Frank Zappa Quotes

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

I don't think there is too much art involved in what I do.

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

The power of painter or poet to describe what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith.

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

Why write [about my art]? Why not just show the photographs?

The video camera dominates art. It's a bore, it makes everything look a bit the same. If you look at things with a pencil and paper in your hand, you are going to see far more.

Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.

Art feels like it has this frame, and it's either outside or inside.

The fact that cartoons are reproduced doesn't mean anything to me as far as whether they are "real art" or not.

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, mush less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back on content so we can see the thing at all. The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us.

The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,--that is the secret of the fine arts.

The world of sight is still limitless. It is the artist who limits vision to the cramped dimensions of his own ego.

Is photography art?... The pure definition of the word 'art' alone is too vague today to break one's brain and soul about it. Let us take a little vacation from this word.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all!

The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.

No-one who has a real understanding of the art of painting attaches any importance to what we call the subject of a picture - what is represented. To one who feels the language of pictorial form, all depends on how it is presented, nothing on what.

Photography is art when it's used by an artist.

The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality.

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

Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it. I prefer to steer clear of anything aesthetic, so as not to set obstacles in my own way and not to have the problem of people saying: 'Ah, yes, that's how he sees the world, that's his interpretation.'