Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Art

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

Bangs, Lester

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause --it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

Rosenberg, Harold

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

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Mailer, Norman

Love can heal a broken heart.

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

Grass, Gunther

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

Bellow, Saul

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

10.

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Bierce, Ambrose

11.

If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole ofyour hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.

Francis De Sales, St.

12.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

13.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

14.

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

15.

If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!

Truman, Harry S

16.

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

17.

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

Picasso, Pablo

18.

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

Bellow, Saul

19.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Ruskin, John

20.

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

21.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

Picasso, Pablo

22.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Miller, Henry

23.

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

Conrad, Joseph

24.

The focus should be on the players. I'm here a long time. You can call me in the summer. Our seniors will be gone.

Smith, Dean

25.

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

Lowell, James Russell

26.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Voznesensky, Andrei

27.

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

28.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Chopra, Deepak

29.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

30.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

Wordsworth, William

31.

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

Burroughs, William S.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Ambrose Bierce

35.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

36.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

G. K. Chesterton

37.

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.

Eckhart, Meister

38.

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

Saint-Victor, Richard of

39.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

40.

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

41.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

42.

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Cezanne, Paul

43.

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

44.

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

45.

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

46.

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

M. C. Richards

47.

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

48.

Art is a form of catharsis.

Parker, Dorothy

49.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Frida Kahlo

50.

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