Iconography Quotes

• How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

  Polly Toynbee

  Art, Knowing, Culture

  "This is a clash of civilisations - between reason and superstition" by Polly Toynbee, www.theguardian.com. April 13, 2006.

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• If geography is prose, maps are iconography.

  Lennart Meri

  Maps, Geography, Prose

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• One cannot set out to make a work that's spiritual. What is a contemporary iconography for the spiritual? Is it some fuzzy space?

  Anish Kapoor

  Spiritual, Space, Fuzzy

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• Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigorous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Wall, Pain, Media

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• Iconography becomes even more revealing when processes or concepts, rather than objects, must be depicted for the constraint of a definite "thing" cedes directly to the imagination. How can we draw "evolution" or "social organization," not to mention the more mundane "digestion" or "self-interest," without portraying more of a mental structure than a physical reality? If we wish to trace the history of ideas, iconography becomes a candid camera trained upon the scholar's mind.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Reality, Self, Organization

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History”, p.428, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There comes a point when you've exhausted your opportunities playing good guys. I've been around long enough, I think I'm entitled to explore a bit. But what I saw there was an opportunity to play a character different from what the audience's expectation was. A chance to take their crude experience of me - of my iconography, if you will - and turn it on its ear at an appropriate juncture in the film to be useful to the process of telling the story.

  Harrison Ford

  Character, Opportunity, Thinking

  "Star Wars Archive: Harrison Ford, Solo Artist". Interview with William Thomas, www.empireonline.com. June, 2002.

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• I am interested in circulating past iconography in the present in order to get to the future.

  Mariko Mori

  Past, Order

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• I am interested in Icons, not just religious works but also contemporary icons. I also like the way the Pop movement of the 60s took subjects from consumer products and people - soup cans, comic books, film stars - and elevated them through art, just like in traditional iconography.

  Horace Panter

  Religious, Art, Stars

  Source: louderthanwar.com

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• I was trying to do like a spaghetti western but using World War II iconography.

  Quentin Tarantino

  War, Trying, World

  "The Rachel Maddow Show", www.nbcnews.com. February 11, 2010.

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• Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.

  James Wolcott

  Art, Book, Design

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• The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.

  Shane Claiborne

  God, Christian, Stars

  Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw (2009). “Jesus for President”, p.197, Harper Collins

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• People have a very proprietary relationship with Superman. It's important to respect the iconography and the canon, but at the same time, you have to tell a story.

  Zack Snyder

  People, Important, Stories

  Source: collider.com

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• Modern man has been in search of a new language of form to satisfy new longings and aspirations - longings for mental appeasement, aspirations to unity, harmony, serenity - an end to his alienation from nature. All these arts of remote times or strange cultures either give or suggest to the modern artist forms which he can adapt to his needs, the elements of a new iconography.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Men, Giving

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• The whole iconography of ancient science is simply the fruit of wishful thinking.

  George Sarton

  Thinking, Fruit, Ancient

  George Sarton (1993). “Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C.”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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• My obsessions stay the same - historical memory and historical erasure. I am particularly interested in the Americas and how a history that is rooted in colonialism, the language and iconography of empire, disenfranchisement, the enslavement of peoples, and the way that people were sectioned off because of blood.

  Natasha Trethewey

  Memories, Blood, People

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• When something is iconic, if you're very careful and delicate, you can add onto that iconography. It can expand. People have attached so much to it themselves, and connected to it, so the risks are big, but the potential is enormous, at the same time.

  Hugh Dancy

  People, Risk, Add

  Source: collider.com

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• David Bowie really played with ideas, and iconography and imagery. He's brilliant man. And a gentleman, too.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Men, Ideas, Gentleman

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• Lorenzo de' Medici seeks highly skilled, aesthetically oriented individual to conceive and implement several major public projects. You are a generalist with sound training in structural engineering, synthesis of pigments and Christian iconography. Some climbing involved

  Michelangelo

  Christian, Climbing, Engineering

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• I drove from New York to California by myself. The iconography of travel and escape is everywhere in my photographs... So actually becoming a runaway was crucial. I had this idea that I'd make my way across the frontier and find my story as it was actually happening in the landscape.

  Justine Kurland

  New York, Ideas, California

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• My visual landscape as a child was the inside of a lot of these old churches. And the Baroque drama of the things was what I was first engaging with artwise. I'm much more attracted to the aesthetic of religious iconography than the actual religious side. The passion and the blood and the violence and the gaudy side of it I find really fascinating.

  Florence Welch

  Religious, Children, Drama

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• It's difficult to choose between these art forms. Iconography is entirely different from the style of the 15th century masters, who were experts in foreshortening and perspective. The technical skill and visual effects of painters like Uccello have to be admired. They achieved a level of artistry that has never been surpassed, in my opinion.

  Mary Pope Osborne

  Art, Skills, Perspective

  Source: www.yabookshelf.com

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• I actually thought that the idea of doing a World War II movie in the guise of a spaghetti western would just be an interesting way to tackle it. Just even the way that the spaghetti westerns tackled the history of the Old West, I thought it could be a neat thing to do that with World War II, but just as opposed to using cowboy iconography, using World War II iconography as kind of the jumping-off point.

  Quentin Tarantino

  War, Cowboy, Jumping

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• Some of Buddhist texts say that, in the moment after you die, you think of New Jersey and you go to New Jersey or you think of 1820 and you go to 1820. Also, all your sort of inner-symbology gets writ large. So, if you're a Christian, you see Christian iconography.

  George Saunders

  Christian, Buddhist, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• We were all inspired by him as an actor and his iconography and thought, if we get somebody like Laurence Fishburne, we can tell a much more sophisticated, complicated version of Jack Crawford than we'd seen before as this large and in-charge and in-control guy, who is unflappable.

  Bryan Fuller

  Guy, Actors, Inspired

  "Bryan Fuller walks us through Hannibal's debut season (2 of 4)". Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, tv.avclub.com. July 24, 2013.

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• I don't take trouble at all to conform a screenplay to my iconography. I don't say, "We can't do that - the audience wouldn't accept it." I try to take the limitations of what is required to play a leading character and then screw with them.

  Harrison Ford

  Character, Play, Trying

  "Star Wars Archive: Harrison Ford, Solo Artist". Interview with William Thomas, www.empireonline.com. June, 2002.

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