Van Quotes - page 7
I maintain that the frustration is an important, almost crucial, ingredient. I think that the best painting involves frustration. The point about the late Rembrandt [paintings] is not that it's satisfying but on the contrary that it is disturbing and frustrating. Because really, what he [Rembrandt] has done is to eliminate any plane - anything between that image and you. The Van Dyck [portrait] hasn't. It says [only] I'm a painting. The Rembrandt says: I am not a painting, I am a real man. But he is not a real man either. What is it then, that you are looking at?
Phillip Guston
It's not hard to understand why an accomplished director like Gus Van Sant (whose most recent success, Good Will Hunting, gave him mainstream clout) would be interested in making this film. The lure of an exact remake presents a tremendous challenge. Unfortunately, it was undoubtedly a lot more stimulating for Van Sant and his crew to make Psycho than it is for an audience to watch it. [C]uriosity is going to be one of the primary reasons why people pay money to see this movie; boredom will be the predominant result.
James Berardinelli
We had no sooner taken our seats in the railway carriage and the train was beginning to move slowly out of the station when the guard came along the corridor and presented me with my viola! The porter had spotted it, reclining in its case all alone on the platform seat where Lillian and I had been busily engaged in conversation, run along the platform, and thrust it into the hands of the guard through the luggage van window as the train was moving off. Such was my absorption in Lillian that I could even forget the existence of my beloved and precious viola which had meant so much to me for so many years.
Lionel Tertis
Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward us
impossibly.
Charles Bukowski
If Van Eyck's patrons had all been Buddhists he would neither have painted the Adoration of the Lamb nor, for that matter, the Hunting of the Otter, but though the fact that he did is therefore trivially connected with the civilization in which he worked, there is no need to place these works on the periphery of the Hegelian wheel and look for the governing cause that explains both otter hunting and piety in the particular form they took in the early decades of the fifteenth century, and which is also expressed in Van Eyck's new technique.
Ernst Gombrich
I mean it seems like there are only two options for songwriters [sic] personalities either theyre [sic] sad, tragic visionaries like morrissey or michael stipe or robert smith or theres [sic] the goofy, nutty white boy, Hey lets party and forget everything people like Van Halen or all that other Heavy metal crap.
Kurt Cobain
The fields of clinical psychology and psychiatry exist specifically to help the emotionally unstable become more stable and lead happier, healthier lives. Unlike in the eras of Vincent Van Gogh and Abraham Lincoln, there is now professional help available for those who suffer from emotional illness. Treatment may require therapy or even medication, but hope is now available every single day in practically every city in the civilized world.
David J. Lieberman
