Robert Fortune Quotes

Carving is easy, you just go down to the skin and stop.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.

From time to time, I've experimented with sculpture or metal design. It's a good break from just sitting behind the keyboard.

Filmmaking is finding a piece of granite and you start to chip away and then you have the shape of a head, the shape of the arm, you can see the shape of the face and the face starts to gather character. You have to find it.

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical.

I liked sculpting better than painting. You have more freedom in sculpting.

In New York, working at the foundry, I was making these little figures. I desperately would like to make big figures, but I just can't do it; my hands don't do it. We were talking about making bronze plinths, and then we made one, a square one. I wrote on it, then I put a little figure on top, and it just looked really good. It worked.

In Giacometti's work, the armature has once again become the life-line of the sculpture, and also, he's brought back to sculpture a nervous sensitivity which the 'pure carving' side of sculpture can lose sight of altogether.

I used to sculpt a bit as a kid.

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood.

Why talk about sculpture when I can photograph it?

Even abstract shapes must have a likeness

In my opinion painting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches the effect of relief, while relief should be considered bad in proportion as it approaches the effect of painting.

I have never discovered that the nude could be studied in any way except the way I have adopted. All the muscles must be pointed out. To do this all the drapery must be removed.

The writer must hew the phantom rock.

Making a movie is like chipping away at a stone. You take a piece off here, you take a piece off there and when you're finished, you have a sculpture. You know that there's something in there, but you're not sure exactly what it is until you find it.

My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. All my works in pastels are the products of obsessional neurosis and are therefore inextricably connected to my disease. I create pieces even when I don’t see hallucinations, though.

My wife's hands are very beautiful. I'm going to have a bust made of them.

Each artist comes to the painting or sculpture because there he can be told that he, the individual, transcends all classes and flouts all predictions. In the work of art, he finds his uniqueness confirmed.

A field of clay touched by the genius of man becomes a castle.

In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.

A painting or sculpture not modelled on any real object is every bit as concrete and sensuous as a leaf or a stone... but it is an incomplete art which privileges the intellect to the detriment of the senses.

I prefer you to take as your model a mediocre sculpture rather than an excellent painting, for from painted objects we train our hand only to make a likeness, whereas from sculptures we learn to represent both likeness and correct incidence of light.

The picture that approaches sculpture nearest Is the best picture.