Bill Viola Quotes

Now painting is different. It's something recollected in tranquility.

There is no art without contemplation.

Art consists in making others feel what we feel.

There is no art without intention.

Oh my God, does art engender humanity? It awakens your humanity. But humanity has nothing to do with political theory. Political theory is in the interests of one group of humanity, or one ideal for humanity. But humanity-my heavens, that's what proper art renders. We have a paradox. Going into the deepest aspects of inner space connects you with something that is the most vital for the outer realm.

It is to aid in making the arts operative rather than only positively or negatively pleasurable... it is to paint a record, in so far as I am increasingly capable, of man's deepst capacities... I seek to paint of how form manifests its subtlest quality named 'idea.

Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art.

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being... Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.

The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world.

Art is about trying to find the good in people, and making the world a more compassionate place.

Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

Art: to nudge truth along a little.

You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what you paint. It's all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people.

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

I feel like you have to make art because you have to make it. But the end result of it- that last stage- you have to show it to somebody else to hopefully get a rise or reaction out of them- [to see] if it’ll affect someone else.

Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.

The aim of art is to create space.

Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.

The true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?

One of my mission statements with all of my art has been to stop the world for people. I want to stop the worrying and stop the world.

I have always kept notebooks and I go back to them over and over. They are my compost pile of ideas.

One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture.