Max Bill Quotes

I'm not trying to do conceptual art.

In the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself.

If I paint something, I don't want to have to explain what it is.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

I don't know why you'd want to say your work comes from nature, because art is related to perception, not nature. All abstract artists try to tell you that what they do comes from nature, and I'm always trying to tell you that what I do is completely abstract. We're both saying something we want to be true.

My approach to portraiture is conceptual.

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.

Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.

I'm not knocking conceptual art; it's another department, but it doesn't move me like painting.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

To create a work of art is to create the world.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

I sometimes am challenged to imagine where the timbre of art should be. Should it be about objects that point to this current moment, or how objects are related to ideas of this current moment?

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

What I am really concerned about is what art is supposed to be - and can become.

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

We're all going about trying to make beauty in the world and trying to make order out of chaos. And that's what art is.

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

Art is significant deformity.

People understand what art is supposed to look like, and so it's easy to make something that looks like art but isn't - especially in an abstract form.

Great art picks up where nature ends.

The hard part is how to plan a picture so as to give to others what has happened to you. To render in paint an experience, to suggest the sense of light and color, of air and space.