Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Roy Lichtenstein - Page 2

There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Mir? and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.

The big tradition, I think, is unity. And I have that in mind; and with that, you know, you could break all the traditions- all the other so-called rules, because they are stylistic.. and most are not true. As long as the marks are related to one another, there is unity. Unity in the work itself depends on unity of the artist's vision.

I don't think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.

My work sanitizes it (emotion) but it is also symbolic of commercial art sanitizing human feelings. I think it can be read that way.... People mistake the character of line for the character of art. But it's really the position of line that's important, or the position of anything, any contrast, not the character of it.

Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.

We like to think of industrialization as being despicable. I don't really know what to make of it. There’s something terribly brittle about it. I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter. There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We're using those things – but we're not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism, and terrorism.

Usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes. I kind of do the drawing with the painting in mind, but it's very hard to guess at a size or a color and the colors around it and what it will really look like. It's only a guess at the beginning, and then I try to refine it.

Color is crucial in painting, but it is very hard to talk about. There is almost nothing you can say that holds up as a generalization, because it depends on too many factors: size, modulation, the rest of the field, a certain consistency that color has with forms, and the statement you're trying to make.

When I met Steve Kaufman, I thought he was Gene Simmons, but what an artist talent he is. He will be an art force in the art world to deal with.

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.

People think one-point and two-point perspective is how the world actually looks, but of course, it isn't. It's a convention.

I was at Rutgers University, and that was a center for Fluxus in a way. But it wasn't what I was interested in. All of it had an impact - as did happenings - because I could see that art was changing from expressionism, which I was doing at the time, or thought I was doing. But it wasn't the direction I really wanted to go.

We're not living in a school-of-Paris world, you know, and the things we really see in America are like this. It's McDonald's, it's not Le Corbusier.

Color is crucial in painting, but it is very hard to talk about.

Painting stems from a sense of organisation, the sensed positions of contrasts. Not that it is about this.

The things that I have apparently parodied I actually admire.

My direction is very anti-contemplative. If you thought I was for commercial products, you'd think there was no irony. The irony isn't meant to be an ironic comment on our society, exactly.

A number of artists have done things with Mickey Mouse - including Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. He's such an American symbol, and such an anti-art symbol.