Joshua Reynolds Quotes

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

I paint what I see, not what a camera would see.

I work from a subjective palette.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him. ... The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well. ... Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order.

Ah, Manet has come very, very close to it and Courbet - the marrying of form and colour.

People will keep on taking them for theorists, when all they wanted was to paint in gay, bright colours, like the old masters.

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which otherwise would remain unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.

The majority of (painters), because they aren't colorists, do not see yellow, orange or sulphur in the South (of France) and they call a painter mad if he sees with eyes other than theirs

Working with the kind of talent that I've gotten to work with, like the cast of Sin City, it makes me think probably more fully dimensionally about what is going on behind their eyes. But I draw the way I draw, and ain't nothing gonna change that. Although, I draw Marv and I think, "Boy, I could throw a little Mickey [Rourke] in there."

Yes, there are billions more photographers, and billions more photographs every day, but who's building up a point of view? Who's photographing with intention, and whose body of work will sustain itself and survive?

Lucidity is the first purpose of color in music.

I always say I'm no different than a 19th-century landscape painter, it's just that we have these incredible tools to look at the Earth and look at the world around us differently.

I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions.

I never photograph sunsets and I never photograph moonrises. I'm not interested in what things look like.

Art is polymorphic. A picture appears to each onlooker under a different guise.

A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don't confuse a drawing with a map.

The purpose of art is to re-present nature, not represent it.

I enjoy directing. I don't know whether it's improving or not, but it's certainly evolving in different directions.

The object of art is to give life shape.

I'm a really visual artist, and I love writing treatments for music videos, photo shoots, fashion, and all the visual parts that go along with making an album.

Photorealism says: to fool your eye. That isn't what I've been interested in doing.

In Utero is a testament to the artistic vision of Kurt Cobain. It's kind of a weird record, and it's strangely beautiful at the same time. And if you look at Kurt's paintings and his drawings - he even did a sculpture for me - it's a rising, tortured-spirit person. It's kind of weird. It's done well, but it's like what Dave was saying about having your own sound. Kurt was a great songwriter. He knew he had a good ear for a hook [and was] a great singer, great guitar player, and In Utero is a good representation of what he liked in art and how he expressed himself.

I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.