Portraits Quotes - Page 4

• I paint in oils, I paint in acrylics. I paint figurative and landscape portraits. It's all in my own kind of style. I'm self-taught.

  Pierce Brosnan

  Self, Oil, Style

  "A Conversation with Pierce Brosnan". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• My movies are film-paintings - moving portraits captured on celluloid. I'll layer that with sound to create a unique mood -- like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth, and there would be a wind, and she'd turn back and smile. It would be strange and beautiful.

  David Lynch

  Beautiful, Moving, Unique

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• I do not care about my own appearance, but I would hope that people could see into my soul, and that is presented better in these photographs than in others. (On his self-portraits)

  August Strindberg

  Self, People, Soul

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• The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  History, Forever, Mind

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.94, Editions Le Mono

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• Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Character, Portraiture, Gestures

  Charles Baudelaire, Jonathan Mayne (1981). “Art in Paris 1845-1862: salons and other exhibitions”

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• Cassius and Brutus were the more distinguished for that very circumstance that their portraits were absent.
  [Lat., Praefulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso, quod effigies eorum non videbantur.]

  Tacitus

  Cassius, Brutus, Absence

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• Most portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me your entire lifetime and never reveal yourself to me. To interpret wrinkles as character is insult not insight.

  Duane Michals

  Lying, Character, Wrinkles

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• But a Book is only the Heart's Portrait- every Page a Pulse.

  Emily Dickinson

  Book, Heart, Pulse

  Emily Dickinson, Thomas Herbert Johnson, Theodora Ward (1986). “The Letters of Emily Dickinson”, p.756, Harvard University Press

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• From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.

  Henri Matisse

  Faces, Firsts, Execution

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• Both Proust and Joyce record the ways in which human perspectives can be transformed. In Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is constantly undergoing epiphanies, but their effects are transitory: the new synthetic complex quickly falls apart. Proust's characters, by contrast, often achieve lasting changes of perspective.

  Philip Kitcher

  Fall, Character, Lasting Change

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It's the same at an art gallery. You're looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work of art directly behind you. Because it's all energy. Every single thing has energy.

  Marina Abramovic

  Art, Energy, How You Feel

  "Marina Abramovic Talks 'The Artist is Present,' Her Thoughts On Censorship, Art & More". Interview with Cristopher Bell, www.indiewire.com. June 15, 2012.

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• I never wanted to make portraits - to photograph celebrities, beautiful people, beautiful landscapes, beautiful buildings, or people in distressing situations.... I have always been interested in everyman - average, ordinary people in everyday situations.

  Ray Metzker

  Beautiful, Average, People

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• What I really do is make portraits of the soul.

  Jan Saudek

  Soul

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• The portrait is the subject matter in photography where the problems of the media are the most visible.

  Thomas Struth

  Photography, Media, Matter

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• You will never see a portrait of my love, for miracles are never seen.

  Steve Lawrence

  Romantic, Miracle

  Song: Portrait Of My Love

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• I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Art, New York, Thinking

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

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• I collect old portraits. They're all just interesting pictures of people, and you just kind of wonder who they were and what they were. There's a guy - I don't know who he is, but he's wearing a suit. He's got his arms folded, and he looks like he sold insurance or something. I'm just wondering why someone painted him.

  Ellen DeGeneres

  People, Interesting, Guy

  "Ellen DeGeneres: Nice Girls Finish First". Interview with David Hochman, www.goodhousekeeping.com. September 10, 2011.

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• When I look in the mirror, I am slightly reminded of self-portraits by Durer and by Rembrandt, because they both show a degree of introspection. I see some element of disappointment; I see a sense of humour, but also something that is faintly ridiculous; and I see somebody who is frightened of being found out and thought lightweight.

  Robert Winston

  Disappointment, Mirrors, Self

  "What I See in the Mirror: Robert Winston". www.theguardian.com. April 13, 2012.

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• Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story. I would like to choose the durable clarity of a platinum print, but nothing in my destiny possesses the luminosity. I live among diffuse shadings, veiled mysteries, uncertainties; the tone of telling my life is closer to that of a portrait in sepia.

  Isabel Allende

  Destiny, Stories, Tone

  Isabel Allende, John Rodden (2004). “Conversations with Isabel Allende: Revised Edition”, p.36, University of Texas Press

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• You wouldn't take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you'd move in close.

  Nick Brandt

  Moving, Feet, Spirit

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• The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook-the gilt-framed portrait of the book-right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear.

  Bonnie Friedman

  Real, Book, Sacrifice

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• It [Lincoln movie] had nothing to do with politics. It had nothing to do with holding a mirror up to the way we conduct our business on Capitol Hill. This was meant to be a story, a Lincoln portrait if you will. I think any time is the right time for a very compelling story, any time.

  Steven Spielberg

  Thinking, Mirrors, Stories

  Source: screenrant.com

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• One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Demand, Impossible, Satisfied

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• There are portraits and still-lifes
  And the first, because 'human'
  Does not excel the second

  Charles Tomlinson

  Art, Perception, Doe

  Charles Tomlinson (1997). “Selected Poems: 1955-1997”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

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• A city is like a family portrait - you don't tear it up if you don't like your uncle's nose.

  Jaime Lerner

  Uncles, Cities, Tears

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