Motivational Quotes

Art

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, not in Kaaba nor Kailas, but here right within you am I.

- Kabir

Best Quotes about Art

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

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

Sand, George

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Orson Welles

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

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

Capp, Al

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugene Delacroix

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

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

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

10.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Picasso, Pablo

11.

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

12.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

13.

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

Mailer, Norman

14.

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

Howe, Nathaniel

15.

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts.

Charles Rosin

16.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Waugh, Evelyn

17.

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

Apollinaire, Guillaume

18.

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

Motherwell, Robert

19.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Zedong, Mao

20.

Art is the only thing that can go on mattering, once it has stopped hurting.

Bowen, Elizabeth

21.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

Joyce, James

22.

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

23.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

25.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Roosevelt, Theodore

26.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

27.

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

28.

Any artist should be grateful for a na?ve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

Bellow, Saul

29.

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

Castaneda, Carlos

30.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

Beecher, Henry Ward

31.

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

Ginsberg, Allen

32.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

33.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Gogh, Vincent Van

34.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Godard, Jean-Luc

35.

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

36.

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

Morris, William

37.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

Where are you searching for me, friend? Look! Here am I right within you. Not in temple, nor in mosque, not in Kaaba nor Kailas, but here right within you am I.

Kabir

39.

I am more afraid of my own heart than the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self.

Luther, Martin

40.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril

41.

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

William Baziotes

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.

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

Bangs, Lester

44.

Fortunately art is a community effort --a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.

Ginsberg, Allen

45.

Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart.

Proverb

46.

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.

Gandhi, Indira

47.

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

Edmond de Goncourt

48.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Alfred North Whitehead

49.

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

50.

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