Quotes about picture
page 8

“Enactment is first and foremost about action in the world, and not about conceptual pictures of the world.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 36; as cited in: Haridimos Tsoukas, ‎Jill Shepherd (2009), Managing the Future: Foresight in the Knowledge Economy, p. 99

“.. the idea that an artist is nothing unless he accepts the total responsibility for everything that he does.... by making a responsible move that he makes a statement... You can make a picture out of truth.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

1960s
Source: 'A period of Exploration', McChesney, as quoted in The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p 35

Kent Hovind photo

“If it came on the evening news tonight that there were five grizzly bears roaming around Cobb County, do you know what would happen by six o'clock in the morning? They would all be dead. Because every redneck in four states would be out there with a rifle, trying to shoot one, right? And whoever could shoot the biggest one would be a hero. They would have his picture on the front page, "Bubba shot the Grizzly Bear" and saved the village. That is exactly what happened to the dragons. If you could figure out a way to kill a dragon, they would be telling stories about you around the campfire. People killed dragons for meat, because they were a menace, to prove that you were a hero, or to prove that you are superior, in competition for land, or for medicinal purposes. Many ancient recipes call for dragon blood, dragon bones, dragon saliva, why? Gilgamesh is famous for slaying a dragon. A Chinese legend tells about a guy named Yu that surveyed the land of China. It says, that after the Flood he surveyed the land, he divided it off into sections. He built channels to drain water off to sea and make the land livable again. Many snakes and dragons were driven from the marshlands. You know that's normal that if you want to build a city. You have to drive off the dragons, then build your city. It was expected that you have got to drive the dragons away or kill them. Why would the Chinese calendar have eleven real animals: the pig, the duck, the dog, and … the dragon? Why would they put just one "mythical" animal in there? Could it be at the time they that they came up with these animals there were 12 real animals? There is one of the oldest pieces of pottery on Planet Earth. It's a piece of slate from Egypt; the first dynasty of United Egypt. It shows long necked dragons […] Why would they put long necked dinosaurs on pottery 3,800 years ago? Here are two long necked dinosaurs with a sheep in between them in their mouths. Here is a hippo tusk from the twelve century B. C., showing an animal with a long neck, and a long tail. Here's a cylinder seal, showing what appears quite obviously to be a long neck dinosaur. The Bible talks about a fiery flying serpent, in Isaiah 14.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

André Maurois photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Phil Ochs photo
Margaret Trudeau photo
Emma Caulfield photo

“a question i have for whoever runs these sites--where do you get all these pictures from? i can't even tell where i was when i took most of these!”

Emma Caulfield (1973) actress

[sic], Emma's first post to her fan forum http://emmaforums.dark-delusion.net/index.php?showtopic=733

Albert Gleizes photo

“The large gray spiked form rising from the bottom of the picture is to me the symbol of death and ruin. And finally the black ovoid form is the symbol of fire, lava and destruction.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

in a letter to Alfred H. Barr, Jr. 6 November, 1955; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 34
Baziotes' quote is referring to his painting 'Pompeii', Baziotes painted in 1955
1950s

Théodore Rousseau photo

“Do not be anxious about [an ordered painting] 'La Ferme' my dear Mr. Hartmann, I am anxious to establish in this picture such a decision deformed, that it may exist, independently of the caprices of the light, and of the influence of the hours of the day. I am regulating it, absolutely as a watchmaker regulates a watch after he has finished it.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

In a letter to Mr. Hartmann, c. 1865; as quoted in The Painters of Barbizon I – Millet, Rousseau and Diaz, by John W. Mollett, B.A.; publ. Sampton Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, Limited, London, 1890, p. 81
Mr. Hartmann, who had bought this and two other pictures had waited for them fifteen years, at last became impatient, and wrote Rousseau: 'I shall only enjoy my pictures in my extreme old age, when I shall have become too blind to see them'. his biographer/friend Alfred Sensier wrote: this seemed to Mr. Hartmann 'as the reasoning of a troubled mind.' https://archive.org/details/souvenirssurthr00sensgoog?q=Theodore+Rousseau
1851 - 1867

Maithripala Sirisena photo
Isidore Isou photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Charles Lindbergh photo
Tony Conrad photo
Thomas Gainsborough photo

“One part of a picture ought to be like the first part of a tune, that you guess what follows, and that makes the second part of the tune, and so I'm done..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, Feb. 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 383 (Appendix A - Letter V)
1755 - 1769

Paul Klee photo

“The law that supports space - this should be the title appropriate to one of my future pictures!”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1905), # 681, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910

“(Gordon Mitchell) weighed 220 pounds when he did these muscle pictures, and he went down to 160 pounds for this movie, like nothing.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Luther Burbank photo
Edward R. Murrow photo
John Constable photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“A picture may be worth a thousand words, a formula is worth a thousand pictures.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (EWD1239: A first exploration of effective reasoning)
1990s

Hans Reichenbach photo

“The main objection to the theory of pure visualization is our thesis that the non-Euclidean axioms can be visualized just as rigorously if we adjust the concept of congruence. This thesis is based on the discovery that the normative function of visualization is not of visual but of logical origin and that the intuitive acceptance of certain axioms is based on conditions from which they follow logically, and which have previously been smuggled into the images. The axiom that the straight line is the shortest distance is highly intuitive only because we have adapted the concept of straightness to the system of Eucidean concepts. It is therefore necessary merely to change these conditions to gain a correspondingly intuitive and clear insight into different sets of axioms; this recognition strikes at the root of the intuitive priority of Euclidean geometry. Our solution of the problem is a denial of pure visualization, inasmuch as it denies to visualization a special extralogical compulsion and points out the purely logical and nonintuitive origin of the normative function. Since it asserts, however, the possibility of a visual representation of all geometries, it could be understood as an extension of pure visualization to all geometries. In that case the predicate "pure" is but an empty addition, since it denotes only the difference between experienced and imagined pictures, and we shall therefore discard the term "pure visualization."”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

Instead we shall speak of the normative function of the thinking process, which can guide the pictorial elements of thinking into any logically permissible structure.
The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Jack Johnson (musician) photo
Jozef Israëls photo
Isa Genzken photo
William Grey Walter photo
James Nachtwey photo
Marc Chagall photo

“For me, Christ has always symbolized the true type of the Jewish martyr. That is how I understood him in 1908 when I used this figure for the first time... It was under the influence of the pogroms. Then I painted and drew him in pictures about ghettos, surrounded by Jewish troubles, by Jewish mothers, running terrified with little children in their arms.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

quote from: From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture, Matthew B. Hoffman; Stanford University Press, 2007, p. 218
Chagall started in 1912 (in Paris) to paint his 'Golgotha' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marc_Chagall,_1912,_Calvary_(Golgotha)_Christus_gewidmet,_oil_on_canvas,_174.6_x_192.4_cm,_Museum_of_Modern_Art,_New_York.jpg and later more Crucifixions. In this (later! quote) Chagall looks back on this question.
1910's

Albert Einstein photo

“If I can't picture it, I can't understand it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed to Einstein by physicist John Archibald Wheeler in John Horgan's article "Profile: Physicist John A. Wheeler, Questioning the 'It from Bit'". Scientific American, pp. 36-37, June 1991. Reprinted here http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pioneering-physicist-john-wheeler-dies after Wheeler's death.
Attributed in posthumous publications

Henry Adams photo
Sarah Palin photo
Jean Baudrillard photo

“Picturing others and everything which brings you closer to them is futile from the instant that ‘communication’ can make their presence immediate.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: 1980s, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987), p. 42

Paul Simon photo

“I like them all. … They're all pictures of me when I wrote them. … I have no favorite songs.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Pop Chronicles Show 36 - The Rubberization of Soul: The great pop music renaissance. Part 2 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19795/m1/, interview recorded (20 December 1967) http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s

John Pilger photo

“I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, This much I know http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/nov/13/pressandpublishing.observermagazine, The Observer, 13 November 2005

Winston S. Churchill photo
William Moulton Marston photo

“Not even the church is so powerfully equipped to serve the public psychologically as is the motion picture company.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

Henry W. Levy, "Professor to Cure Scenarios with Wrong Emotional Content: Dabbled in Movies While at Harvard; Now Sought By Hollywood with Offer of Favorable Contract", New York University News January 1929; Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014), p. 137.

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Ludwig Feuerbach photo

“The history of philosophical system is the picture gallery of reason.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 68
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)

Erwin Schrödinger photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
J. William Fulbright photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Jacoba van Heemskerck photo

“Every day I am thinking about the Art school [which Walden wants to start in Germany, since 1915-16]... If our pursuit is really to make great progress in future, the Art school must produce individualities who can with our assist really continue from their inside and start creating on their own, without always studying the pictures of other artists.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:) Ich denke immer viel über die Kunstschule nach [ die Walden seit 1915/16 anfangen möchte].. .Wenn unser Streben wirklich in der Zukunft grosse Fortschritte machen soll, muss die Kunstschule Individualitäten hervorbringen, die durch uns wirklich vo inneren heraus weiter können und anfangen zu schaffen, ohne immer Bilder von anderen zu sehen.
Quote in a letter of Jacoba van Heemskerck to Herwarth Walden in Berlin, 15 August 1917; as cited in Jacoba van Heemskerck, kunstenares van het Expressionisme, Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 1982, pp. 15-16
1910's

James Comey photo
Orson Welles photo
Asger Jorn photo
Hendrik Werkman photo

“The subject reports itself, it is never looked for. Afterwards a small drawing will follow for the color-planes which are determined immediately. These colors will be printed by large logs and updated and enlivened with the hand-roller. For pressing I use an old hand-press with lever (from c. 1800)... Sometimes it is necessary to press heavily, other times only very light. Sometimes one half of the block is rolled in [with ink] bold, the other half only skimpy. By first printing sometimes the first layer of paint on a piece of paper, a gentle tint appears which is then printed on the original. Another time I print the first print of the paper back on the original... As soon as the color-planes have been applied, the first state is reached, so to say..
.. Of course all kinds of side-steps can be made, while working. In case of enlivening the picture - both in terms of color or decoration - the main goal I always keep in mind.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Het onderwerp meldt zichzelf en wordt nooit gezocht, daarna volgt een kleine tekening voor de kleurvlakken die meteen vaststaan. Deze kleuren worden met groote houtblokken gedrukt en met de handrol bijgewerkt en verlevendigt. Als pers gebruik ik een oude handpers met hefboom (c. 1800).. .Soms is het noodig zwaar te drukken, soms heel licht; soms wordt de ene helft van het blok vet ingerold [met inkt], de andere helft schraal, ook wordt door eerst op een stuk papier de eerste laag verf af te drukken een lichte tint gekregen die dan op het origineel afgedrukt wordt, een andere keer druk ik de eerste druk van het papier weer op het origineel af.. Zijn de kleurvlakken aangebracht, dan is als het ware de eerste staat bereikt..
.Het spreekt vanzelf dat onder het werk verschillende zijsprongetjes gemaakt kunnen worden. Ter verlevendiging, zowel wat kleur als wat versiering aangaat: het hoofddoel staat steeds voor oogen.
Quote from Werkman's letter (6.) to August Henkels, 24 Jan. 1941; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 134
1940's

Christopher Langton photo
Paul Weller (singer) photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Peter Greenaway photo
David Manners photo
John Maynard Smith photo
Umberto Boccioni photo
Fred Thompson photo
Paul Gauguin photo

“This Cézanne [a 'Still life with Compotier, Fruit and Glass', Cézanne made c. 1879-1882!! ], that you ask me for is a pearl of exceptional quality and I already have refused three hundred francs for it; it is one of my most treasured possessions, and except in absolute necessity, I would give up my last shirt before the picture.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Quote in a letter (June 1888) to Gauguin's friend Émile Schuffenecker; as cited in Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition, Anne Distel, Michel Hoog, Charles S. Moffett, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, N.Y.) 1975, p. 56
1870s - 1880s

Gerhard Richter photo
Sten Nadolny photo
Murray Walker photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Pete Doherty photo

“She said, "I'll show you a picture,
A picture of tomorrow,
There's nothing changing, it's all sorrow."

"Oh, no, please don't show me
I'm a swine, you don't wanna know me!"”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Horrorshow" (with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Aldous Huxley photo
Dennis Miller photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Paul Cézanne photo

“Let's not eliminate nature. Too bad if we fail. You see, in his 'Dejeuner sur l'herbe', Manet ought to have added - I don't know what - a touch of this nobility, whatever it is in this picture that conveys heaven to our every sense. Look at the golden flow of the tall woman, the other one's back... They are alive and they are divine.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 186 in: 'What he told me – II. The Louvre' [standing in the Louvre in front of the painting 'Le concert Champêtre', painted by Giorgioni (ca. 1510)

Max Beckmann photo

“Put the picture away or, preferably, send it back to me, dear Valentin. If people cannot understand it is based on their inner engagement with these matters, then there is no point in showing the thing at all.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

In a letter to his art-dealer Curt Valentin, Amsterdam, 11 February 1938; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 52
1930s

Caspar David Friedrich photo

“You should keep sacred every impuls of your mind; you should keep sacred every pious sentiment; because that is art in us. In an inspired hour she will appear in a clear form, and this form will be your picture.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

as quoted in Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, Barbara Novak; Oxford University Press, 2007, note 74
undated

Giorgio Vasari photo
Johann Hari photo

“The truth emerging from this scattered picture of nuclear proliferation is simple: there is a stronger chance of a nuclear bomb being used now than at almost any point in the Cold War.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

Will we wake from our nuclear coma?, JohannHari.com, October 20, 2004, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=465,

Katherine Mansfield photo
Lucian Freud photo

“I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen … that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.”

Lucian Freud (1922–2011) British painter and engraver

Interview with Martin Gayford, Independent on Sunday 26 May 2002
Other

Mark Steyn photo
Graham Greene photo
Phil Brown (footballer) photo

“In any game, you get pictures and at half time there were 11 players who had half a shirt for Saturday.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

27-Aug-2008 Hull City OWS
More pictures for Phil's collection, but unfortunately also something of a kit problem.

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter (5–6 January 1932); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“So, all through the medieval period, Foreign and Indian Muslims strove hard to make India a Muslim country by converting and eliminating the Hindus. They killed and converted, and converted and killed by turns. In the earlier centuries of their presence here, the picture was sombre indeed. Turkish rule was established in northern India at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Within fifteen years of Muhammad Ghori’s occupation of Delhi, the Turks rapidly conquered most of the major cities of northern India. Their lightening success, as described by contemporary chroniclers, entailed great loss of life. Qutbuddin Aibak’s conquests during the life-time of his master and later on in the capacity of king (c.1200-1210) included Gwalior, parts of Bundelkhand, Ajmer, Ranthambhor, Anhilwara, as well a parts of U. P. and Malwa. In Nahrwala alone 50,000 persons were killed during Aibak’s campaign.8 No wonder, he earned the nickname of killer of lacs.9 Bakhtiyar Khalji marched through Bihar into Bengal and massacred people in both the regions. During his expedition to Gwalior Iltutmish (1210-36) massacred 700 persons besides those killed in the battle on both sides. His attacks on Malwa (Vidisha and Ujjain) were met with stiff resistance and were accompanied by great loss of life. He is also credited with killing 12,000 Khokhars (Gakkhars) during Aibak’s reign.10 The successors of Iltutmish (Raziyah, Bahram, etc.) too fought and killed zealously. During the reigns of Nasiruddin and Balban (1246-86) warfare for consolidation and expansion of Turkish dominions went on apace. Trailokyavarman, who ruled over Southern U. P., Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand, and is called “Dalaki va Malaki” by Persian chroniclers, was defeated after great slaughter (1248). In 1251, Gwalior, Chanderi, Narwar and Malwa were attacked. The Raja of Malwa alone had 5,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry and would have been defeated only after great loss of life. The inhabitants of Kaithal were given such severe punishment (1254) that they ‘might not forget (the lesson) for the rest of their lives.’ In 1256 Ulugh Khan Balban carried on devastating warfare in Sirmur, and ‘so many of the rebellious Hindus were killed that numbers cannot be computed or described.’ Ranthambhor was attacked in 1259 and ‘many of its valiant fighting men were sent to hell.’ In the punitive expedition to Mewat (1260) ‘numberless Hindus perished under the merciless swords of the soldiers of Islam.’ In the same year 12,000 men, women and children were put to the sword in Hariyana.”

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

Erik Naggum photo