Portraits Quotes - Page 4

• I paint in oils, I paint in acrylics. I paint figurative and landscape portraits. It's all in my own kind of style. I'm self-taught.

  Pierce Brosnan

  Self, Oil, Style

  "A Conversation with Pierce Brosnan". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• My movies are film-paintings - moving portraits captured on celluloid. I'll layer that with sound to create a unique mood -- like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth, and there would be a wind, and she'd turn back and smile. It would be strange and beautiful.

  David Lynch

  Beautiful, Moving, Unique

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• I do not care about my own appearance, but I would hope that people could see into my soul, and that is presented better in these photographs than in others. (On his self-portraits)

  August Strindberg

  Self, People, Soul

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• The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  History, Forever, Mind

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.94, Editions Le Mono

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• Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Character, Portraiture, Gestures

  Charles Baudelaire, Jonathan Mayne (1981). “Art in Paris 1845-1862: salons and other exhibitions”

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• Cassius and Brutus were the more distinguished for that very circumstance that their portraits were absent.
  [Lat., Praefulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso, quod effigies eorum non videbantur.]

  Tacitus

  Cassius, Brutus, Absence

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• You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It's the same at an art gallery. You're looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work of art directly behind you. Because it's all energy. Every single thing has energy.

  Marina Abramovic

  Art, Energy, How You Feel

  "Marina Abramovic Talks 'The Artist is Present,' Her Thoughts On Censorship, Art & More". Interview with Cristopher Bell, www.indiewire.com. June 15, 2012.

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• From the first shock of the contemplation of a face depends the principal sensation which guides me throughout the entire execution of a portrait.

  Henri Matisse

  Faces, Firsts, Execution

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• Most portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me your entire lifetime and never reveal yourself to me. To interpret wrinkles as character is insult not insight.

  Duane Michals

  Lying, Character, Wrinkles

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• But a Book is only the Heart's Portrait- every Page a Pulse.

  Emily Dickinson

  Book, Heart, Pulse

  Emily Dickinson, Thomas Herbert Johnson, Theodora Ward (1986). “The Letters of Emily Dickinson”, p.756, Harvard University Press

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• I never wanted to make portraits - to photograph celebrities, beautiful people, beautiful landscapes, beautiful buildings, or people in distressing situations.... I have always been interested in everyman - average, ordinary people in everyday situations.

  Ray Metzker

  Beautiful, Average, People

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• Both Proust and Joyce record the ways in which human perspectives can be transformed. In Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is constantly undergoing epiphanies, but their effects are transitory: the new synthetic complex quickly falls apart. Proust's characters, by contrast, often achieve lasting changes of perspective.

  Philip Kitcher

  Fall, Character, Lasting Change

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The portrait is the subject matter in photography where the problems of the media are the most visible.

  Thomas Struth

  Photography, Media, Matter

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• What I really do is make portraits of the soul.

  Jan Saudek

  Soul

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• You will never see a portrait of my love, for miracles are never seen.

  Steve Lawrence

  Romantic, Miracle

  Song: Portrait Of My Love

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• I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Art, New York, Thinking

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

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• I collect old portraits. They're all just interesting pictures of people, and you just kind of wonder who they were and what they were. There's a guy - I don't know who he is, but he's wearing a suit. He's got his arms folded, and he looks like he sold insurance or something. I'm just wondering why someone painted him.

  Ellen DeGeneres

  People, Interesting, Guy

  "Ellen DeGeneres: Nice Girls Finish First". Interview with David Hochman, www.goodhousekeeping.com. September 10, 2011.

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• When I look in the mirror, I am slightly reminded of self-portraits by Durer and by Rembrandt, because they both show a degree of introspection. I see some element of disappointment; I see a sense of humour, but also something that is faintly ridiculous; and I see somebody who is frightened of being found out and thought lightweight.

  Robert Winston

  Disappointment, Mirrors, Self

  "What I See in the Mirror: Robert Winston". www.theguardian.com. April 13, 2012.

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• Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story. I would like to choose the durable clarity of a platinum print, but nothing in my destiny possesses the luminosity. I live among diffuse shadings, veiled mysteries, uncertainties; the tone of telling my life is closer to that of a portrait in sepia.

  Isabel Allende

  Destiny, Stories, Tone

  Isabel Allende, John Rodden (2004). “Conversations with Isabel Allende: Revised Edition”, p.36, University of Texas Press

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• You wouldn't take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you'd move in close.

  Nick Brandt

  Moving, Feet, Spirit

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• Dreams are like portraits; and we find they please because they are confessed resemblances.

  George Crabbe

  Dream, Please, Resemblance

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• Age continually alters the faces of those who think or study, and so their portraits differ from one another and don't even resemble them for very long. I dream so much and live so little that I'm sometimes only three years old. But the next day I'm three hundred, if the dream has been sombre.

  George Sand

  Dream, Thinking, Years

  Gustave Flaubert, George Sand (1999). “Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert & George Sand”, Harvill Press

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• In The Moon, Come to Earth Philip Graham takes us on the best kind of journey, as he simultaneously reveals the fascinating city of Lisbon--its neighborhoods, its writers, its customs, its cuisine--and offers an intimate portrait of his beloved family. With his far-reaching intellect Graham is the ideal travelling companion, and The Moon, Come to Earth is a beautiful and surprising book.

  Margot Livesey

  Beautiful, Book, Moon

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• I think of all the choices I never knew. And those I let be made for me - to please, from fear, for love. Where did they disappear to, those choices that I never made? They are all part of who I am. They are the legacy I leave behind, they are the finished portrait of myself I cannot change.

  Liv Ullmann

  Thinking, Who I Am, Choices

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• That moment when the person actually dictates the way I do the portrait is when the intimacy arrives.

  Francesco Clemente

  Way, Moments, Intimacy

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