How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
Vincent Van GoghRead
Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Focus on the most important aspects of a subject while allowing some details to remain unclear.
Vincent Van Gogh's quote encourages artists and individuals to emphasize the essential elements of their creations or expressions, thereby inviting interpretation and imagination. By intentionally leaving certain aspects vague, one can evoke deeper feelings and thoughts, allowing the audience to engage more meaningfully with the work, rather than being distracted by overly detailed, obvious components.
Themes
ArtEssentialVagueInterpretationCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
An artist might quote this during a gallery opening to explain their abstract style.
More from Vincent Van Gogh
All quotes βDescribing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.
Vincent Van GoghRead
To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
Vincent Van GoghRead
Great things do not just happen by impulse, _x000D_ but as a succession of small things linked together.
Vincent Van GoghRead
The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings β not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.
Vincent Van GoghRead
To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.
Vincent Van GoghRead
Similar quotes
Erotica is using a feather; pornograpy is using the whole chicken.
Isabel AllendeRead
I write for fanboy moments. I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of. I write to do all the things the viewers want too. So the intensity of the fan response is enormously gratifying. It means I hit a nerve.
Joss WhedonRead
[People] want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. ... Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then.
Henri De Toulouse-LautrecRead
After a point of time, when you get success and fame, money and everything, the purpose of life has to be redefined. For me, I think that purpose is to build bridges. Artists can do that very easily, more than politicians.
A. R. RahmanRead
Humanity looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.
Pope John Paul IiRead
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
Leonardo Da VinciRead