Illustrators

"It is a curious fact that with Through the Looking-Glass the faculty of making book illustrations departed from me. … I have done nothing in that direction since."

"A wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art."

"How true it is that some have greatness thrust upon them! - and you may be quite sure that it was none of my seeking."

"Captain Hall expressed some doubts as to my views respecting the affection and love of pigeons, as if I made it human, and raised the possessors quite above the brutes. I presume the love of the mothers for their young is much the same as the love of woman for her offspring. There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures."

"I took down my portfolio, to select a drawing to copy in oil. He had never seen my works before, and appeared astonished as his eyes ranged over the sheets. He expressed the warmest admiration, and said, "How hopeless must be the task of my giving any instruction to one who can draw like this?" I pointed out to him that nature is the great study for the artist, and assured him that the reason why my works pleased him was because they are all exact copies of the works of God, — who is the great Architect and perfect Artist; and impressed on his mind this fact, that nature indifferently copied is far superior to the best idealities."

"I cannot write at all, but if I could how could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books? I will not write at all."

"Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment; cares I knew not, and cared naught about them. I purchased excellent and beautiful horses, visited all such neighbors as I found congenial spirits, and was as happy as happy could be."

"Thank God it has rained all day. I say thank God, though rain is no rarity, because it is the duty of every man to be thankful for whatever happens by the will of the Omnipotent Creator; yet it was not so agreeable to any of my party as a fine day would have been."

"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children."

"A work of art should express only that which elevates the soul and pleases it in a noble manner. The feeling of the artist should not overstep these limits; it is wrong to venture beyond."

"He was shy, nervous, and self-conscious, without any of the intellectual assurance and ease so characteristic of him eighteen months later when his success was unquestioned."

"Imitable, Aubrey, imitable, surely."

"Why, you don't know anything about editing. Neither of you, not even with me, can run a magazine."

"Superbly premature as the flowering of his genius was, still he had immense development, and had not sounded his last stop. There were great possibilities in the cavern of his soul, and there is something macabre and tragic in the fact that one who added another terror to life should have died at the age of a flower."

"Pope has more virulence and less vehemence than any of the great satirists. His character of Sporus is the perfection of satirical writing. The very sound of words scarify before the sense strikes."

"How few of our young English impressionists knew the difference between a palette and a picture! However, I believe that Walter Sickert did — sly dog!"

"When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of Shakespeare amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study of literature. He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare."

"One’s ears are weary of the voice of the art teacher who sits like the parrot on his perch, learning the jargon of the studios, making but poor copy and calling it criticism. We have had enough of their omniscience, their parade of technical knowledge, and their predilection for the wrong end of the stick."

"The only place in London where one can forget that it is Sunday."

"His sketches were numerous and so were his mistakes."

"Advertisement is an absolute necessity of modern life, and if it can be made beautiful as well as obvious, so much the better for the makers of soap and the public who are likely to wash."

"The poster first of all justified its existence on the grounds of utility, and should it further aspire to beauty of line and colour, may not our hoardings claim kinship with the galleries, and the designers of affiches pose proudly in the public eye as the masters of Holland Road or Bond Street Barbizon (and, recollect, no gate money, no catalogue)?"

"The general opinion appears to be that it is very funny to make yourself out as fast or as foolish as possible; though even worse than this is the painful orthodoxy of those individuals who claim Shakespeare for their favourite poet, Beethoven for their favourite composer, and Raphael for their favourite painter."

"Oscar loved purple and gold, Aubrey put everything down in black and white. And while every connoisseur declared that line of the artist superb, there were others who deplored that he did not know where to draw it."

"I have always done my sketches, as people would say, for the fun of it... I have worked to amuse myself, and if it has amused the public as well, so much the better for me."

"What view the bill-sticker and sandwich man take of the subject I have yet to learn. The first is, at least, no bad substitute for a hanging committee, and the clothes of the second are better company than somebody else’s picture, and less obtrusive than a background of stamped magenta paper."

"I shall not live much longer than did Keats."

"What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it."

"There was a young man with a salary, Who had to do drawings for Malory; When they asked him for more, He replied, 'Why? Sure You've enough as it is for a gallery.'"

"I think the title page I drew for Salomé was after all "impossible". You see booksellers couldn't stick it up in their windows."

"Of course, I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing."

"It takes only one man to make an artist, but forty to make an Academician."

"I see everything in a grotesque way. When I go to the theatre, for example, things shape themselves before my eyes just as a I draw them — the people on the stage, the footlights, the queer faces and garb of the audience in the boxes and stalls. They all seem weird and strange to me. Things have always impressed me in this way."

"I’m so affected, that even my lungs are affected."

"I see you have a feeling for draperies, and I suggest you cultivate it."

"All humanity inspires me. Every passer-by is my unconscious sitter; and as strange as it may seem, I really draw folk as I see them. Surely it is not my fault that they fall into certain lines and angles."

"Art is the Flower - Life is the Green Leaf. Let every artist strive to make his flower a beautiful living thing, something that will convince the world that there may be, there are, things more precious more beautiful - more lasting than life itself... you must offer real, living - beautifully coloured flowers - flowers that grow from, but above, the green leaf – flowers that are not dead – are not dying – not artificial – real flowers springing from your own soul – not even cut flowers - You must offer the flowers of the art that is in you – the symbols of all that is noble – and beautiful – and inspiring - flowers that will often change a colourless leaf - into an established and thoughtful thing."

"(J. D. Sedding's) aphorism 'There is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist' became a personal motto for Mackintosh."

"Poetical spaces too can be painted like a vase."

"As with respect to viewers, I must say that gallery-viewing is increasingly becoming more of a fashion than a love. Many of the openings have turned into exhibitions of pompousness. Also, there are groups of viewers that enter galleries with their already formed judgments. Amidst all these there are also groups that show absolutely no reaction towards the works, these are the worst. They are neither approving nor disapproving. A smaller percentage constitutes honest art-lovers who ask questions, and their views are worthwhile and they inspire real energy in an artist."

"In my opinion, people in our society are becoming like clones. Children are not reading books , and they are not learning by doing. They're just sitting and watching each other be pretty. Like my vases."

"As Amish say "There is a vast difference between putting your nose in other people's business and putting your heart in other people's problems,” and there is also a vast difference between using the ‘grammar of language’ and the ‘grammar of painting’. In a language we have subjects, adjectives, verbs, and so on, and in painting we have light, composition, geometric planes, and lines. It is by using this grammar that one can understand a work of art. This is very similar to Ferdinand Saussure’s, distinction between “la langue” and “la parole” for interpretation of written words."

"How would you explain Manet’s '? Yes, you may say that the mirror in the back of the barmaid, like Plato’s , shows that the reflections in the mirror are as close as the viewers get to viewing reality, which is mixed up with the inner reality of the barmaid, her reflection in the mirror, and her own picture in front of the viewer and image of Manet himself as the painter and as the creator of that painting in that mirror. Yet we know that this picture cannot be real since the artist cannot simultaneously be painting the picture and be steering at the barmaid in the guise of a client in the picture. Since, if the picture shows the true reality the mirror must reflect the painter performing the act of painting! Explanations like these are, of course, stating the obvious. The truth pf this painting is all revealed at that very moment in which it connects with the subconscious of the viewers. Manet does not want to warn his viewers that “look! I am showing you the illusion of picturing reality in painting”. If he really wanted to give such a warning he would have written such a warning underneath his work, pretty much the same way that wrote '. But, even Magritte’s warning is not that clear! What is not a pipe, that illustration of a pipe? If so, then that is obvious, and what is the point of stating the obvious? Perhaps Magritte like Ferdinand de Saussure wants to say there is a difference between the pipe as a ‘signifier’ and the pipe as a ‘signified’. As I stated the grammar of painting is different from the grammar of language."

"It must be said that an authentic work of art needs no philosophical justification. In principle, if Philosophical Treatises could explain a work of art then there would be no justification for the existence of that work art. Put it differently, a work of art precisely enters into the scene when philosophy and other experimental sciences are inept of representing or elucidating an artistic vision."

"I love to experiment with all styles, and do not have any particular prejudice or bias towards any specific style. These works appear, and they turn out, the way they should. I do not decide in what style I want to paint. I am only experimenting. Even Picasso, when he arrived at Cubism, had already experimented with a lot of other styles."

"I believe any philosophizing about art is absurd and empty. Unfortunately, in the last century a phenomenon has emerged in which the status of “work of art” were granted to many foolish, tacky, and distasteful works as long as they were accompanied by ten or twelve pages of philosophizing justification."

"The pronouncements by Hegel and Nietzsche, on "the End of Art" and "the Death of God" ignited the fad of Endism in the western culture in the final century of the last millennium. Daniel Bell 's "The End of Ideology" (1960), Martin Heidegger's "The End of Philosophy" (1973), Theodore J. Lowpdi's "The End of Liberalism" (1979), Arthur Danto's "the End of Art" (1984), Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature" (1989), Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History" (1992), Kenichi Ohmae's "The End of the Nation State" (1996), Jorie Graham 's "The End of Beauty" (1999), Chris Dillow's "The End of Politics” (2007) were just some of such seemingly endless stream of "endings", which made one wonders that at such high rate will there anything be left for a future ending!"

"In my paintings, the question on whether figures are similar or not is not of any importance, the slightest change of figure or color can create a new painting and it doesn't really matter if a subject is revisited by an artist repeatedly. With enough time in between paintings, an artist can always bring to it something new."

"Seurat and Signac mixed paintings with the dry and abstract laws of science. This approach, in my opinion, usually strays from the purpose of art in general. Because it means that one cannot expect from an artifact, that is created with mathematical laws, to establish an improbable and irrational relationship between the work and the viewer."

"If I were the type of artist that didn't care whether or not my works communicated with viewers then I wouldn't bother exhibiting them, I might as well stock them in a warehouse. But I do exhibit and I do care because I want to communicate back to the viewer what I've viewed. My paintings are inspired by my homeland's traditional spaces. My colors are the colors of monasteries and mosques, the color of ruins of Sassanid and Seljuq era, colors of Bazaars of Isfahan and Shiraz, and colors of northern-Iran's ceramics. I have sensed all these colors, forms and everything within my painting's frame from the viewer's own world."