Motivational Quotes

Art

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

- Chandler, Raymond

Best Quotes about Art

In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

Kennedy, John F.

Many bad artists will tell you that art is life. There's a subtle difference however. You can turn your back on art

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.

Varese, Edward

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious.

Bangs, Lester

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft.

Ovid

10.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Gogh, Vincent Van

11.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Shaw, George Bernard

13.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugene Delacroix

14.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

15.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Hare, David

16.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

17.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

18.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.

19.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Matisse, Henri

20.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Picasso, Pablo

21.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

Chagall, Marc

22.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

23.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

John F. Kennedy

24.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Jackson Pollock

25.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

26.

Advice from a veteran trapeze performer: Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow.

27.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

29.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Proust, Marcel

30.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

31.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Duke Ellington

32.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

West, Rebecca

33.

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

34.

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.

M. C. Richards

35.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.

Ciardi, John

36.

Drink, and dance and laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight through, for tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

Parker, Dorothy

37.

I am an artist I am here to live out loud.

Zola, Emile

38.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

39.

It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

41.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Geldzahler, Henry

42.

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

Ionesco, Eugene

43.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Bierce, Ambrose

44.

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave.

Wolfe, Thomas

45.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Alfred North Whitehead

46.

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

47.

What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.

Blair, Hugh

48.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

49.

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

50.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted. [Henry Iv]

Shakespeare, William