Motivational Quotes

Art

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

- Ben Shahn

Best Quotes about Art

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

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Matisse, Henri

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

Ambrose Bierce

There is nothing enduring in life for a women except what she builds in a man's heart.

Anderson, Judith

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

Tagore, Rabindranath

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

Kooning, Willem De

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

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

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

10.

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

Simonides

11.

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

Arp, Jean

12.

Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.

Mcluhan, Marshall

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Pablo Picasso

17.

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

18.

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.

Piero Milani

19.

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

Novalis

20.

A Great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart.

Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

21.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Jacob, Max

22.

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

Suttner, Bertha Von

23.

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

24.

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

25.

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

26.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Picasso, Pablo

27.

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Kooning, Willem De

28.

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

Brown, John Mason

29.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Godard, Jean-Luc

30.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

Crowley, Aleister

31.

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

Connolly, Cyril

32.

The heart always sees before than the head can see.

Carlyle, Thomas

33.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

34.

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

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

35.

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.

Berryman, John

36.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

Picasso, Pablo

39.

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

Stephen Nachmanovitch

40.

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

41.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

42.

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

Schumann, Robert

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

William Baziotes

46.

I am more afraid of my own heart than the Pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great Pope, Self.

Luther, Martin

47.

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.

Erasmus, Desiderius

48.

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.

Debord, Guy

50.

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