Motivational Quotes

Art

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

- Richter, Jean Paul

Best Quotes about Art

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

Yu Cao

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

John Singer Sargent

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Woodberry, George E.

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

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

Mailer, Norman

10.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

11.

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

Nickolas Muray

12.

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

13.

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.

Gill, Eric

14.

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

Cassady, Neal

15.

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

16.

Thou art my glory and the exultation of y heart: thou art my hope and refuge in the day of my trouble.

Kempis, Thomas

17.

You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.

18.

If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat...you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

19.

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

Edmond de Goncourt

20.

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

Beauvoir, Simone De

21.

The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

22.

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.

Louis I Kahn

23.

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

24.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

Nightingale, Florence

25.

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Arp, Jean

26.

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

Schnitzler, Arthur

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

William Baziotes

30.

There must be hearts which know the depths of our being, and swear by us, even when the whole world forsakes us.

Gutzkow

31.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.

32.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

Ruckett

35.

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

36.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

Winkelmann

37.

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

Parker, Dorothy

38.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

39.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Dali, Salvador

40.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

41.

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.

Midler, Bette

42.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

43.

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

44.

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

Bible

45.

Good art however immoral is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Pound, Ezra

46.

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.

47.

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

Updike, John

48.

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

49.

If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens.

Moses, Grandma

50.

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

Motherwell, Robert