Top 585 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Sculptors - Page 4

If you get it out into the urban field it's going to be used or misused but it'll also probably provide a way of people acknowledging what the aesthetic is about because people have to confront it every day.

A life cycle can be imposed on an object. An object can be very energetic and active, and then it has a dying phase and a phase of decomposition.

Now when you have administrators deciding what sexuality is, and what's a taboo and what's not in terms of content, you got guys, like, Trent Lott who equates homosexuality with a disease.

What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.

Mushy novels, pretty pictures, pretty sculpture, decorations on the wall, nice parallel lines - make me sick.

Because my work is naturally non-meaningful, the meaning found in it will remain doubtful and inconsistent - which is the way it should be. All that I care about is that, like any startling piece of nature, it should be capable of stimulating meaning.

Glass is the most magical of all materials. It transmits light in a special way...Im pleased that my art appeals to so many people of all ages. As a parent and an artist, Im especially looking forward to leaving a legacy at The Childrens Museum, a place where I hope my work brings joy to children who visit from all over the world.

I happen to like regionalism, whatever that means. I like the idea of art that somehow specifically reflects some aspect of a community or culture from which was created, the idea of uniform art sounds dreadfully boring and almost fascistic in its implication. So in that sense, I really celebrate the idea of a place that allows for a range of ideas and certainly L.A. does that.

I'm in favor of an art that does something other than just sit on its ass in a museum.

Remember, second chances don't expire until midnight.

Cats of good breed hunt better fat than lean.

You are what you are because your parents made love at that exact moment, and if they made love one second after you would be different. The fact that you were born means that there are no other children born because of you - you've killed them in a way. Is it destiny? Was it written somewhere that this was to be your life? Is it useful that you are here? Or is it simply by chance?

It was always disappointing to see that what I could really master in terms of form boiled down to so little.

Words are cold and formal things.

But eventually I moved the portraiture into the smaller clay things which gave them more of a caricature look to them, rather than a characterization.

Any work that is not rooted in myth and poetry or that does not partake of the depth and essence of the universe is merely a ghost.

I never take photographs myself. I don’t feel like a photographer, more like a recycler

One can pass on responsibility, but not the discretion that goes with it.

My features I take from my father, but my spirit, my industry and perseverance I get from my Indian mother.

I have made my world and it is a much better world than I ever saw outside.

Don't ask what it means or what it refers to. Don't ask what the work is. Rather, see what the work does.

My work comes from the experience of crowds, injustice, and aggression… I feel an affinity for art when it was made a form of existence, like when shamans worked in the territory between men and unknown powers… I try to bewitch the crowd.

In my work, I have never had any use for anything that I have known in advance.

The way of a creative mind is always positive, it always asserts; it does not know the doubts which are so characteristic of the scientific mind.

I appreciate a slight yield, lightness of weight, some motion if possible, because in moving about, the human body determines... the comfort and the measurements of its environment... the human measure is still the strongest factor. But coming back to the chair, there are certain motions we go through - we like to lean back, like to toss things - and if the chair's adaptable it responds and it's almost like wearing a comfortable coat; you really don't know you have it on.

I think the benefit of a Catholic childhood is your belief in visual symbols as transmitters of information and clues about life, whether it's the mystery of life or life in general.

The freer that women become, the freer men will be. Because when you enslave someone, you are enslaved.

I never met a color I did not like.

I think you always have to find where the boundary is in relation to the context in order to be able to kind of articulate how you want the space to interact with the viewer.

True strength is delicate.

All my high school papers were written in the rare book room.

I think of moving as a kind of saving grace.

I tolerate my faults but not at all other people's.

No matter how individual we humans are, we are a composite of everything we are aware of. We are a mirror of our times.

It is easy to follow, but it is uninteresting to do easy things. We find out about ourselves only when we take risks, when we challenge and question.

I finished my studies in England, I opened my studio in London, and the first one-man exhibit I had on Bond Street, which was opened by the Austrian ambassador.

I think at one point, a whole new younger generation of critics come in and they're really aware of zeitgeist in their group, and the older artists tend to get forgotten as their critics retire and do other things or stop paying attention. So there's a factor of aging that I think is to be considered, too. As a middle-aged artist, you kind of get put on a shelf for the young ones.

The transformation of disease, as exemplified by the case of diabetes, is a valuable and elegant concept that serves to remind us that the tally sheet for medical science must carry a column for debit as well as credit.

An artist’s work is almost entirely inquiry based and self-regulated. It is a fragile process of teaching oneself to work alone, and focusing on how to hone your quirky creative obsessions so that they eventually become so oddly specific that they can only be your own.

I see no reason why I should tickle stones or waste time on polishing bronze.

But you have to take all of those things, you have to take into consideration the paths, the roadways, how much cloud cover there is, how much foliage cover there is, whether there are streams, all of that comes into play.

Art comes from art: I remember going to the Matisse show and seeing how Matisse had taken one of his own paintings, worked from it and transformed it, and that had led on to the next one and the next.

I think humor is used a lot of the time to keep people from getting too close. Humor side-steps and shifts the meaning.

I can assure you, that once you get rid of the notion of art, you acquire a great many wonderful new freedoms.

Since the time of the cavemen, man has glorified himself, has made himself divine, and his monstrous vanity has caused human catastrophe. Art has collaborated in this false development. I find this concept of art which has sustained man's vanity to be loathsome.

Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.

About my method of work: first it’s the state of mind—Elation (joy).

We're painting the same people all our life - it's just the way we look at them that changes. If you experience trauma, you can speak about it in so many different ways. You can speak about landscape, you can speak about your food; it's always different. Trauma is the beginning of life as an artist.

A painting is merely the image of a tree, a man, or any other object reflected in a fountain. The difference between a painting and sculpture is the difference between a shadow and the thing which casts it.

Artists don't think archivally.

From the time I can first recall the rain falling on the red clay in Florida. I wanted to make things. When my brothers and sisters were making mud pies, I would be making ducks and chickens with the mud.

I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air.

If you are an artist, you may live with Lincoln. You sit with him, your coat is spread to keep the snow from the grave of Ann Rutledge; you will walk with Washington through the snow and suffer with him as you note the bloodstained footsteps at Valley Forge.

I am interested in finding solutions to problems.

I don't think you can prevent an artist from being and I don't think you can cause one to be. No one knows what makes an artist.

The nature of the lost-wax process is that there is no original in the popular sense.

There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect.

His work "The Pasture" features cast bronze cows in Toronto's financial district I wanted to remind stockbrokers what real stock is.

I thought Out of Action was better as a catalogue than the honeycomb because the honeycomb was like walking into one compartment and then another compartment.

The artist who imagines that he puts his best into a portrait in order to produce something good, which will be a pleasure to the sitter and to himself, will have some bitter experiences.