Motivational Quotes

Art

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

- Bayley, Stephen

Best Quotes about Art

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

Stein, Gertrude

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Churchill, Winston

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

Shaw, George Bernard

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Miller, Henry

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Maistre, Joseph De

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

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

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Huxley, Aldous

10.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

11.

Bayley, Stephen

12.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril

13.

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

14.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

15.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

16.

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

17.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

18.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

19.

If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!

Truman, Harry S

20.

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

Ruckett

21.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

22.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

23.

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

24.

Two things are bad for the heart -- running up stairs and running down people.

Baruch, Bernard M.

25.

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

Paz, Octavio

26.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

Klee, Paul

27.

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

London, Jack

28.

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

Benjamin, Walter

30.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

31.

All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!

Castaneda, Carlos

32.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Conrad, Joseph

33.

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

Peri, Gabriel

34.

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

35.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.

Pascal, Blaise

36.

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

37.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Wilson, Robert

39.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

40.

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

41.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.

Hockney, David

42.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Reinhardt, Ad

43.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

44.

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

45.

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

Farnham, Eliza

46.

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.

Haldane, John B. S.

47.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

Rodin, Auguste

48.

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

Proust, Marcel

49.

Fortunately art is a community effort --a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.

Ginsberg, Allen

50.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish