Sculpture Quotes

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.”
― Henri Matisse

“The greatest artist does not have any concept
Which a single piece of marble does not itself contain
Within its excess, though only
A hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti, I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation

“Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“Stars are always dancing. Sometimes they dance twinkling away with the rhythm of your joyful heart and sometimes they dance without movement to embrace your heartache as if frozen sculptures of open-armed sadness.”
― Munia Khan

“The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.”
― Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir

“Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt”
― Christian Boltanski

“Dr Sass…maintained that in paradise, until the time of the fall, the whole world was flat, the back-curtain of the Lord, and that it was the devil who invented a third dimension. Thus are the words ‘straight’, ‘square’, and ‘flat’ the words of noblemen, but the apple was an orb, and the sin of our first parents, the attempt at getting around God. I myself much prefer the art of painting to sculpture”
― Isak Dinesen

“As Henry Moore carved
or modelled his sculpture every day,
he strove to surpass Donatello

4. and failed, but woke the next morning
elated for another try.”
― Donald Hall

“I assert that the art of sculpture, among all the arts connected with design, is at least seven times greater than any other, for the following reason: why, sir, a statue of true sculpture ought to have seven points of view, which ought all to boast equal excellence.”
― Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

“If water could be shaped like clay, then swimming ducks would be master sculptors. If I were to commission a statue of myself, I'd hire splashing ducks at play.”
― Jarod Kintz, Ducks are the stars of the karaoke bird world

“The truest evidence that any civilization ever leaves behind about itself is its art. Art never lies.”
― Waldemar Januszczak, Understanding art

“I dance like both my shoes are nailed to the wall. It goes way beyond mere performance and into the realm of art. I am the Rodin of the music world.”
― Jarod Kintz, There are Two Typos of People in This World: Those Who Can Edit and Those Who Can't

“If your educe sculpture to the flat plane of the temporal experience of the work. (...) the experience of the work is inseparable from the place in which the work resides. Apart from that condition, any experience of the work is a deception.”
― Richard Serra

“We don't catch hold of an idea, rather the idea catches hold of us and enslaves us and whips us into the arena so that we, forced to be gladiators, fight for it.”
― Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

“Swimming ducks are water sculptors. Their artwork takes shape in the form of play.”
― Jarod Kintz, Ducks are the stars of the karaoke bird world

“Miriam admired the statue of a beautiful youth, a pearlfisher; who had got entangled in the weeds at the bottom of the sea, and lay dead among the pearl-oysters, the rich shells, and the seaweeds, all of like value to him now.

“The poor young man has perished among the prizes that he sought,” remarked she. “But what a strange efficacy there is in death! If we cannot all win pearls, it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just as well. I like this statue, though it is too cold and stern in its moral lesson; and, physically, the form has not settled itself into sufficient repose.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun

“I design saxophone music in blocks, like Stonehenge. I also arrange notes in other shapes, like sound sculptures.”
― Jarod Kintz, Eggs, they’re not just for breakfast

“In The Ozarks, where there isn't rock, there is clay. That makes those who use backhoes and dozers to shape the land sculptors.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“I'm a sculptor—on an excavator. I'm a Sculptavator. Or am I an Excavulptor?”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“When I'm on a backhoe, I'm shaping clay. I am a sculptor. I am a farm artist.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“Just like a sculptor takes time to mould a sculpture, take your time to hone your skills too.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Yoga poses are living sculptures. A sculpture is made beautiful as much from the knocks it receives as from the creative vision of its creator. You are no different”
― Leo Lourdes, A World of Yoga: 700 Asanas for Mindfulness and Well-Being

“In the summer of 1961, Segal taught an adult painting class in New Brunswick. The class was encouraged to make use of odd and unlikely materials in assemblages, and one woman brought to class a box of surgeon's bandages. Segal took some home, with the intention of wrapping them around one of his chicken wire framworks. Then a thought occurred to him: why not dip the cloth bandages in plaster, and apply them directly to the body? Segal sat on a chair and instructed his wife to cover him in soaked bandages. The new technique led to a few anxious moments when the plaster began to harden, heat up, and contract, and the artist lost a good portion of his body hair in the course of frantically removing the casts. With great difficulty, he was able to reassemble the pieces into a complete figure which he then placed on a chair. Next Segal provided an environment for his plaster effigy. The chair was moved up to a table, to which was nailed an old window frame. The result, entitled Man Sitting at a Table, marked the discovery of a new sculptural technique and a turning point in the artist's career.
Segal has never looked back.”
― Sam Hunter, George Segal

“Michelangelo sculpted La Pietà when he was 23. At 23, members of my generation could not build even the most miserable of sandcastles.”
― Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

“Your thoughts shape who you are. That makes you your own sculptor and sculpture.”
― Jarod Kintz, A Memoir of Memories and Memes

“You are the sculptor, and the future is your sculpture. Tomorrow is shaped today.”
― Jarod Kintz, A Memoir of Memories and Memes

“Michelangelo on sculpture: “I feel about each new figure the way an astronomer does each time he discovers a new star: one more fragment of the universe has been filled in.”
― Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy

“Bleed me of art, and there won’t be enough liquid left in me to spit.” - Michelangelo”
― Irving Stone