Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

Jeff Melvoin

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

Barenboim, Daniel

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Apollinaire, Guillaume

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

Thurber, James

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Capp, Al

All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!

Castaneda, Carlos

E. M. Forster

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

Suttner, Bertha Von

10.

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing --to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

David Cronenberg

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

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

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

16.

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

17.

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

18.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.

Pascal, Blaise

19.

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

Ovid

20.

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

George Tooker

21.

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

Frost, Robert

22.

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.

23.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

Riding, Laura

25.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Cioran, E. M.

26.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

Sills, Beverly

27.

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

28.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

29.

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

30.

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

Morris, William

31.

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

32.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

33.

I will greet this day with love in my heart. For this is the greatest secret of success in all ventures. Muscles can split a shield and even destroy life itself but only the unseen power of love can open the hearts of man. And until I master this act I will remain no more than a peddler in the marketplace. I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend upon its force... my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day.

Mandino, Og

34.

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

Yu Cao

35.

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

Franklin, Benjamin

36.

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

Wolfe, Thomas

37.

All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.

Trocchi, Alexander

38.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

39.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

40.

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

Novalis

41.

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

42.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

44.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

Trilling, Lionel

45.

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

Burroughs, William S.

46.

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

Kooning, Willem De

47.

It doesn't matter if people are interested. It's about you taking your stuff and shouting out into the void.

Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

48.

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

49.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

Tzara, Tristan

50.

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.

Paglia, Camille