James Mercer Quotes

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

My art, like my acting, is a profound expression of poetic license.

Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste.

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

But as long as you're creating the art you want to create, if people start liking you, you shouldn't have to apologize. You want your stuff to be heard by as many people as possible.

I don't think I'm making any great statements, and I certainly don't think I'm making art.

Unlike fashion, art isn't applied. It doesn't have to serve anybody. It doesn't have to be there for any other reason than to give an impression of what the world is about.

I just wanted to be an artist. I didn't care how or what; I just wanted to express my artistic integrity, and I wanted the world to have a vision of what I was seeing in my mind.

Not to make too much of a claim for poetry, but this is a question that goes to the moral heart of the business of any art: 'How do you see the world, and what right do you have to see the world in the way that you do?'

A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.

It is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness.

I don't think most of our films should be realistic, but you want that as an artistic possibility. Then, the artist can take the realism of the world and push it in ways that we can connect with.

You can't stop an artist from expressing his views through art.

I enjoy finding a low subject and bringing it up high. I think with strong technique, you can glamorize certain things. You can make the imagery sharper, rounder, and basically better looking.

Nowhere in the job description of an artist is the requirement that I must validate your taste.

I have no goal to have artistic credibility.

Life is complicated, and art has the right to be complicated, too. I don't like films that simplify.

I am making art. It's not a job that you've gotta show up to and fill in your slot. This is a dream come true. You get the opportunity to say something, to make a piece of art and hang it on the wall forever. Sometimes you're gonna have to take your time.

I believe that while art is always beyond morality, it is never above it.

I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares, as opposed to ugly things. That's my intent.

Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.