Edward Gorey Quotes

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

It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap.

There is something wrong with a work of art if it can be understood by a policeman.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.

I guess the role of art is to make something that is ambiguous and complex.

All good art is about something deeper than it admits.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.

Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Art in relation to life is nothing more than a glove turned inside out. It seems to have the same shapes and contours, but it can never be used for the same purpose. Art teaches nothing about life, just as life teaches us nothing about art.

I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.

Duchamp is known for calling a thing art, rather than making it. A lot of that is picked up in pop art, too.

Art is not there simply to be understood. ... It is more the sense of an indication or suggestion.

I don't know of any good work of art that doesn't have a mystery.

In art, as long as you have ideas and think, you are bound to deform nature. Art is deformation.

In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one's work caged in art's great zoos - the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Writing is a creative art form and the acting and directing is more of an interpretive art form.

In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.

Art as a whole is a riddle. Another way of putting this is to say that art expresses something while at the same time hiding it.

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world. Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament.

Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, who have made up in their minds to be content with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.