Motivational Quotes

Art

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

- Cezanne, Paul

Best Quotes about Art

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Andre Gide

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential --the imagination.

Durrell, Lawrence

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

Howe, Nathaniel

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

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

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

10.

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

Ciardi, John

11.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Miller, Henry

12.

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

Shaw, George Bernard

13.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Berle, Adolf

14.

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

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

17.

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

I have joined my heart to thee: all that exists are thou. O Lord, beloved of my heart, thou art the home of all; where indeed is the heart in which thou dost not dwell?

Jafar

19.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Voznesensky, Andrei

20.

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

Holyfield, Evander

21.

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

Mailer, Norman

22.

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

23.

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

Sontag, Susan

24.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

25.

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Kooning, Willem De

26.

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

27.

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

Wilde, Oscar

28.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

29.

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

30.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

31.

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

32.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

33.

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Miguel de Cervantes

34.

I know just how frustrating it can be when you're tired and exhausted, but you still want to draw something.

Ward Jenkins

35.

No manager ever won no ballgames.

Anderson, Sparky

36.

Good art however immoral is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Pound, Ezra

37.

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

38.

One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.

French, Marilyn

39.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling Kilroy was here on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

Faulkner, William

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

West, Rebecca

45.

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

Berryman, John

46.

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

Motherwell, Robert

47.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

49.

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

Breton, Andre

50.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

David Cronenberg