Juergen Teller Quotes

I like movies, because it's kind of a combination of every art, it's like it's picture, it's story, it's music, it's kind of like a clash and a collide of every art. It's really neat.

I think art can reflect tragedy.

Artwork is a representation of our devotion to life.

If art has a purpose, it is to interpret life, reproduce it in fresh visions.

I believe that true art is universal in its appeal.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism.

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.

We don't perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program. These days you can't choose how you want to express yourself anymore.

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.

Every medium has its advantages and weaknesses and there are many things I can put down on paper that I might not be able to put into film or into a stage performance. In each form, one can communicate powerfully in different ways.

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

I've always felt the portrait is an occasion for marks to happen. I've never viewed the portrait as about the sitter. Even when I go to the National Portrait Gallery, I'm not thinking about the sitter; I'm thinking about how the artist chose that color or that highlight. It becomes about the time, place, and context.

I see no reason for painting anything that can be put into any other form as well.

Poetry is superior to painting in the presentation of words, and painting is superior to poetry in the presentation of facts. For this reason I judge painting to be superior to poetry.

A good painting should be the equivalent of a good deed.

The pictures which do not represent an intense interest cannot expect to create an intense interest.

We may call painting the grandchild of nature.

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.

Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound.

Whether our work is art or science or the daily work of society, it is only the form in which we explore our experience which is different.

Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.

There are many people writing songs. That is absolutely wonderful. Who knows, there may be some kid in diapers and he or she might succeed in capturing in a few dozen words what great writers have spent years trying to say. Just the right word in the right place with the right melody behind it and the right rhythm. It might get around the world inch by inch, and people realize that this world is in danger, that we're in danger. That's the way "This Land Is Your Land" got to be so well known.

It is much to my advantage that several of my pictures should be seen together, as it displays to advantage their varieties of conception and also of execution, and what they gain by the mellowing hand of time which should never be forced or anticipated. Thus my pictures when first coming forth have a comparative harshness which at the time acts to my disadvantage.

There is no photograph more inherently photographic than another.

How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky? You paint it jet black.