Laura Cumming TV - Mark Rothko - Banksy - Francis Bacon - Henri Matisse - Lucian Freud - Andy Warhol - Piet Mondrian - David Hockney - John Singer Sargent - Apples Pears & Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting TV - Leonardo da Vinci - Proverbs - Pablo Picasso - Robert Capa - Don McCullin - Rudolf Arnheim - Salvador Dali - Ray Donovan TV - Oscar Wilde - Tim Marlow TV - Play for Today TV -
All a self-portrait can ever be is an illusion. Laura Cumming, Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits, BBC 2013
A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent. Mark Rothko
I paint very large pictures. I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them however, – I think it applies to other painters I know –, is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command. Mark Rothko, Interiors vol 110 May 1951
The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it. Banksy
The glass helps to unify the picture. Francis Bacon, cited The Art of Francis Bacon
A picture must possess a real power to generate light ... for a long time now I’ve been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light. Henri Matisse
The promise of happiness is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then that the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope that the picture might spring to life. Lucian Freud
My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person. Andy Warhol
The object must be eliminated from the picture. Piet Mondrian
I’m interested in picture-making technology. David Hockney
A portrait is a picture in which there is something not quite right about the mouth. John Singer Sargent
Cézanne had abandoned the fiction that a painting is a picture into reality. Apples, Pears & Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting, BBC 2014
The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard. Leonardo da Vinci
One picture is worth ten thousand words. Early 20th century proverb, attributed Frederick R Barnard
To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture. Pablo Picasso
If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough. Robert Capa, Hungarian-born American photojournalist
Darkroom: I like to shoot pictures at night time and dusk because I think they have much more impact. Don McCullin, interview Night on Film: An A-Z of the Dark, BBC 2011
Nobody could squeeze any more from a negative that what I’ve done by the time I’ve printed. ibid.
I know there’s no turning back, and I know there’s no other occupation that I could settle down in if I had to stop photography for some reason or other. I just don’t know what the hell I’d do with myself. I’m just no good at anything else in the world other than taking pictures. ibid.
Pictures produced by camera can resemble paintings or drawings in presenting recognizable images of physical objects. But they have also characteristics of their own, of which the following two are relevant here: first the photograph acquires some of its unique visual properties through the technique of mechanical recording; and second, it supplies the viewer with a specific kind of experience, which depends on his being aware of the picture's mechanical origin. To put it more simply: (1) the picture is coproduced by nature and man and in some ways looks strikingly like nature, and (2) the picture is viewed as something being by nature. Rudolf Arnheim, On the Nature of Photography
The reason some portraits don’t look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures. Salvador Dalí
I see fucking pictures in my head! Every fucking day! Every night! Ray Donovan s3e12: Exsuscito, Ray in confessional, Showtime 2015
How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young … If it were only the other way round! Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
For there would be real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to follow his mind into secret places. This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. ibid.
Sunrise, with a Boat between Headlands ... The pinnacle of much of British art. Tim Marlow Meets … s1e1: Michael Palin, Tim, Sky Arts 2010
Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway 1844: It’s a wonderful picture; it’s full of energy and dynamism. Tim Marlow Meets … s2e2: Nitin Sahney, Tim
It inspired a hugely significant movement and a generation who were working in France. ibid.
Gallery geezer #1: Must be a very late one. I’ve never come across it before.
Gallery geezer #2: Well it’s been out of circulation. Play for Today: Under the Hammer, BBC 1984
Gallery geezer #3: However much I look at it I don’t like it. ibid.
Plundered … stolen pictures … I thought it was interesting … ibid. porter’ talk
American geezer was here – reckons it was a fake. ibid.
I wish you’d kicked McClaren … If only you’d done it half an hour earlier … Absolute discretion, you understand? ibid. gallery geezer
We should go into the possibility of a discreet repair. ibid.
Looks genuine enough for me. ibid. painting repair man
I think you know what I have to say. ibid. gallery geezer to head porter