Composition Quotes

• Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away.

  Robert Henri

  Bridges, Add, Lines

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

  Claude Monet

  Art, Painting, Method

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• Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.

  Edward Weston

  Photography, Law, Littles

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• Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

  Walt Whitman

  Communication, Race, Growth

  Walt Whitman (2003). “The Portable Walt Whitman”, p.557, Penguin

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• The word compositon moved me spiritually and I made it my aim in life to paint a composition. It affected me like a prayer and filled me with awe.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Prayer, Paint, Made

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• Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.

  Edward Weston

  Way, Strongest, Seeing

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• The photographer has almost as much control over his subject matter as a painter. He can control light and shade, form and space, pattern and texture, motion and mood, everything except composition.

  Andreas Feininger

  Light, Space, Texture

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• Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Use, Elements

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• The act of composition is a series of discoveries.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Discovery, Series

  E. L. Doctorow, Christopher D. Morris (1999). “Conversations with E.L. Doctorow”, p.102, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Thus then a single harmony orders the composition of the whole...by the mingling of the most contrary principles.

  Aristotle

  Order, Unity, Principles

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• One compositional element suggests and asks for another. This is what makes the activity interesting.

  Robert Genn

  Interesting, Elements, Activity

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• The way we see is critical to understanding how others will read our compositions.

  Mike Svob

  Understanding, Way, Critical

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• The composition is the organized sum of the interior functions of every part of the work.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Function, Organized, Interiors

  Wassily Kandinsky (1982). “Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art: 1922-1943”

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• My theory of composition? Simple: do not release the shutter until everything in the viewfinder feels just right.

  Ernst Haas

  Photography, Simple, Feels Just

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• A composition is an arrangement, built out of parts, that aims at seamlessness.

  Eric Maisel

  Aim, Built, Arrangements

  Eric Maisel (1996). “Affirmations for Artists”, Tarcher

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• I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.

  Andre Kertesz

  Eye, Elements, Angle

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• Composition is selective improvisation.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Improvisation, Selective

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• Composition is frozen improvisation.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Frozen, Improvisation

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• Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.

  Robert Henri

  Running, Art, Bridges

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• The right use of color can make any composition work.

  Fairfield Porter

  Color, Use

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• When we look at a painting, listen to a piece of music, read a novel, or watch a movie we are taking in the artist's composition. The composition is the totality of the work.

  Mike Svob

  Artist, Watches, Looks

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• I put in my pictures everything I like. So much the worse for the things - they have to get along with one another.

  Pablo Picasso

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• Even in front of nature one must compose.

  Edgar Degas

  Fronts

  Edgar Degas, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Degas by Degas”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Book, Writing, People

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• Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format.

  Henri Matisse

  Drawing, Expression, Dimensions

  "Artists on Art - from the 14th - 20th centuries". Book edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, London, p. 410, 'Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter), 1972.

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