Motivational Quotes

Art

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

Best Quotes about Art

Every artist was first an amateur.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.

Varese, Edward

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

Wolfe, Thomas

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

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

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

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

John F. Kennedy

10.

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

11.

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

Morris, William

12.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

13.

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone seeds the invisible.

Saint-Victor, Richard of

14.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

Twain, Mark

15.

What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?

Rosenberg, Harold

16.

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

Lao-Tzu

17.

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

George Tooker

18.

Art the end result of perception, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and coincidence.

19.

The artist belongs to their work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

20.

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

Elizabeth Bowen

21.

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

22.

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

William Baziotes

23.

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

Truman, Harry S

24.

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

Ciardi, John

25.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Andre Gide

26.

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

27.

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

Ovid

28.

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

Kooning, Willem De

29.

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

30.

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

Chopra, Deepak

31.

Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

Buckingham, Duke of

32.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

In free society art is not a weapon. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

Kennedy, John F.

34.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

35.

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

36.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

37.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

Miller, Henry

39.

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

40.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Gandhi, Indira

41.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

Wilde, Oscar

42.

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

43.

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

44.

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.

Penn Jillette

45.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

46.

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

47.

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

48.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

49.

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

50.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.