Harvey Pekar Quotes

Every art form has its own beauty, but blending it with other forms in separate ways is okay.

My whole purpose of taking on miniature painting was to break the tradition, to experiment with it, to find new ways of making meaning, to question the relevance of it.

I feel like animation's stagnant. There's not much that's trying to push the artform, and so, for me, I'm way too critical about it.

I'm not belittling the art world. Not at all. I take it quite seriously, actually. But the logic of art is a vanguard logic that pressures art to incorporate the quotient of risk.

Artists are free to push boundaries to make art. But when pushing boundaries is their only aim, the result is usually bad art.

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.

I like people that challenge their art, not only in the purist way, but also in terms of how they could provoke and make something different.

I'm a huge fan of David Hockney. I love the way he keeps reinventing himself.

Theatre was an art form that I didn't really respect, and because I wanted to shake it up and do different things on stage, I was able to combine all the things I'd learnt through writing on my own.

Art is changing. Again. Here. Now. Opportunities to witness this are rare, so attend and observe.

The basis for my own work during the years just before coming to America in 1915 was a desire to break up forms - to 'decompose' them much along the lines the cubists had done. But I wanted to go further - much further - in fact, in quite another direction altogether.

I work intentionally to try and make dense, complex things. We can move between genres and forms, from something that looks like a PowerPoint lecture to something that looks like an informercial to something that looks like a cinematic melodrama.

Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying.

I think, as a director, it's always worth pushing yourself and finding out new areas and exploring new ways to tell story.

I like artists that tend to be more interested in reinventing themselves, in experimenting.

For me, as an artist, I think you have to experiment.

You don't have to compose a masterpiece every time, but I think the challenge of art is always searching for something different, searching for a new sensitivity, a new perspective, a new vision.

I think if you're a creative person, then you're always kinda looking to move things along - 'Where else can I go? Where can I take this?' From painters to photographers - anything creative in the arts - if you're a true artist, I think you'll always look to do something else. 'Where else can I go with it?' Do you know what I mean?

Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.

True revolutions in art restore more than they destroy.

I regard photography and film simply as new technical means which painters must absolutely make use of, just as from time out of mind they have made use of brush, charcoal and color. It is certain, however, that photography and film must become as evocative for the sensibility as pencil, charcoal and brush. (1927)

Any innovation that is evident in my paintings is a direct result of something that happened in the course of making a print.

I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.

To open up the new, to look back on the old may bring forth like discoveries in the practice of art.

I can strip down basic principles of certain things and apply it to everything else. And that keeps you interested, changing the art form, making it more avant-garde. Because I can't play any instruments.