Artistic Meaning Quotes

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.

Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

Art needs to stand for something.

Take the birds which you'll have noticed in so many of my recent paintings. I never thought them up, they just materialized of their own accord; they were born on the canvas... it is absurd to read any sort of symbolic significance into them.

I think great art is always ambiguous and can't be pinned down.

Beauty, which I admit to being in pursuit of, is an extremely suspect word among many in the art world. But I don't think you can get along without it. It's the confirmation of meaning in life.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

Art is why I get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know I don't think its fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.

A lot of times, my work is looked at very much on the surface. It's very easy to just want to put something in a box - to say, 'Oh, since this work deals with surface desires at times, this is about consumerism.' And of course, the base of the work is... not about economics at all.

I think that's what all art is for - for people to express what it is to be human. That's the purpose of it.

Much of left-wing artistic activity … has been restricted, narrowed … sometimes made sterile … [This flows] from a central source … That source is the vulgarization of the theory of art which lies behind left-wing thinking: namely, “art is a weapon.” I have come to believe that the accepted understanding of art as a weapon is not a useful guide, but a straightjacket.

Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, “Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.” So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.

A composer knows that music is written by human beings for human beings and that music is a continuation of life, not something separated from it.

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

Art expresses man.

There is no art without intention.

When you make a film, it's because it's important to you, it means something to you.

Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity.

Film is an incredible way to express yourself and your vision, as is fashion, but you have to make sure [to] be confident and honest and true to yourself and say something that means something, because that is really the point of any art.

A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry.

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.

Painting doesn't have a function, not in the way that music or film does... I mean, you can dance to music. Music can be used for a soundtrack, so it has a function in that sense, beyond itself. But painting doesn't... But I do believe that painting has a purpose.