Stephen Sondheim Quotes

Let us note that art - even on an abstract level - has never been confined to 'idea'; art has always been the 'realized' expression of equilibrium.

Beauty is for the artist something outside all orders of rank, because in beauty opposites are tamed; the highest sign of power, namely power over opposites; moreover, without tension: - that violence is no longer needed: that everything follows, obeys, so easily and so pleasantly - that is what delights the artist's WILL TO POWER.

I cry out for order and find it only in art.

I like design, I like details, to me it is just another form of self-expression.

Design, whether it's on your body or in your home, is the same thing. It's mixing different colors, different textures, and unexpected patterns - elements that you wouldn't often put together in an interesting way.

Everyday people are not very good designers.

Collage is not a kitchen sink; it's not a refuge for the compositionally disabled.

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

Order and creativity are complementary.

Learn by heart the forms to be found in nature, so that you can use them like the notes in a musical composition. That is what these forms are for. Nature is a marvelous chaos, and it is our job and our duty to bring order into that chaos and - to perfect it.

The science of design, or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture... Sometimes... it seems to me that... all the works of the human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that art.

Art and order, the relatives that refuse to relate.

Don't confuse symmetry with balance.

And harmony means that the relationship between all the elements used in a composition is balanced, is good.

Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions.

I was a fine arts major in college, and a painter for many years. And I found that, like writing, art is very similar.

Painting, for me, is a dynamic balance and wholeness of life; it is mysterious and transcending, yet solid and real.

Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

I knew style and content went hand in hand.

I was always interested in photography and other forms of art.

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

I like to think that my works flow like music. That may be one reason I work in large groups versus one picture of one thing; it's the flow of the whole series that counts.

Form must have a content, and that content must be linked with nature.