Jan Saudek famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I believe all artists, if they are not lying to themselves, must believe that the best part of their work, or even their life, is in front of them. To look only to the past and to say â€˜those were the best years, when I was youngâ€™ is to say that in the future there is nothing.
-- Jan Saudek

#Lying #Believe #Artist
I have no way of portraying the lives of others. I portray my own.
-- Jan Saudek

#Way #Portraying #Lives Of Others
I still dream of the day when I will take a photograph so beautiful that it can be called love.
-- Jan Saudek

#Beautiful #Dream #Photograph
What I really do is make portraits of the soul.
-- Jan Saudek

#Soul #Portraits

If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.
Wanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest? 'Tis that every mother's son Travails with a skeleton. Lie down in the bed of dust; Bear the fruit that bear you must; Bring the eternal seed to light, And morn is all the same as night.
The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.
Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
I cannot understand how any man or woman can believe in the Lord's coming and not be a missionary, or at least committed to the work of missions with every power of his being.
The gods have fled, I know. My sense is the gods have always been essentially absent. I do not believe human beings have played games or sports from the beginning merely to summon or to please or to appease the gods. If anthropologists and historians believe that, it is because they believe whatever they have been able to recover about what humankind told the gods humankind was doing. I believe we have played games, and watched games, to imitate the gods, to become godlike in our worship of eachother and, through those moments of transmutation, to know for an instant what the gods know.
I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance.
After a point of time, when you get success and fame, money and everything, the purpose of life has to be redefined. For me, I think that purpose is to build bridges. Artists can do that very easily, more than politicians.
Artists are often excellent businessmen. They have to be. Otherwise they do not remain artists.
Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That's an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.

Jan Saudek famous quotes

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