Accounts Quote by Richard Tuttle
“If you're going to be a visual artist, then there has to be something in the work that accounts for the possibility of the invisible, the opposite of the visual experience. That's why it's not like a table or a car or something. I think that that might even be hard for people because most of our visual experiences are of tables. It has no business being anything else but a table. But a painting or a sculpture really exists somewhere between itself, what it is, and what it is not-you know, the very thing. And how the artist engineers or manages that is the question.”
About This Quote
Source Essay: Art Theory, 1995
Artists must embed the unseen within visible works, balancing what is and what is not.
In simple terms: Art blends visible and invisible aspects.
Key Takeaway
Balance visible and invisible in art.
Themes
creativity
perception
duality
Mood
thoughtful
analytical
Type
philosophical
inspirational
When to use this quote
- painting
- sculpture
- installation
- conceptual design
Key Concepts
aesthetics
ontology
interpretation
Questions to Reflect On
- How can you convey the unseen?
- What does “the opposite of visual” mean?
A Different Perspective
The invisible may be too abstract for some audiences.
![“[My photography teacher] gave me the Mexican Day Books of Edward Weston and just blew me away with this work. The fact that you could be this fabulous visual artist, with all this milieu of people like Diego Rivera and you could sleep with these gorgeous, amazing women, that you could live that…” quote by Max Pam](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/bb8/max-pam-75748_amazing-woman_my-photography-teacher-gave-me-the-mexic_670029.jpg)
