Garry Winogrand Quotes

I think it's always difficult to reconcile the needs of art and business.

I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.

I was always trying to take art photographs, but the most interesting pictures were the snapshots. The artsy pictures were boring, always.

White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.

Poetry dovetails contradictions.

Art is really a battle.

Art and order, the relatives that refuse to relate.

Art gives a sense of order, life is basically chaotic, and there's a tension between them. A sense of order comes from chaos and contains a bit of it, but it's the sense of order that is important in a work of art.

A lot of filmmaking is all about filtering out the bullshit.

Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.

Energy and art go where they will.

In many ways my paintings are about energy — both in how they are created and the image itself.

Once you've started a film you don't become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don't know, and they don't know. It's through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with.

The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.

You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies.

I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.

All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in the mind of the beholder, encroach upon the essential elements.

Poetry is a dangerous profession between conflict and resolution, between feeling and thought, between becoming and being, between the ultra-personal and the universal - and these balances are shifting all the time.

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.

A great work of Art demands a great thought or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. - Neither in Art nor Literature more than in Life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well-dressed.

Art transcends war. Art is the language of God and war is the barking of men. Beethoven is bigger than war.

A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner-continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you-is a fine art, in and of itself.

The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.

I like that feeling when you’re making art, that you’re taking the energy out of your body and putting it into a physical object. I like things that are labor-intensive : you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility.