Motivational Quotes

Art

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

- Haydon, Benjamin

Best Quotes about Art

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

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

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.

Proverb, Chinese

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

Tzara, Tristan

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Picasso, Pablo

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

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

Howe, Nathaniel

10.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

Picasso, Pablo

11.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

12.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

13.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

14.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

15.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

16.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul. The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist.

Poe, Edgar Allan

17.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.

18.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

20.

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

21.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

22.

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

23.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

24.

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

25.

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.

Gandhi, Indira

26.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

27.

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

Peri, Gabriel

28.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

29.

In every veil you see, the Divine Beauty is concealed, making every heart a slave to him. In love to him the heart finds its life; in desire for him the soul finds its happiness. The heart which loves a fair one here, though it knows it not, is really his lover.

Jami

30.

I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man. And until I master this act I will remain no more than a peddler in the marketplace. I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend upon its force... my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day.

Mandino, Og

31.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

I suppose no matter what I'm drawing, there will always be some sort of question in my mind about it. A work of art (even cartoon art)is never really finished; it is abandoned.

Brooke McEldowney

33.

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

Edmond de Goncourt

34.

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

35.

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

36.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Woodberry, George E.

37.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Mann, Horace

38.

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

George Tooker

39.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

40.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Adorno, Theodor W.

41.

Any artist should be grateful for a na?ve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

Bellow, Saul

42.

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

Bellow, Saul

43.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Motherwell, Robert

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

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

Isak Dineson

48.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

49.

When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it -- a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand -- as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it is bad art.

Chagall, Marc

50.

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