Motivational Quotes

Art

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

- Capp, Al

Best Quotes about Art

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

Wolfe, Thomas

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

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Blackie, Professor

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Alfred North Whitehead

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

All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.

Trocchi, Alexander

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

Wilson, Robert

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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

Miguel de Cervantes

11.

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

Proverb

12.

What is art but a way of seeing?

Berger, Thomas

13.

It doesn't matter if people are interested. It's about you taking your stuff and shouting out into the void.

Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

14.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

Beecher, Henry Ward

15.

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

16.

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

Edmond de Goncourt

17.

If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.

Trotsky, Leon

18.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

19.

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

20.

If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat...you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

21.

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

22.

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

23.

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

24.

The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.

Lowell, James Russell

25.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Orson Welles

26.

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

27.

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes

28.

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

Cioran, E. M.

29.

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

Shakespeare, William

30.

If your heart were sincere and upright, every creature would be unto you a looking-glass of life and a book of holy doctrine.

Kempis, Thomas

31.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

32.

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.

Isak Dineson

33.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher

34.

Art has an enemy called ignorance.

Johnson, Ben

35.

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause --it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

Rosenberg, Harold

36.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of the fool is in the house of entertainment.

Bible

37.

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

Bellow, Saul

38.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Einstein, Albert

39.

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

40.

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

West, Rebecca

41.

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Dahlberg, Edward

45.

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

46.

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

Dubuffet, Jean

47.

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

48.

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

49.

He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

50.

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.

Farnham, Eliza