A Quote by William Dobell

So long as people expect paintings to be simply coloured photographs they get no individuality and, in the case of portraits, no characterisation.

William Dobell

Quote Topics

Case Expect Get Individuality Long Paintings People Photographs Portraits Simply

Quote Author

William Dobell
Australian - Artist
September 24, 1899 - May 13, 1970

I've had photographs taken for portraits because I very much prefer working from the photographs than from models... I couldn't attempt to do a portrait from photographs of somebody I didn't know.

Francis Bacon

I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth.

William Klein

All photographs are self-portraits.

Minor White

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

Ansel Adams

Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs, photographs of advertising, sculpture with ready-made objects, videos using already-existing film.

Jerry Saltz

I think I've identified as an artist since I was a baby - literally a baby. I made a book of drawings and paintings in pre-school. By the time I got to high school, I was completely enamored with art, doing paintings and portraits at lunchtime. I've been creating in some capacity forever.

Chloe Wise

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

My aim is increasingly to make my photographs look so much like photographs [rather than paintings, etchings, etc.] that unless one has eyes and sees, they won't be seen - and still everyone will never forget having once looked at them.

Alfred Stieglitz

I feel certain that the largest part of all photographs ever taken or being taken or ever to be taken, is and will continue to be, portraits. This is not only true, it is also necessary. We are not solitary mammals, like the elephant, the whale and the ape. What is most profoundly felt between us, even if hidden, will reappear in our portraits of one another.

Ben Maddow

It's always the case, whenever you're doing someone real, how much you want to do an impression or a characterisation. If I was doing Churchill, or Gandhi - people know exactly how they talked, walked.

Martin Freeman

That's what I paint, I paint people. They're portraits, but you won't always be pleased with the way you look in my paintings. Which is fine, I guess. Unless you're buying it, and it's of your kid!

Jemima Kirke

Portraits are the most intimate photographs. The image will survive the subject.

Victor Skrebneski

I want to make beautiful paintings. But I don't make beautiful paintings by putting beautiful paint on a canvas with a beautiful motif. It just doesn't work. I expect my paintings to be strong and surprising.

Albert Oehlen

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.