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James Elkins Quotes - Page 2

All Quotes Art Giving Painting
It is as if only irrelevance can be promoted as art.

It is as if only irrelevance can be promoted as art.

James Elkins
Art, Irrelevance, Modernism
James Elkins (2011). “What Photography Is”, p.124, Routledge

If paintings are so important - worth so much, reproduced, cherished, and visited so often - then isn't it troubling that we can hardly make emotional contact with the artists? Few centuries, it seems, are as determinedly tearless as ours.

James Elkins
Emotional, Artist, Important

Water and stones. Those are the unpromising ingredients of two very different endeavors... painting, because artists' pigments are made from fluids... mixed together with powdered stones to give color... and the other is alchemy, the stone the ultimate goal.

James Elkins
Artist, Color, Two

The range in brightness from the purple glow [of the sunset] to the dark sky above is too great for most films, and naturally it is beyond the range of printed pictures.

James Elkins
Sunset, Dark, Sky
James Elkins (2007). “How to Use Your Eyes”, p.215, Routledge

A painter knows what to do by the tug of the brush as it pulls through a mixture of oils, and by the look of coloured slurries on the palette.

James Elkins
Oil, Mixtures, Looks
James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.8, Routledge

To an artist, a picture is both a sum of ideas and a blurry memory of 'pushing paint,' breathing fumes, dripping oils and wiping brushes, smearing and diluting and mixing.

James Elkins
Memories, Artist, Breathing
James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.2, Routledge

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