ART QUOTES V
quotations about art
Never judge a work of art by its defects.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
attributed, A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern
Art is becoming one of the indispensable factors influencing the organization of everyday life. It is present everywhere and nowhere. It is becoming a fluid. It stands outside all professions. It cannot be isolated, it cannot be worshipped, it cannot be converted into money. None of this is possible. It is irreversibly dissolved in the solution of burgeoning human existence.
MILAN KNIZAK
"Aktual Univerzity: Ten Lessons", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings
I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. We don't have to rely totally on experience if we can do things in our imagination.... It's the only way in which you can live more lives than your own. You can escape your own time, your own sensibility, your own narrowness of vision.
MARY OLIVER
The Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 9, 1992
An artist cannot fail; it is success to be one.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Life and the Student
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
JEAN COCTEAU
Newsweek, May 16, 1955
The highest art is always the most religious; and the greatest artist is always a devout man. A scoffing Raphael or Michelangelo is not conceivable.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
On Beauty: three discourses delivered in the University of Edinburgh
We live in a world full of urgent problems: climate change, terrorism and poverty, to name but three. We won't resolve them with brawn; they are obstacles we can only overcome by using our brains--when we are thinking like artists and not behaving like animals.
WILL GOMPERTZ
Think Like an Artist: and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life
Nothing helps an artist's career more than a little death and obscurity.
DAN SIMMONS
The Fall of Hyperion
If they who understand the utmost refinement of any art will enjoy the perfection of it in a manner superior to other men, will they not amply pay for that advantage in feeling more than other men the imperfection of it, which in the natural course of things must so much oftener fall in their way?
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Realism and art cannot live together.
JENNETTE LEE
The Ibsen Secret
If you are not passionate in life, you can't be passionate in art.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir
Now the culture is made of old things, it's a collage. Art made out of art is not art. You're supposed to make art out of life.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
interview, Paper Magazine, September 17, 2014
Keep doing what you like to do. That's all [art] is.
CORY ARCANGEL
interview with Stina Puotinen, Mar. 21, 2009
An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
J. D. SALINGER
Zooey
Art is not a copy of the real world; one of the damn things is enough.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
attributed, Languages of Art
Art is a little subversive, very subversive; it gets underneath the surface and reveals what is there; it is a Geiger counter for truth.
PAT B. ALLEN
Art Is a Spiritual Path
Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
Strong Opinions
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
LEO TOLSTOY
What is Art?
Art is an organized response to what nature allows us to glimpse occasionally. Art sets out to transform the potential recognition into an unceasing one.
JOHN BERGER
The Sense of Sight
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