Julie Mehretu Quotes

To love a painting is to feel that this presence is ... not an object but a voice.

When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.

When I go to galleries in New York, I feel like I'm in school. I know that there's good contemporary conceptual art, but I have a really hard time caring about it. I'd rather look at images of people and things I can relate to. Then again, I didn't go to art school.

Music's something you feel. You have to feel it first before you hear it.

Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. It's about reasserting our firsthand experience in present time.

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. I just want (the audience) to have an experience that moves them.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

Art objects are inanimate sad bits of matter hanging in the dark when no one is looking. The artist only does half the work; the viewer has to come up with the rest, and it is by empowering the viewer that the miracle of art gains its force.

When I'm putting the character together I try to find music that I think fits the character.

No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.

Music is an experience, not a science.

Anything I've not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained.

Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy.

An artistic impression is substantially the resultant of two components. One what the work of art gives the onlooker - the other, what he is capable of giving to the work of art.

People get out of music what they want to get out of it, and all I try to do is do the same thing.

The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It's not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff.

The most delightful aspect about the language of cinema is that it speaks to each of us in different ways - it is a purely subjective experience.

For me, all the materials and objects I employ come from a specific space that's very personal.

I don't really approach a character as to whether or not it's good or bad. I just approach a character as to where it lives in me.

It is not an aesthetic misstep to make the viewer aware of the paint and the painter's hand. Such an empathetic awareness lies at the heart of aesthetic appreciation.

I can't do pieces I only admire technically. I have to feel some direct contact with them.