Emir Kusturica Quotes

I'm very interested in the language of photography in relationship to painting.

A great painting is a great painting.

I'm drawn to silhouettes because of their emblematic rather than their illustrational quality. I see them as shapes, allowing an image to become an abstraction and for pure painting to take place.

Art is always an exaggeration in some sense; in color, in form, even in theme, etc... but it has always been this way. It is the same with the nature of some works by Giotto or Massacio, or the color of life as expressed by Van Gogh.

The first painting that I realised I liked was 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymus Bosch, when I was six years old, at the Prado in Madrid. I still find myself returning there every time I'm in the city.

This truth must be recognized as a dogma and assume the validity of an axiom in the general understanding of painting.

When I was painting in art school - and I think many painters in the 1980s worked similarly - a finished painting would often be constructed from lots of other paintings underneath. Some of these individual layers of painting were better than others, but that was something that you would often only realise retrospectively.

I really admire paintings that look like an actual snapshot - I think that's just extraordinary.

I've been taking art classes for a couple of years; I love to draw.

Most of the power of painting comes through the manipulation of space... but I don't understand that.

The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn't refer to anything else. They stood alone, and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else.

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

I've enjoyed collecting. I've enjoyed art ever since - I'll tell you when - I went to Columbia. I went to the Met, and I saw Poussin's 'Rape of the Sabine Women', and it's this incredible, epic, great, great painting.

Now, I love painting. I love looking. I love the fact that they don't move. They constantly change with the light. They are sort of patient.

I am a big fan of the Impressionists, and in my school days, I was inspired by Caravaggio, Velazquez and Rembrandt.

Illustrating is more about communicating specific ideas to a reader. Painting is more like pure science, more about the act of painting.

The actual technique, the process of painting flat color and simple geometric edges, all dates from my time here on Coenties Slip.

I really like the language of painting.

Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.

The messages that my work might contain, the verbal aspects, the use of words, certainly I never mean for it to be more than - shall we say? - fifty percent of the total, and sometimes my active interest is much less than that. It is the formal aspect of my painting which fascinates me most.

I love the way painting is so full of illusionistic possibilities.

When you see the best of the best - when you see a Matisse or a Picasso - what interests you is the creativity and harmony.

Painting from life is a completely different monster, which I like. But because I've been painting from photography for so long, I've learned my best moves from photography.

I influenced the BG style by not being able to draw perspective. The BG artists developed cool graphic painting styles to make my bad backgrounds look like they were that way on purpose.

I do portraits. I usually do live models in a class environment, but I've been painting at home more. I really love the human form, and I love faces. I've tried to do landscapes a few times.