Frank Stella Quotes

22 quotes in 287 categories

• Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into…
• You see what you know!
• I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.
• I like real art. It's difficult to define 'real' but it is the best word for describing what I like to get out of art…
• A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere.
• Making art is complicated because the categories are always changing. You just have to make your own art, and whatever categories it falls into will…
• Up until 35 I had a slightly skewed world view. I honestly believed everybody in the world wanted to make abstract paintings, and people only…
• I was worried in the '80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the…
• I want to make exalted art. A successful image has pictorial lift. I am looking for whatever is up there
• One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters. I can't stress enough how important it is, if you are interested at all…
• 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…
• No art is any good unless you can feel how it's put together. By and large it's the eye, the hand and if it's any…
• One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters.
• I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes…
• But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the…
• When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the…
• Abstract paintings must be as real as those created by the 16th century Italians.
• I always get into arguments with people who want to retain the old values in painting - the humanistic values that they... find on the…
• What you see is what you see.

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