ART QUOTES XII
quotations about art
The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is Art?
I love my work. To paint, to write, to create and then start all over again is bliss. Viewing and celebrating creations by others artists is equally as thrilling. While it may be true that "there is nothing new under the sun," that we only see variations of what came before, I am continuously amazed that there is always something that feels brand new.
PATRICE DRAGO
"Gallery: The variety of art is exciting", Capital Gazette, March 6, 2016
Good art means the ability of any one man to pin down in some permanent and intelligible medium a sort of idea of what he sees in Nature that nobody else sees. In other words, to make the other fellow grasp, through skilled selective care in interpretative reproduction or symbolism, some inkling of what only the artist himself could possibly see in the actual objective scene itself.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Woodburn Harris, February/March 1929
Aesthetic culture is not the high-road to all the virtues, and, indeed, certain of the vices have been known to infest it. Neither, on the other hand, is there any special grace in ugliness. Art is only utterance. It must express something; and the vital question is, what does it express?
LEWIS FOREMAN DAY
Everyday Art
There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.
ADRIENNE RICH
Blood, Bread and Poetry
If the world were clear, art would not exist.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus
An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.
CHINUA ACHEBE
The Massachusetts Review, Summer, 1987
What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature... (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms).
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Sandman"
Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Antic Hay
Men are momentary but art is forever.
MAUREEN CORRIGAN
"Men Are Momentary, But Art Is Forever In 'Innocents And Others'", NPR, March 15, 2016
It's a great life except for the money. If you are into STUFF, being an artist is probably not your thing unless you can marry yourself off to a financier. But as an artist, you get to do what you love doing and has meaning for you.
JAMES GUPPY
"Judging art is a classic business", Echo Netdaily, March 16, 2016
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel--Art.
HERMAN MELVILLE
"Art"
Art is my spiritual path.... Art is my prayer, my ritual, my remembrance of the Divine. Art is the way I knit together the beliefs and practices that guide my life.
PAT B. ALLEN
introduction, Art Is a Spiritual Path
Art still has truth. Take refuge there.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Memorial Verses
The only original part in a work of art is the infusion of the artist's own character, if he has one.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.
ROBERT ALTMAN
interview with F. Anthony Macklin, 1976
No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society