Jim Lee Quotes

Suddenly I've got an overwhelming desire to surround myself with the aura of classical and Romantic art.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

Warhol was definitely an inspiration when I was younger. I wouldn't quantify his sort of influence. I've been influenced by nature and science, and I've been influenced by people like Ernst and Rauschenberg, Cornell and Bosch and Bruegel, by writers like Haruki Murakami to Pablo Neruda to Artaud.

I thought it would be very nice to become Picasso or Rembrandt, or a van Gogh.

My first influence obviously was Picasso.

I really appreciate artists of the 20th century, and I can see a lot of their influence on my work, but to suggest that my design only fits within an 'ism' kind of bothers me.

Well, let's say we acknowledged the School of French Painting - the Paris School of painting as the leading force and vitality of the time. I think that was understood and felt and experienced.

Pablo Picasso first entered my consciousness when I was a boy of about eight years old.

I still remember my first Giacometti exhibition, and going back to the museum every day, whenever I could, to look again and again at these long, thin stick figures, so beautiful, so graceful. That, I think, was the moment I became really obsessed by art.

I don't know if I'm an impressionist or an expressionist. You can call me an American first... I've been labeled doing neimanism, so that's what it is, I guess.

The paintings by Van Gough and Chagall had a big influence on me.

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

I always say Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is my biggest influence. But for painters, I like many, many painters, but I love Francis Bacon the most, and Edward Hopper.

If I could have any artist's work on my sitting room wall it would probably be by Van Gogh or Picasso.

A little part of my life is built around ancient art.

I love color. When I paint, I use a lot of color. I love art that has a vibrancy of color and compositions. I adore the Impressionists, and I'm influenced strongly by them as a self-taught artist.

We weren't art students, but we definitely created our own style and were pretty influenced by Andy Warhol and all the stuff we read and saw and made fun of, you know.

Blushes are fun. I like to do circles - like a Caravaggio painting almost, or Victorian looking.

Even Andy Warhol had a copy of '666.'

I love art, painting, and drawing and studying art, like Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

Artwork, films, TV - it's always informed my work, no matter what I'm working on.

If you think about art, if you look at Rembrandt and Vermeer and Caravaggio, if you look at Turner and Constable and all the Impressionists and the Hudson River School, there's a tradition of light in art, especially painting.

Leger was not only the first artist I ever met but also the first pop artist, and he blew our minds.

Last time I checked, there were no Americans at all in Renaissance art.

When I teach classes at the School of Visual Arts,, I'll ask the students, 'How many of you have been to a museum this year?' Nobody raises their hand and I go into a tirade. If you want to do something sharp and innovative, you have to know what went on before.