Lewis Mumford Quotes

The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Mount Tamalpais became my house. For Cezanne, Sainte-Victoire was no longer a mountain. It was an absolute. It was painting.

I don't know much about modern art, but I guess I am modern art.

When people ask me what it is about Brazil and my work, it's not something that I can say literally. It's unidentifiable. It's like when you do research and things inspire you. If you're smart enough, then obviously you don't take it literally. The inspiration will come out later somehow.

Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.

Life and art are inseparable.

I've always felt the portrait is an occasion for marks to happen. I've never viewed the portrait as about the sitter. Even when I go to the National Portrait Gallery, I'm not thinking about the sitter; I'm thinking about how the artist chose that color or that highlight. It becomes about the time, place, and context.

...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?

The artist does not illustrate science; ... [but] he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does, and expresses by a visual synthesis what the scientist converts into analytical formulae or experimental demonstrations.

In my own life, I share my home with works by artists like Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Jackie Windsor and so many others, whose creativity is clear and fresh and compelling; the works break through the usual, and they inspire creativity; they inspire responses and understanding.

I can't believe that 100% of the people who stand in art galleries looking at art are thinking, 'Well, here I am, looking at art.' They must be having some sort of other, unselfconscious experience.

What does art mean to me? I never really think about the 'meaning' of art. Yet, obviously, that's what I do.

Art brings to life things that can seemingly be dead, and can put a fresh perspective on things that are living. It's so important we keep creating.

A lot of people are intimated by art, but it's something to be revered beyond criticism.

My approach to portraiture is conceptual.

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

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.

My paintings cannot be a negation of what has always been and always will be necessary - drawing and search for values.

I have been continuously aware that in painting, I am always dealing with... a relational structure. Which in turn makes permission 'to be abstract' no problem at all.

The place of the arts in the classroom is essential in encouraging invention, ambition, and an understanding of the importance and pleasures of living an examined life.

What mattered to Abu was the music of the sentence. 'A shadow does not belong to the object that casts it.' To Abu, it was a little poem. And in general, it was the poetics, the music of things that tossed his confetti.

An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

Art still has truth. Take refuge there.

That should be something that an artist can respond to as well in terms of a painting.