Creative Renaissance Quotes

I like to break down barriers and I think that Hollywood is doing the same thing over and over. I want to do something new and say, "Let's evolve as artists!"

There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.

The 1980s were fantastic. This was a time when we were at the peak of our creative work. The question of whether we would exist or not - something which everybody used to ask, including ourselves - stopped. Profits kept pace with growth requirements. HCL had credibility - that was the biggest barrier we had to break.

As one who loves literature, art, music and history, I've been deeply rooted in the Harlem Renaissance for many years.

What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world.

Artistic mediums go through phases where progress happens really rapidly, and then other moments where it slows down.

The disintegration of the culture starts with the artist. I'm on a crusade to turn the tide in the arts, to restore dignity to the arts and, by extension, to the culture.

It's always true, and in all the arts. When one guy's terrific, there will be a lot of other terrific guys around. And this last decade, the '90s, has been a period of very low talent.

3D really altered the way I shot the movie completely, and it was exciting because, after 20 years of filmmaking, I felt like I was making my first movie, all over again.

The death of every art form seems imminent at least once in every century; but while the very funeral arrangements go forward, some child is born who is Michelangelo, Picasso, Yeats.

I think television goes through phases, like other creative arts, where suddenly a group of people are producing exciting work all at once.

From 1940 to the present, the art world - and particularly Los Angeles - has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.