Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Schnitzler, Arthur

Best Quotes about Art

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

Picasso, Pablo

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

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Not the glittering weapon fights the fight, but rather the hero's heart.

Proverb

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

Kooning, Willem De

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

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

Baldwin, James

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

Truman, Harry S

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

Ciardi, John

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing --to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

Jackson Pollock

11.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

12.

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

Ambrose Bierce

13.

Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.

Ballard, J. G.

14.

I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way.

Brown, John Mason

15.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

16.

I suppose no matter what I'm drawing, there will always be some sort of question in my mind about it. A work of art (even cartoon art)is never really finished; it is abandoned.

Brooke McEldowney

17.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.

Trilling, Lionel

18.

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

19.

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

20.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

Lombardi, Vince

21.

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

22.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Phillips, Wendell

23.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

France, Anatole

24.

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

25.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin

26.

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

Herder, Johann Gottfried Von

27.

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

28.

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

Breton, Andre

29.

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Proust, Marcel

30.

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

Gide, Andre

31.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

32.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Wilson, Robert

33.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Cather, Willa

34.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

35.

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

36.

All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!

Castaneda, Carlos

37.

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.

Miguel de Cervantes

38.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Kennedy, John F.

39.

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

40.

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

Updike, John

41.

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

42.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

43.

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

West, Rebecca

44.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Paz, Octavio

45.

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

Motherwell, Robert

46.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

Stein, Gertrude

47.

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

Connolly, Cyril

48.

The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]

Shakespeare, William

49.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Keller, Helen

50.

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