Abstract Quotes - Page 19

• I loved surrealism and abstract painting, and anything related to those. I always thought painting was the highest form of art. What led me to drawing was seeing so much self-important, pretentious, conceptual-type art in university. I wanted to reject that by making quick, fun art.

  Neil Farber

  Art, Fun, Drawing

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Directing, to me, starts even before we get to the set. Directing is a fluid, an abstract thing. It's not done only purely in the moment. It's an idea that you plant before. It's a location that you show. It's something I whisper in someone's ear. It's a freeform thing. It only takes me a week to write the script, but it's years that you're thinking about it. The execution is really the fast part.

  Harmony Korine

  Writing, Thinking, Years

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• I paint like an abstract painter everything is inside nothing is meant to be, I take tattoos off a people I take anything that's not necessarily going to be timeless. I want to get across what I feel and I just use the figure because I enjoy the figure.

  Jason Shawn Alexander

  Tattoo, People, Use

  "An Interview with Jason Shawn Alexander & Sloan Schaffer : No Good At Exits Stuns @ 101/Exhibit’s 2nd Location". Interview with Franceasca Seiden, laicreatives.com. April 17, 2014.

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• I know a lot of choreographers prefer to do abstract dance and not be bothered with a story, but even when I'm asked to do classical ballet or a modern piece, I still want to tell a story.

  Susan Stroman

  Ballet, Stories, Pieces

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Simple, Differences

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Strong Opinions”, p.34, Penguin UK

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• I was struggling to figure out how to combine the abstract and the representational. Painting, I suddenly understood how that aesthetic could fit together. That was a really fun game to figure out how that worked.

  Margaux Williamson

  Fun, Struggle, Games

  "'This Flat-Screen World'". Interview with Kenneth Goldsmith, logger.believermag.com. May 18, 2014.

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• There is something very pleasing about the principles of science and the rules of math, because they are so inevitable and so harmonious - in the abstract, anyway.

  Lydia Davis

  Math, Principles, Inevitable

  Interview with Sarah Manguso, www.believermag.com. January, 2008.

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• We can tell people abstract rules of thumb which we have derived from prior experiences, but it is very difficult for other people to learn from these. We have difficulty remembering such abstractions, but we can more easily remember a good story. Stories give life to past experience. Stories make the events in memory memorable to others and to ourselves. This is one of the reasons why people like to tell stories.

  Roger Schank

  Memories, Memorable, Writing

  Roger C. Schank (1995). “Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence”, p.10, Northwestern University Press

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• One of the problems with watching TV is that you've got a fairly low level of language operating all the time. Quite a small vocabulary and really no conceptual or abstract thinking. That's an issue. If you've got a wide vocabulary, you can learn. The complexities of grammar, in themselves, force you to think about time in a particular way. Force you to widen your outlook on the world.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Thinking, Issues, Vocabulary

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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• Abstract expression is so solid, so successful and recognizable, but there's a mystery about the artists that goes into it, a fetishism about the artists themselves and who they were.

  Keanu Reeves

  Successful, Artist, Expression

  "Robert Longo". Interview with Keanu Reeves, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 4, 2014.

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• Modern abstract art starts in Russia in about 1915 with Malevich, and then the Russian Revolution happens, and eventually all that experimental art gets squashed and social realism comes back into play. All of a sudden, Malevich is no longer painting black squares; he's painting peasants in colorful schmattas.

  Robert Longo

  Art, Play, Squares

  Interview with Keanu Reeves, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 4, 2014.

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• That's what I always loved about [Federico] Fellini's films: You see the weird joy of the weird filmmaking family and the abstract craziness that goes along with it, and there's something about it that's quite beautiful.

  Tim Burton

  Beautiful, Joy, Film

  "Interview: Tim Burton Talks Big Eyes, Margaret Keane, and More". Interview with Elise Nakhnikian, www.slantmagazine.com. December 19, 2014.

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• Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract

  William James

  Truth, Reality, Ideas

  William James (2007). “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking”, p.128, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction

  William James

  Truth, Self, Giving

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• Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do.

  William James

  Lying, Opportunity, Thinking

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.50, Harvard University Press

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• There is a part of yourself that is not subject to change, it is the silent witness behind the scenes. That is essentially your spirit, the spirit being an abstract but real force. It is as real as gravity. It is as real as time. It is incomprehensible. It is mysterious but it is powerful and it is eternal.

  Deepak Chopra

  Powerful, Real, Behind The Scenes

  Interview with Veronica M. Hay, www.peopleandpossibilities.com.

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• I always wanted to make an abstract photograph. I would photograph walls, sports interiors, marks on the walls people made. Even looking back it makes so much sense. It's like it was a fight against the photograph.

  Idris Khan

  Sports, Wall, Fighting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I saw money becoming more and more important everywhere. It's one of the most abstract and important inventions by human beings. At the same time, money is capable of extraordinary corruption in every kind of relationship. I tried to see how and why, more and more, money is becoming a religion.

  Costa-Gavras

  Important, Saws, Becoming

  Source: progressive.org

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• For me, the canvas is an abstract interpretation of a wall. It's a piece of art with its own history, one that alludes to the passage of time and to the theater of life.

  Jose Parla

  Art, Wall, Pieces

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Sometimes I think I shouldn't explain much about my work because people will just feel what they feel when they see it. They'll love it or hate it or enjoy it on their own, like how I've looked at abstract paintings of other artists and cried or felt happy because I've felt, "Wow, I've lived that, I've understood that."

  Jose Parla

  Hate, Artist, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• They are, in a sense, two sides of the same coin: women are, on the one hand, subjects of an extremely real and abject (as Julia Kristeva put it) body and denigrated sexuality; on the other, the proliferation of images, and their digitalisation produces more and more abstract and air-brushed representations of impossible female bodies. Both indicate, certainly, a "lack of progress." But, one hopes, discussions and resistance are emerging in response.

  Laura Mulvey

  Real, Air, Hands

  Source: en.aup.nl

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• [My work] looks very cinematic because it's not abstract video art. It's sometimes very narrative and since I play with film grammar in my video work, making a feature film was almost the same challenge.

  Nicolas Provost

  Art, Play, Challenges

  Source: filmmakermagazine.com

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• My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.

  Barack Obama

  Powerful, Heart, Empathy

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.10, Canongate Books

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• I just really enjoying creating in general; I used to also write stories and play music and do different crafts, but illustration ended up being the creative outlet that I focused on for my career. I feel like illustration gives me the flexibility to tackle more abstract or loose ideas, as well as just enjoy the process of putting time into developing a skill.

  Julie Dillon

  Writing, Illustration, Play

  Interview with Loraine Sammy, www.apex-magazine.com. March 4, 2014.

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• The design is a really flat primary color with all sorts of abstract geometric shapes, just implying something. And then you'd have your characters running from something with guns. It was very expressionistic.

  Don Hertzfeldt

  Running, Character, Gun

  Source: www.avclub.com

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