Eric Fischl Quotes

I believe all painting and art should be uplifting for the viewer.

"The work of art must seize upon you...carry you away."

Art consists in making others feel what we feel.

The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

Thus art is not an object, it is an experience.

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

The true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

Art is something that opens up and enhances your emotions and that's what I like to think I'm doing.

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.

Every artist in the world likes his or her work to make people think.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

Art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. It's about reasserting our firsthand experience in present time.

Sometimes art is just about getting a reaction, that's really the end-all be-all.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.

Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.

Those of us who make films try to make something that we're feeling and that we would like. Then we just hope an audience responds the same way. It's very important to have the electrical circuit made, but I don't have control over how people feel when they flip the switch. So the whole idea of marketing research and test screenings is just foreign to me.

Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.

The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.

For art to be art it has to cure.