Motivational Quotes

Art

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted. [Henry Iv]

- Shakespeare, William

Best Quotes about Art

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

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it joy?

Dworkin, Andrea

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

The powerful play goes on -- and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Beck

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

John F. Kennedy

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

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

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Geldzahler, Henry

10.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Tagore, Rabindranath

11.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

12.

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

13.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

14.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

15.

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

Arp, Jean

16.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

Wilde, Oscar

17.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

18.

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

Picasso, Pablo

19.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Gogh, Vincent Van

20.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Maistre, Joseph De

21.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden... it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Forster, Edward M.

22.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

23.

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

Eliot, T. S.

24.

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

Kempis, Thomas

25.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Picasso, Pablo

26.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Rand, Ayn

27.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Sand, George

28.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

29.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

30.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Adorno, Theodor W.

31.

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Al Capp

32.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

33.

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

Joseph Chilton Pearce

34.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.

Hockney, David

35.

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

Schnitzler, Arthur

36.

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

M. C. Richards

37.

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.

Holyfield, Evander

38.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso

39.

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

Edmond de Goncourt

40.

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

Ambrose Bierce

41.

In our own hearts, we mold the whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our own gods.

Melville, Herman

42.

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

Yu Cao

43.

If the wolf had ever come to our back door, he'd have had to bring a picnic lunch.

Anderson, Bill

44.

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

Jackson Pollock

45.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Pope, Alexander

46.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Picasso, Pablo

47.

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

48.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

49.

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.

Jeff Melvoin

50.

Doubt obscures the true vision of the heart.