Alan Rickman Quotes

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

There were some extremely good teachers there that were great artists really in their own right. It was actually very hard to concentrate on getting down to going any work being an art student especially when it's a flighty thing at best.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

A contemporary artist can use the findings of all epochs and all styles, from the most primitive literary expressions up to the most refined products of the baroque.

I've been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.

And I have exposed myself to art so that my work has something beyond just the usual potter.

I feel like, paying homage to an artist, it's better to do something that's inspired by them - a new work that's inspired by them - versus another person saying they redid your song.

My idea about the role of artists is to get people to look at things in a way that's different than the way they normally would if they are being told how to think, what to do. I think when people receive information through art, they are more open-minded.

In my own life, I share my home with works by artists like Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Jackie Windsor and so many others, whose creativity is clear and fresh and compelling; the works break through the usual, and they inspire creativity; they inspire responses and understanding.

In the entertainment industry all that anybody wants to do whether it's music or stories or dancing or comedy or whatever, they want to entertain the public. And they do it any way they can. Sometimes they concentrate simply on entertaining people and they don't care what message they are giving.

Sometimes you read a passage by a great writer, and you know what he says and how he says it will always be, for you, the only possible way it could be. Less often a painter will describe an event in a way that fits into your interpretation of that event so perfectly that it becomes the event itself.

I have had three masters, Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.

Actors are like kids, they need to play a little bit. And that's the nature of their job, they need to shake off some energy and then you as the director get them back on track. When you do loosen up the reins, you get some amazing things, but you have to wring out the performances for every last good drop.

Warhol influenced me because of his writing. If I had never read his writings and interviews, I would never have understood his work.

I didn't see an abstract painting until I was 18, when I went to Vincent Price's house and saw Richard Niebencorn, Wolff, Jackson Pollack. He had an amazing collection. I didn't know people painted abstractly, I thought I was just doing something wholeheartedly.

My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.

I'm trying to steal from everybody. So yeah, there's cats that I'm personally affiliated with - Carl Franklin, Paul Thomas Anderson - and others that I don't know personally but their work I'm a big admirer of, like Martin Scorsese. But I'm hoping to come up with a language that is mine, that's specific to my take on this material.

All I care about these days is painting — photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.

Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation.

I really love art and I always have in every single different form and I just hope that I'm able to give some art that will touch some people and help them to be more positive and stronger.

The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter - perfect in its bud as in its bloom - with no reason to explain its presence - no mission to fulfill - a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist - a puzzle to the botanist - an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.

I'm just enjoying playing a character of myself. People's mouths drop when I dance, but my friends are like, "You dance like that in the kitchen!"