Motivational Quotes

Art

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul. The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist.

- Poe, Edgar Allan

Best Quotes about Art

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.

Varese, Edward

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.

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

Joyce, James

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

Godard, Jean-Luc

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

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

Art is the objectification of feeling.

Langer, Suzanne K.

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

It is either easy or impossible.

Dali, Salvador

10.

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

11.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

12.

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

David Cronenberg

13.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

Chandler, Raymond

14.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

15.

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

Bayley, Stephen

16.

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

17.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

18.

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

19.

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

20.

If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.

Trotsky, Leon

21.

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

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Huxley, Aldous

24.

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

25.

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

M. C. Richards

26.

Whether joy or sorrowful, the heart needs a double, because a joy shared is doubled and a pain that is shared is divided.

Ruckett

27.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

John F. Kennedy

28.

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.

29.

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

30.

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

Schnitzler, Arthur

31.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Novalis

32.

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

Picasso, Pablo

33.

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

Erasmus, Desiderius

34.

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave.

Wolfe, Thomas

35.

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

36.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

37.

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

Franklin, Benjamin

38.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Jacob, Max

39.

It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

Elizabeth Aston

40.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

West, Rebecca

41.

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

42.

I know just how frustrating it can be when you're tired and exhausted, but you still want to draw something.

Ward Jenkins

43.

The heart will break, but broken live on.