ART QUOTES VI
quotations about art
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Art Like Morality Consists in Drawing the Line Somewhere
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
LEO TOLSTOY
What is Art?
That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men.
OSCAR WILDE
"Art and the Handicraftsman"
Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
Letters to a Young Artist
Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.
HOWARD ZINN
"Artists of Resistance", The Historic Unfulfilled Promise
Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out. The cause of production of real art is the artist's inner need to express a feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the cause of sexual conception is love. The cause of counterfeit art, as of prostitution, is gain. The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into the intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife's love is the birth of a new man into life. The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man, pleasure which never satisfies, and the weakening of man's spiritual strength.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is Art?
I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.
LOUISE NEVELSON
"Dawns and Dusks", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings
Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
Strong Opinions
Art, true art, is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.
AMY LOWELL
Tendencies in Modern Poetry
Art is one of man's few serious activities.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
There are many brave artists who dare to reveal what's most precious to them. Who dare to step into the world without protective layer. Open. Vulnerable. Exposed.
ESTHER DE CHARON DE SAINT GERMAIN
"Why Art Is Important for Highly Sensitive Persons", Huffington Post, March 15, 2016
The transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.
JOHN BERGER
The Sense of Sight
The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
NORMAN MAILER
Western Review, winter 1959
Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
letter, Feb. 17, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet
Art ... is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
interview, July 5, 2005
Art begins with resistance -- at the point where resistance is overcome.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.
EDWARD ALBEE
Stretching My Mind
Realism and art cannot live together.
JENNETTE LEE
The Ibsen Secret
Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the songs of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them.
PABLO PICASSO
Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views