Artistic Subjectivity Quotes

I believe in limitations. I think the worst art ever made - in my opinion, because it's all so subjective - is where the artist had complete freedom.

Money is something that can be measured; art is not. It's all subjective.

I always question if somebody else is going to love my films. I think that's what art is about - it's so individual.

I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?

Some people... cling to the idea that the photograph is an inherently real or honest image and as such is always on a different plane from an obviously subjective form of visual communication such as painting.

If you are in an Edward Albee play, you say Edward Albee is the greatest playwright of all time... If you're in an Israel Horovitz play, you say Israel Horovitz is the greatest playwright of all time.

There is, in any art, a tendency to turn one's own preferences into a monomaniac theory.

I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love.

Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven't I the right to paint you as I want?

Art does not, like science, set forth a permanent order of nature, the enduring skeleton of law. Two factors primarily determine its works: one is the idea in the mind of the artist, the other is his power of expression; and both these factors are extremely variable.

And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously.

I like clever lyrics, funny lyrics, dumb lyrics. I can never put my finger on what I like about them.

Completely true to nature!' - what a lie: / How could nature ever be constrained into a picture? / The smallest bit of nature is infinite! / And so he paints what he likes about it. / And what does he like? He likes what he can paint!

Music tells no truths.

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

I'm glad I made a piece of art that can be interpreted so widely. Art is always interpreted subjectively.

There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art? There is hardly a right and a wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should form the basis of all works of art.

There is no photograph more inherently photographic than another.

With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.

Art is subject to arbitrary fashion.

I have no evangelical feelings about art at all. I despise art education. Art doesn't lend itself to education. There is no knowledge there. It's a set of propositions about how things should look.

If anything can be art, then anyone can be an artist.

I don't really see art as structured by logic.

I don't think there's any formula for what makes great art.

In art the search for a content which is collectively understandable is false; the content will always be individual.