Motivational Quotes

Art

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

- Baldwin, James

Best Quotes about Art

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it -- on the inside.

Experiment is necessary in establishing an academy, but certain principles must apply to this business of art as to any other business which affects the artistic tic sense of the community. Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

Menzies, Robert

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

Federico Fellini

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.

Ruckett

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Capp, Al

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

10.

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

11.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

12.

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Kooning, Willem De

13.

Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.

Byron, Lord

14.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

15.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Mailer, Norman

16.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Godard, Jean-Luc

17.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Paz, Octavio

18.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

19.

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones.

Howe, Nathaniel

20.

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

Elizabeth Aston

21.

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

22.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

23.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Murdoch, Iris

24.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Rand, Ayn

25.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

26.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

27.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

28.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Edmond de Goncourt

29.

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

Penn Jillette

30.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Jacob, Max

31.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Pound, Ezra

32.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Picasso, Pablo

33.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

34.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

36.

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.

Ionesco, Eugene

37.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Ellis, Havelock

38.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

39.

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Castaneda, Carlos

40.

Art the end result of perception, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and coincidence.

41.

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Buckingham, Duke of

42.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

43.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

Pound, Ezra

44.

It is a weakness that I lead from my heart, and not my head?

Diana, Princess of Wales

45.

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.

Isak Dineson

46.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

47.

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.

Morris, William

48.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

49.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Reinhardt, Ad

50.

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

Cioran, E. M.