John Maeda Quotes

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

Art like life is an open secret.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a physical law.

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.

It is not meant that the artist, in arriving at truth, must follow the way of the scientist, or, in stating it, the way of the philosopher.

Art is always kind of snooping and listening in.

I have always thought that by observing things with a great deal of attention you eventually wrest some of their secrets from them, making them utter what they would most like to keep to themselves.

It is by logic we prove. It is by intuition we discover.

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.

I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.

I'm lucky a couple of filmmakers have seen beyond what you're saying.

Is not art a tool we employ to peel the kitsch off life? Layer by layer art strips life bare. The more abstract it gets, the more transparent the air is. Can it be that the farther it is removed from life, the clearer art becomes?

When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.

The real truthfulness of all works of imagination, sculpture, painting, and written fiction, is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth

I think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.

I believe that the arts make indispensable contributions to our understanding.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

An exhibition is in many ways a series of conversations. Between the artist and viewer, curator and viewer, and between the works of art themselves. It clicks when an exhibition feels like it has answered some questions, and raised even more.

Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.

Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse.

The science is in knowing; the art in perceiving.

The best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.

What is great about art and artists is that we get to ask the questions, even though we may never know the answers.