and appreciation. It's a lovely word, but I feel like it's been hijacked by really boring, dull people who don't understand how to use words.

Beauty really has such a wide field of interpretation. I guess that's why it's forever fascinating.

Style is objective, akin to art, so it varies.

What shall I say about poetry? What shall I say about those clouds, or about the sky? Look; look at them; look at it! And nothing more. Don't you understand anything about poetry? Leave that to the critics and the professors. For neither you, nor I, nor any poet knows what poetry is.

Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.

The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator.

Art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. It's about reasserting our firsthand experience in present time.

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it.

The individual point of view is the only point of view from which one is able to look at the world in its truth.

The world is beautiful but not sayable. That's why we need art.

Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself.

I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.

Art trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.

Not acknowledging that beauty is complex-that's the problem. I enjoy making it complex for people, because that's my world.

Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.