Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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

Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem.

Anderson, Lindsay

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

Mann, Horace

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

Eliot, T. S.

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

Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

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.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Berle, Adolf

13.

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

Piet Mondrian

14.

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

15.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.

Pound, Ezra

16.

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

17.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

18.

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

Picasso, Pablo

19.

If the wolf had ever come to our back door, he'd have had to bring a picnic lunch.

Anderson, Bill

20.

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

Kooning, Willem De

21.

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

Melville, Herman

22.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

26.

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

27.

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

28.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

29.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

30.

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

Thurber, James

31.

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

32.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

33.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

34.

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

Ruskin, John

35.

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.

M. C. Richards

36.

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

37.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Kael, Pauline

38.

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

39.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Tagore, Rabindranath

40.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

41.

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

Parker, Dorothy

42.

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

Sand, George

43.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Frida Kahlo

44.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

Shaw, George Bernard

45.

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

46.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Blackie, Professor

47.

Art has never been made while thinking of art.

Niko Stumpo

48.

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

Paz, Octavio

49.

Faint hearts never win fair ladies.

Proverb, Danish

50.

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