George Crabbe Quotes

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 do not think that any realism is beautiful.

When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.

Photography is truth.

Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth.

Part of the reason that these attempts at explanation fail, I think, is that photographers, like all artists, choose their medium because it allows them the most fully truthful expression of their vision... as Robert Frost told a person who asked him what one of his poems meant, 'You want me to say it worse?'

Art is a lie that makes us realise truth ... that is given us to understand.

Abstract paintings must be as real as those created by the 16th century Italians.

The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,--that is the secret of the fine arts.

Painting does more than just point to things. The very act of pointing is a value statement.

The works of previous artists have come from their own experiences or insights but haven't given the experience itself. They had set themselves up as a sort of interpreter to the layman... Our interest is in a form where you realize that the media are just perception.

Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.

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.

That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.

Art lies because it's social.

A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.

Modern pictures banish depiction for interfering with the workings of paint.

If nothing will finally survive of life besides what artists report of it, we have no right to report what we know to be lies.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

In a sense, I feel like the job of the artist at all times is essentially the same, which is simply to tell the truth. I mean, I'm nervous about any prescriptions for what a writer should or shouldn't do.

A lot of ideas don't translate very well into art. To say, "Oh my god, the grass is green ..." You're going to end up with a big green painting.

Just because a poet said something didn’t mean it was true, only that it sounded good.

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.

Why talk about sculpture when I can photograph it?

The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.