Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Duke Ellington

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

Brancusi, Constantin

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

M. C. Richards

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone seeds the invisible.

Saint-Victor, Richard of

Kooning, Willem De

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

11.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

12.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

13.

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.

Lewitzky, Bella

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.

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

16.

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

Mcluhan, Marshall

17.

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

Morris, William

18.

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

Apollinaire, Guillaume

19.

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

Anderson, Bill

20.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

21.

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

Camus, Albert

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Murdoch, Iris

25.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

26.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

In every veil you see, the Divine Beauty is concealed, making every heart a slave to him. In love to him the heart finds its life; in desire for him the soul finds its happiness. The heart which loves a fair one here, though it knows it not, is really his lover.

Jami

28.

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

29.

The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]

Shakespeare, William

30.

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

31.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]

Rodin, Auguste

32.

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

Berle, Adolf

33.

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

Warhol, Andy

34.

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

Alvarez, A.

35.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

36.

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.

Cassady, Neal

37.

Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place.

Rowland, Helen

38.

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

Beecher, Henry Ward

39.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Davis, Angela Y.

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.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

42.

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

Benjamin, Walter

43.

Charity is in the heart of man, and righteousness in the path of men. Pity the man who has lost his path and does not follow it and who has lost his heart and does not know how to recover it. When people's dogs and chicks are lost they go out and look for them and yet the people who have lost their hearts do not go out and look for them. The principle of self-cultivation consists in nothing but trying to look for the lost heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

44.

What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.

Blair, Hugh

45.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Matisse, Henri

46.

Art is a form of catharsis.

Parker, Dorothy

47.

In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.

Kronenberger, Louis

48.

Labor is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art.

49.

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

Thurber, James

50.

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

Penn Jillette