Visual Representation 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.

I have a policy that I don't actually watch the work that I do. There are all kinds of reasons to do that, but one really interesting side effect that has come about from that is that I have no imagery of the show that isn't from first-person.

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye.

I have never seen an angel. Show me an angel, and I'll paint one.

Approach nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone ...

Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible.

Create, artist, do not talk.

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

Portraiture is something that we're all drawn to. I think primarily other forms - we prefer, by and large, to look at human beings than a bowl of fruit.

Art is truth.

You can go to the moon or walk under the sea, or anything else you like, but painting remains painting because it eludes such investigation. It remains there like a question. And it alone gives the answer.

Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms.

The principal role of a logo is to identify, and simplicity is its means... Its effectiveness depends on distinctiveness, visibility, adaptability, memorability, universality, and timelessness.

So begins a question which has of late become more and more urgent: what is the relation of aesthetics to politics?

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

Photography has the power to undo your assumptions about the world.

The simple fact is that what you see on the screen is pretty much real.

The mass of Venom. I mean, he's like a big, foreboding, physical presence. Actually, let me correct myself - the eyes, the tongue, the mouth, those are his most distinguishing traits, and so making those look as photoreal and true to the comics as we possibly could was super important to me.

Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go.

Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point.

The truth is, I don't know how to draw.

If there can be a better way for the real world to include the one of images, it will require an ecology not only of real things but of images as well.

I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.

There was a mission: To match the cover of 'Extraordinary' to the cover of the paperback 'Impossible,' which was commercially successful. Consider the outdoor natural setting, the single girl in motion with her hair blowing, and the cursive font used for the title; both covers have these in common.

There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera.