Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Ionesco, Eugene

Best Quotes about Art

O, had I but followed the arts!

Shakespeare, William

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

Richter, Jean Paul

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Edmond de Goncourt

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

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

Diana, Princess of Wales

If your heart were sincere and upright, every creature would be unto you a looking-glass of life and a book of holy doctrine.

Kempis, Thomas

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

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

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

10.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Picabia, Francis

11.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion --I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more --I could be martyred for my religion --Love is my religion --I could die for that.

Keats, John

12.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Byron, Lord

13.

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

Bunuel, Luis

14.

If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come.

Proverb, Chinese

15.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Picasso, Pablo

16.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

Conrad, Joseph

17.

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.

Schnitzler, Arthur

18.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Beck

19.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.

Faulkner, William

21.

At every party there are two kinds of people -- those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.

Landers, Ann

22.

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

23.

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

Frost, Robert

24.

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.

25.

The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.

Lowell, James Russell

26.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

27.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

28.

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

Ovid

29.

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

30.

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

Jovovich, Milla

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

Latimer, Bishop Hugh

34.

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

Paz, Octavio

35.

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

36.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Wilson, Robert

37.

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

Capp, Al

38.

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

Parker, Dorothy

39.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

40.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

Thurber, James

42.

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

Jackson Pollock

43.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Cather, Willa

45.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

46.

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

Yu Cao

47.

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

48.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

49.

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

David Cronenberg

50.

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