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

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

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

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

Parker, Dorothy

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

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

Piet Mondrian

A Great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

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

Ciardi, John

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

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

10.

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

Mailer, Norman

11.

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

Grass, Gunther

13.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

14.

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

William Baziotes

15.

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

Ionesco, Eugene

16.

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

17.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

18.

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

Miller, Henry

19.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Schumann, Robert

20.

Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model.

Frye, Northrop

21.

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.

Warhol, Andy

22.

I'm still an artist. I'm never gonna do a shit movie, because I've got my modeling to support me.

Jovovich, Milla

23.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

Joyce, James

24.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

Lao-Tzu

25.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

Schumann, Robert

26.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

27.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Ruskin, John

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Sand, George

31.

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Burroughs, William S.

32.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

33.

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

Jackson Pollock

34.

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.

Rich, Adrienne

35.

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.

36.

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.

Lewitzky, Bella

37.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

39.

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

Picasso, Pablo

40.

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, not in Kaaba nor Kailas, but here right within you am I.

Kabir

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Ovid

44.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

45.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

46.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Baudelaire, Charles

47.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

Ruskin, John

48.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

Barenboim, Daniel

49.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Einstein, Albert

50.

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