Marlene Dumas Quotes

Through a painting we can see the whole world.

You can mix in certain sensitivities as a filmmaker.

The cartoon absolutely captures something that acres and acres of copy can't. And even photographs can't.

We seem to know when to 'tap the heart.' Others have hit the intellect. We can hit them in all emotional way. Those who appeal to the intellect only appeal to a very limited group. The real thing behind this is: we are in the motion picture business, only we are drawing them instead of photographing them.

Great art is not a matter of presenting one side or another, but presenting a picture so full of the contradictions, tragedies, [and] insights of the period that the impact is at once disturbing and satisfying.

You need contrast and conflict in order to tell a story. Stories need to have dark and light, turmoil, all those things. But that does not mean the filmmaker has to suffer in order to show the suffering. Stories should have the suffering, not the people.

The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.

I see all art as a complement to telling people's stories. I'm in the storytelling business. I believe that the humanity that all of us share is the stories of our lives, and everybody has a story. Your story is as important as the next person's story.

I can't even tell you what else I imagined. I can only humiliate myself to such a degree; at a certain point it becomes humorous, and this story is not meant to be humorous. This story is meant to winch your ribs open and tamper with your heart. This story is meant to make you realize that your chances of happiness in this world are terribly slim if you lack a fine imagination.

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

Movies have an enormous power to open the mind and the heart and everything. You are sitting and seeing something moving in front of you, and then your mind goes into a trance. You are completely there. It's a real great art; it's not only a business. It's to open the mind, to understand this mystery within reality. This is why we need it.

Why talk about sculpture when I can photograph it?

I certainly fall in love with artists. I think that's probably the aspiration of an artist, to make a listener empathize so deeply that they do fall in love with you.

The contest between form and content is what, is what art is about - it's art history. That's what basically everybody has ever contended with. The problem is uniquely complex in still photography.

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

I want my pictures to cut through political abstractions... and make a connection on a human level.

I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

Stories always have held conflicts and contrasts, highs and lows, life and death situations. And there can be much suffering in stories, but now we say the artist doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand the human condition, understand the suffering.

How painting surpasses all human works by reason of the subtle possibilities which it contains.

Art comes from joy and pain...But mostly from pain.

It's art. It's commerce. It's heartbreaking and it's fun. It's a great way to live.

There's a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.