Making something good and saying something brilliant are not two things. When you make your own statement, there is a higher energy level, and you do better painting.
I don't know why you'd want to say your work comes from nature, because art is related to perception, not nature. All abstract artists try to tell you that what they do comes from nature, and I'm always trying to tell you that what I do is completely abstract. We're both saying something we want to be true.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that art is fundamentally about perception rather than being a direct representation of nature.
Roy Lichtenstein's quote reflects on the essence of art and its relation to perception. He argues that while some abstract artists claim that their work emerges from nature, he believes that true abstraction transcends nature, focusing instead on the subjective experience of viewers. Each artist creates a narrative influenced by their own interpretation, regardless of the natural world, highlighting the complex dialogue between abstraction and perception.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about modern art, one could use this quote to challenge traditional views on artistic inspiration.
More from Roy Lichtenstein
All quotes →Im interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think its the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really cant be this way.
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Judge: And what is your occupation in general? Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator. Judge: And who recognized you to be a poet? Who put you in the ranks of poet? Brodsky: No one. And who put me in the ranks of humanity? Judge: Did you study it?...How to be a poet? Did you attempt to finish an insitute of higher learning...where they prepare...teach Brodsky: I did not think that it is given to one by education. Judge: By what then? Brodsky: I think that it is from God.
The writing process for a short story feels more like field geology, where you keep turning the thing over and over, noting its qualities in detail, hammering at it, putting it near flame, pouring different acids on it, and then finally you figure out what it is, or you just give up and mount it on a ring and have an awkward chunky piece of jewelry that seems weirdly dominating but that you for some reason like. I could be wrong about field geology here.
In the elder days of art Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the Gods are everywhere
People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them 'all of my life.'
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint.
It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.