A Quote by Robert Genn

Flat, uninteresting parts of paintings are, in fact, a ruse to get the viewer to see what needs to be seen.

Robert Genn

Quote Topics

Fact Flat Get In Fact Needs Paintings Parts See Seen Uninteresting Viewer

Quote Author

Robert Genn
Canadian - Artist
May 15, 1936 - May 27, 2014

I want my paintings to give the viewer a true sense of reality - that includes but is not limited to depth, scale and a tactile surface as well as the real sense of what the subject looks like and is feeling at the time that I painted them. There should be a discourse between the viewer and the subject, to feel as though they are in a way connected. My goal is not to set a narrative but rather to have the viewer bring their own experiences to the painting and the subject as they would if they had seen the subject on the street in real life.

David Kassan

All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion…What you see is what you see.

Frank Stella

I have always wanted to make paintings that are impossible to walk past, paintings that grab and hold your attention. The more you look at them, the more satisfying they become for the viewer. The more time you give to the painting, the more you get back.

Cecily Brown

I don't see that my age has anything to do with what is between the covers of my book, any more than the fact that I am right-handed. It's a fact of my biography, but it's uninteresting.

Eleanor Catton

I've never seen myself as a celebrity, but I see it in a positive way, the fact that people are still interested in most parts of my life.

David Beckham

I want the viewer to be overwhelmed. I want the space to feel like it is caving in on the viewer and that they are forcibly entering the world of my paintings. I want there to be a feeling of overpowering decadence to the work, that is almost too much to take. I don't want them to be subtle.

Rosson Crow

A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.

Irving Penn

A good photograph will prove to the viewer how little our eyes permit us to see. Most people, really, don’t see-see only what they have always seen and what they expect to see-where a photographer, if he’s good, will see everything. And better if he sees things he doesn’t expect to see.

Leon Levinstein

Even when I'm back home, I find the flat parts of the course tougher. Because it's flat, I feel it more in my knees.

Genzebe Dibaba

There must be an open space in the paintings - an entry space for the viewer, or even for me. Just white space where you can get into it.

Norbert Bisky

Flat or uninteresting writing often signals something deeper that is being covered up.

Kathi Appelt

The paintings are not just on flat walls - you have these enormous niches, bulges and protrusions, as well as stalactites and stalagmites. The effect of the three-dimensionality is phenomenal. It's a real drama which the artists of the time understood, and they used it for the drama of their paintings.

Werner Herzog

The real change that paintings undergo is in the perceptions of the viewer.

Arthur Smith

The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.

Irving Stone

In fact, every place I've been to in Africa has a nice part, but you see the downside. Calcutta , parts of Central and South America , I've seen a lot of dead bodies and a lot of sad poverty and just obliteration.