Motivational Quotes

Art

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

- Alvarez, A.

Best Quotes about Art

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy, John F.

Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.

Driscoll, Louise

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it joy?

Dworkin, Andrea

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Eliot, T. S.

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

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

Carter, Angela

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

10.

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

11.

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

Zola, Emile

12.

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

Nickolas Muray

13.

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

14.

Why should I go into details, we have nothing that is not perishable except what our hearts and our intellects endows us with.

Ovid

15.

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

16.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

17.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

18.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

Cassady, Neal

19.

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

20.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

21.

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

Morris, William

22.

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Al Capp

23.

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

24.

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts.

Charles Rosin

25.

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

26.

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

27.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

28.

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

29.

Art is a form of catharsis.

Parker, Dorothy

30.

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

Motherwell, Robert

31.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Davis, Angela Y.

32.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

Ruskin, John

33.

Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.

William Baziotes

34.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

35.

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

36.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

37.

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

Eugene Delacroix

38.

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

Varese, Edward

39.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure -- if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

Drummond, John

40.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Weil, Simone

41.

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

Beauvoir, Simone De

42.

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

43.

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

44.

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

Joseph Chilton Pearce

45.

Have thy heart in heaven and thy hands upon the earth. Ascend in piety and descend in charity. For this is the Nature of Light and the way of the children.

Vaughan, Thomas

46.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

47.

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

48.

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

49.

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Ben Shahn

50.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao