I have a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College in Illinois. All I did was give a speech, and now everybody has to call me Dr. Colbert.
Stephen ColbertRead
You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and you’re like an immigrant to your own world. You don’t have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the complexity of the world and our perception of it through art.
Shaun Tan's quote reflects on the challenges artists face in perceiving and representing reality. It suggests that even familiar objects, like a car, can seem foreign and bizarre when examined closely, illustrating how art can reveal the strangeness and beauty in the everyday world. The act of drawing becomes a journey of discovery, emphasizing that the unusual and confounding elements of life are ever-present, waiting to be explored through creativity.
Themes
ArtPerceptionCreativityWorldStrangeness
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of art in society, one might use this quote to illustrate how creativity changes our perspective.
Similar quotes
In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.
John F. KennedyRead
We know there are poets who are chosen: by what or whom, we no more know than what lies beyond our final breath, or what caused a certain action which resulted in the fulfillment or the desecration and collapse of what we most cared for in life.
Franz WrightRead
It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.
David HockneyRead
The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.
David AttenboroughRead
If I'm going to be anything more than average, if anyone is going to remember me, then I need to go further, in art, in life, in everything!
Salvador DaliRead