Motivational Quotes

Art

It is a weakness that I lead from my heart, and not my head?

- Diana, Princess of Wales

Best Quotes about Art

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

William Baziotes

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

Frost, Robert

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

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

Warhol, Andy

It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it --just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.

Camus, Albert

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Ellis, Havelock

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

Ciardi, John

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Buckingham, Duke of

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

10.

If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens.

Moses, Grandma

11.

If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat...you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

12.

Life isn't long enough for love and art.

W. Somerset Maugham

13.

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

14.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Keller, Helen

15.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

Lombardi, Vince

16.

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

Apollinaire, Guillaume

17.

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

18.

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

Melville, Herman

19.

The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious.

Bangs, Lester

20.

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

Ben Shahn

21.

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

22.

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

Burroughs, William S.

23.

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

24.

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

Ovid

25.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Picasso, Pablo

26.

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

Paz, Octavio

27.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

29.

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.

Brancusi, Constantin

30.

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

31.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

32.

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

33.

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

34.

The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

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.

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

Picasso, Pablo

37.

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

38.

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

39.

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

Ovid

40.

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.

41.

Repetition is the death of art.

Robin Green

42.

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

43.

A heart in love with beauty never grows old.

Proverb, Turkish

44.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

45.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

46.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

Klee, Paul

47.

Enjoyed it! One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

Parker, Dorothy

48.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

49.

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

Morris, William

50.

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

Kooning, Willem De