Max Bill Quotes

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art.

Photography is Art and Art is Photography.

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

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her.

And, moreover, it is art in its most general and comprehensive form that is here discussed, for the dialogue embraces everything connected with it, from its greatest object, the state, to its least, the embellishment of sensuous existence.

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

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

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

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

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

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.

The role of art in society is not to resolve conflicts; rather, it is to express these conflicts and antagonisms.

Art points to things. It's a way of giving people not the standard way of looking at the world.

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.

Traditionally, photography has dealt with recording the world as it is found. Before photography appeared the fine artists of the time, the painters and sculptors, concerned themselves with rendering reality with as much likeness as their skill enabled. Photography, however, made artistic reality much more available, more quickly and on a much broader scale.

Although photography generates works that can be called art-it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made.

The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art.

Every single work of art is the fulfillment of a prophecy; for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image.

The arts often realize human truths well before other branches of human endeavor.

Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible.

The true painter strives to paint what can only be seen through his world.

Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar. Art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible.