There was a big drive when I was at art school to make you aware of the economy of meaning - after all, this was still during the tail end of minimalism. Being responsible for everything you put in your picture, and being able to defend it. Keeping everything clear around you so you know what is operating. To open the wound and keep it clean.
The first time I saw 'Sunset Boulevard' I was probably eight or nine years old, and it really struck me how it's so simply put and elegant, yet there's so much going on.
My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.
I always think, 'What does this picture mean? What's the best place to put my camera? Do I have anything extra in the picture, things in the background that will distract? Am I in the basic position that will give the essential things for this picture but not too much?'
Grandeur of effect is produced by two different ways which seem entirely opposed to each other. One is by reducing the colors to little more than chiaroscuro... and the other, by making the colors very distinct and forcible... but still, the presiding principle of both those manners is simplicity.
There are some aspects of the diagram that I wish I had expressed a little more clearly.
The motif must always be set down in a simple way, easily grasped and understood by the beholder. By the elimination of superfluous detail, the spectator should be led along the road that the artist indicates to him, and from the first be made to notice what the artist has felt.
The camera can capture thought in a way that's quite surprising and shocking. You can become very simple and minimal in your work and communicate a lot with just a finger or an eyebrow, or a look, or a glance.
I'm happy to provide that service. But that's the power of it. A good infographic that's been really worked on looks simple and easy, but it actually required a lot of processing.
For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.
No color will ever be brighter for me than black and white.
Minimal art went nowhere.
Comedy is all about the joke. Comedies usually don't do anything fancy with the camera [or] the lighting. It doesn't matter. It should never be fancy.
I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract.
For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.
So much of art-making is about reducing things to the essentials, so I don't feel particularly crippled by this. I don't want it to look natural because then I would be making a documentary film.
Pictures must not be too picturesque.
My paintings are certainly nonobjective. They're just horizontal lines. There's not any hint of nature. And still everybody responds, I think.
I do love sparse cartooning.
They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn't seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible.
The shapes of letters do not derive their beauty from any sensual or sentimental reminiscences. No one can say that the O’s roundness appeals to us only because it is like that of an apple or of a girl’s breast or of the full moon. Letters are things, not pictures of things.
I love white, I love black. For me, sometimes, it's nice to play with colors, but when you're too busy to think and you've got so much in your mind, sometimes all you need is a bare uniform.
If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.
I like silent pictures and I always have ... I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way: one of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film.
I am quite convinced now... that the actual training of drawing cartoons - which is, of course, my style - led to my producing Spot. Cartoons must be very simple and have as few words as possible, and so, too, must the 'Spot' books.
