Motivational Quotes

Art

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Best Quotes about Art

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

Motherwell, Robert

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

John F. Kennedy

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Eliot, T. S.

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

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 is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Murdoch, Iris

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

Use your head and your heart, its not everything but its a start.

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

10.

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

Gutzkow

11.

Art, that great undogmatized church.

Key, Ellen

12.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; no sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Gordon, George

13.

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

M. C. Richards

14.

As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.

Mcluhan, Marshall

15.

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

16.

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

Ambrose Bierce

17.

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.

Elizabeth Bowen

18.

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

Anderson, Bill

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.

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Castaneda, Carlos

21.

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Capp, Al

22.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

23.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Cicero

24.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

25.

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

26.

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

Brancusi, Constantin

27.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

Bellow, Saul

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

Cocteau, Jean

34.

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

35.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

36.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Pablo Picasso

37.

It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

Picasso, Pablo

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.

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.

Morris, William

41.

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

West, Rebecca

42.

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.

43.

Balance is the enemy of art.

Eyre, Richard

44.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Cather, Willa

45.

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

Paz, Octavio

46.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Rushdie, Salman

47.

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

Kooning, Willem De

48.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

49.

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

50.

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

Ruckett