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

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

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

Morris, William

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

Weil, Simone

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.

Blair, Hugh

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.

Baudelaire, Charles

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

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Jefferson, Thomas

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Updike, John

10.

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

Buckingham, Duke of

11.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

12.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

13.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

14.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

15.

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

16.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

17.

A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

18.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

19.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

Lao-Tzu

20.

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

Wilde, Oscar

21.

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

David Cronenberg

22.

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

23.

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

Melville, Herman

24.

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

Farnham, Eliza

25.

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

Burroughs, William S.

26.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

27.

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Dahlberg, Edward

28.

Drink, and dance and laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight through, for tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

Parker, Dorothy

29.

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

Ciardi, John

30.

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

Proverb, Chinese

31.

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.

32.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

Gide, Andre

34.

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

Yu Cao

35.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Rushdie, Salman

36.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Geldzahler, Henry

37.

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

38.

Use your head and your heart, its not everything but its a start.

39.

There are in every generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter and these are the salt of the generations.

Pearse, Patrick Henry

40.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

41.

Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.

Updike, John

42.

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

Dubuffet, Jean

43.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

45.

In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

Kennedy, John F.

46.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Reinhardt, Ad

47.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

Barzun, Jacques

48.

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