Peter Max Quotes

Things like anatomy and drawing and design and color had pretty much been drop-kicked out of the curriculum in the '70s, when I was studying art, in favor of abstraction and minimalism.

I only understand realism.

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.

I really admire paintings that look like an actual snapshot - I think that's just extraordinary.

I went to art school when I was little.

In classical oil painting, there seemed to be a radical turn to seeing things as the camera sees them, with that technological modification. I began to have a tremendous problem with all of this.

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

I was at the Royal Art School. That was a preparatory school specially for art teachers. You see, it was not so much for the development of artists. But we had there terribly stiff training.

If I had gone to art college and everybody was being a conceptual artist, I probably would have wanted to be a portrait or landscape painter.

Social realism takes research.

I don't do abstract art because I don't find it as interesting as I do subjects and depictions.

I have hundreds of art books and the biographies of artists I love, such as Thomas Eakins and Edgar Degas.

The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the material for modern poetry.

I wouldn't go across the street to see a Bouguereau. His pictures look false; he does not get the truth of what he wishes to represent. His light is not outdoor light; his works are waxy and artificial. They are extremely near being frauds.

In Giacometti's work, the armature has once again become the life-line of the sculpture, and also, he's brought back to sculpture a nervous sensitivity which the 'pure carving' side of sculpture can lose sight of altogether.

My gallery represents a lot of figurative artists.

I've just always been interested in alter-naturalism and seeing if you can make real life interesting enough to be dramatic without enhancing it. Like, could you make a movie or write a play in which there's no compression of time, there's no enhanced event, it's just real life?

Whenever I write, I write what I find to be the way people are. I never use any symbolism at all, but if you write as true to life as you possibly can, people will see symbolism. They'll all see different symbolism, but they're apt to because you can see it in life.

I find that there's so much funny stuff in real life, and I am much more interested in super grounded, real stuff, so now I just want things to feel real and authentic.

I love many realists but very strongly resist the notion that realism presents a less stylized, more authentic version of the world.

I think I'm just generally more interested in figuration than abstraction. I think that painting abstraction often feels like painting colors to me, whereas portraits always feel like something connected. I like the exchange, the collaborative aspect of sitter and subject for sure.

A close friend of mine described me as a radical pragmatist. I embrace this no-nonsense distinction wholeheartedly. It is a character trait that matches the sense of myself I've had from as far back as I can remember. I am not one who goes in much for magical thinking. I don't believe in destiny, fate, or things like divine guidance, either.

I'm a formalist. I'm interested in the history of painting.

I like to keep my films close to reality.