Anish Kapoor Quotes

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

Art is more engaging that propaganda.

The work itself has a complete circle of meaning and counterpoint. And without your involvement as a viewer, there is no story.

Viewing abstract art requires more imagination. The result is more intense involvement of the viewer—more pleasurable.

I'm not a writer myself, so I'm forced to try to get what's a sort of an odour or a colour or something I feel in my head from a writer, and that's a... I don't have a recipe for that process. I don't know what it is... it's different every time.

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it.

Art objects are inanimate sad bits of matter hanging in the dark when no one is looking. The artist only does half the work; the viewer has to come up with the rest, and it is by empowering the viewer that the miracle of art gains its force.

To be an artist, you don't have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It's just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.

There is a deep question whether the possible meanings that emerge from an effort to explain the experience of art may not mask the real meanings of a work of art.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

The more I see and know about life, the more ideas I have and the more I want to make art.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

Insight is the first condition of Art.

I try to find the picture, not create it.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

You know, as you compose music, you're just off in your own world. You have no idea where reality is, so to have an idea of what people think is pretty hard.

Sometimes I can see the whole painting from the outset in my mind's eye. But more often than not, that idea doesn't last the duration of the painting. Sometimes it comes out easy, just as I had envisaged. But that is reasonably rare.

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea.