Ernst Gombrich Quotes

All art is image making and all image making is the creation of substitutes.

During the days of my youth, critics and art-lovers resorted freely to this term of abuse. Even some of the most renowned Old Masters were also pilloried as having manufactured insipid and sugary paintings that were offensive to good taste.

The Painter must leave the beholder something to guess.

Art does not copy nature - it suggests it.

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.

One never finishes learning about art. There are always new things to discover. Great works of art seem to look different every time one stands before them. They seem to be as inexhaustible and unpredictable as real human beings.

There really is no such thing as art. There are only artists.

What an artist worries about as he plans his pictures, makes his sketches, or wonders whether he has completed his canvas, is something much more difficult to put into words. Perhaps he would say he worries about whether he has got it 'right'.