Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Tynan, Kenneth

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

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

Kooning, Willem De

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

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

Brancusi, Constantin

The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Henri Matisse

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

10.

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

Klee, Paul

11.

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

12.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

13.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

Sills, Beverly

14.

Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem.

Anderson, Lindsay

15.

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

16.

Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.

Eliot, T. S.

17.

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

G. K. Chesterton

18.

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

Kempis, Thomas

19.

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

Piero Milani

20.

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

Conrad, Joseph

21.

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

Lewis, Sinclair

22.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

23.

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

Sontag, Susan

24.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugene Delacroix

27.

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

West, Rebecca

28.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

29.

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

William Baziotes

30.

Advice from a veteran trapeze performer: Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow.

31.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Waugh, Evelyn

32.

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

Bellow, Saul

33.

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.

Rich, Adrienne

34.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

35.

Why should I go into details, we have nothing that is not perishable except what our hearts and our intellects endows us with.

Ovid

36.

The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.

Connolly, Cyril

37.

Experiment is necessary in establishing an academy, but certain principles must apply to this business of art as to any other business which affects the artistic tic sense of the community. Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

Menzies, Robert

38.

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Cioran, E. M.

39.

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.

40.

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

George Tooker

41.

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

42.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Baudelaire, Charles

43.

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

44.

There is in every human heart Some not completely barren part, Where seeds of truth and love might grow, And flowers of generous virtue flow; To plant, to watch, to water there, This be our duty, be our care.

Bowring, Sir John

45.

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

Chopra, Deepak

46.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Jackson Pollock

47.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

48.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

49.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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