Herb Ritts Quotes

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

The principle of the design - the harmony, rhythm and balance are all the same with interior and fashion design.

For painting, I like strong lines, powerful pieces.

Everything must work in concert. Composition is important, but so are many other things, from content to the way colours work with or against each other.

Behrens had a great sense of the great form. that was his main interest; and that I certainly understood and learned from him.

In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry.

Whether it's a computer or a pen drawing, design is about drawing shapes and making physical things.

By drawing or exposing two or more patterns on the same bit of film I can create harmony and textual effects.

If I was influenced by anything, it was architecture: structure having to do with logic. If you don't do it right, the whole thing is going to cave in. In a certain sense, you can carry that to graphic design. Fortunately, however, nobody is going to die if you do it wrong.

I absorbed as many Impressionist paintings as I could, in Parisian museums and in many museums in the United States and in books, looking for clues to architecture, clothing, settings.

And since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art.

In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color.

The truth is that painting is all about scale; you use scale to create experience. A lot of artists have lost that ability. They don't even know that's something they should be doing.

What has stayed true all the way through my work is my composition, I hope, and my sense of color.

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.

My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify, and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity.

A great painting is a great painting.

Much of what I make is geometric, and has a kind of almost mathematical logic to the form.

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.

Design, whether it's on your body or in your home, is the same thing. It's mixing different colors, different textures, and unexpected patterns - elements that you wouldn't often put together in an interesting way.

In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color.

I want to seduce my viewers and be able to hold them with the work. Much of that is done in terms of formalist ideas that I bring to the work.

Maybe black and white is the best medium for landscapes, I don't know.

Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space.

I really like the language of painting.