Art Complexity Quotes

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

My popularity has to do with the divorce between modern art, where everything is obscure, and the viewer who often feels he needs a professor to tell them whether it's good or not. I believe a painting has to talk directly to the viewer, with composition, color and design, without a professor to explain it.

What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting.

Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.

Color is crucial in painting, but it is very hard to talk about.

Dogma, static positions, consonance - all these are obstacles to catching the disease of art, at least in its more complex forms.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.

Good art is art that allows you to enter it from a variety of angles and to emerge with a variety of views.

There are many, many art worlds. Art contains multitudes.

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

Songs are pretty easy. They are small, they are modular, they are about as big as a bagel. They are easy to build. Films are overwhelming in their magnitude and scope. By comparison, a lot of film directors wish they were writing songs because you can do it while getting your hair cut.

People look at film in a gallery, and if they walk out after two minutes they know they haven't seen the whole work. But then people look at a painting for two minutes and think they've seen it. Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them.

Jazz is an art that takes decades to appreciate and understand.

Life is short, the art is long, the problems pressing.

You see, painting has now become, or all art has now become completely a game, by which man distracts himself. What is fascinating actually is, that it's going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to become any good at all.

Even drawing gray hair at all is difficult to render in black and white.

What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.

Maybe it's a compliment to the film that you can't do that with it, that it can't be explained in 15 seconds.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Many works of the past complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasing boredom. Certain others plague me because I cannot follow their intentions. I can tell at a glance what Fabritius is doing, but I am spending my life trying to find out what Rembrandt was up to.

Although I'm certainly glad cartoons are finally getting some respect as an art, I'm fairly ambivalent to see cartooning as a legitimate academic offering. If comics need to be deconstructed and explained, something is really wrong with them.

The artistic world is one of high nuance.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.