A Quote by Jeff Wall

The spontaneous is the most beautiful thing that can appear in a picture, but nothing in art appears less spontaneously than that.

Jeff Wall

Quote Topics

Appear Appears Art Beautiful Beautiful Thing Less Most Most Beautiful Most Beautiful Thing Nothing Picture Spontaneous Spontaneously Than Thing

Quote Author

Jeff Wall
Canadian - Artist
Born: September 29, 1946

What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is.

E. B. White

Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the art of smoking.

Herman Melville

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

Edgar Degas

Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than by religion.

John Sterling

The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, it comes or it lags behind, It comes from its embowered garden and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the world.

Walt Whitman

A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.

Epictetus

Most reckless things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibilities that they are founded on nothing.

John Ashbery

I found my first picture of Amanda Lepore online in fashion magazines. It was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen in my life. I thought nothing could trump the perfection of that photograph.

Sharon Needles

Nature is the most beautiful thing we have. It's better than art because it's from the creator.

Olivia Newton-John

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

You must make the main thing in your picture appear most important. If anyone tells me my hat is more important than my head - by God I'm taking off my hat.

Harvey Dunn

I have read of a glass kept in an idol temple in Smyrna that would make beautiful things appear deformed, and deformed things appear beautiful; carnal sense is such a glass to wicked men, it makes heavenly things which are beautiful to appear deformed, and earthly things which are deformed to appear beautiful.

Ralph Venning

The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of art for art's sake than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore - and then there will be time enough for art.

Upton Sinclair

There's nothing more superficial to do than to paint a beautiful woman. The most beautiful portraits in art were of ugly women. If you paint Brigitte Bardot, it's a disaster. Sunsets, you have to stay away from sunsets. You paint a sunset, you are in great danger.

Fernando Botero

Some people don't think that what I do is art - but for me art exists by definition. The beautiful and most liberating thing about being an artist is the ability to say that what I make is art. Art exists because the author says so.