Art Quotes

Photography, like any other art, is a form of communication. The artist is not blowing bubbles for his own gratification, but is speaking a language, is telling somebody something.

It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts-music, painting and writing-is magical and evocative; and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result.

Spade! Thou art a tool of honor in my hands. I press thee, through a yielding soil, with pride.

As generations come and go, Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow; Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away, And feeble, of themselves, decay.

The saying 'the arts aid the body' is for samurai of other regions. For samurai of the Nabeshima clan the arts bring ruin to the body.

I come from a culture that has refined the art of the dirge to a sublime level.

We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.

Truth is most beautiful undraped.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart

I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

Art never comes from happiness.

His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own.

It's funny how the beauty of art has so much more to do with the frame than the artwork itself.

So. Lie there, my art.

Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.

We live in an age when the traditional great subjects - the human form, the landscape, even newer traditions such as abstract expressionism - are daily devalued by commercial art.

I feel genius in great works of art. I have seen medical cures that science can't explain, some seemingly triggered by faith. The same is true of millions of other people.

I'm happy to be a writer - of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation.

Poetry looking in the mirror sees art, and art looking in a mirror sings poetry.

Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.

One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them.

A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.

To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty

All art is abstract, because art is an abstraction of the truth.

I love my old paintings as postulates as fresh starting points but I have to destroy them. I have to make a new manifesto.

Art is art. You can take it or leave it. Liking it or not liking it does not make you a better person, and who you like or dislike results in the same thing.

I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go.

Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.

But if what interests you are stories of the fantastic, I must warn you that this kind of story demands more art and judgment than is ordinarily imagined.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

Speed is not always a constituent to great work, the process of creation should be given time and thought.

The main thing for inner contentment is to be in a state of grace. And there is an artistic state of grace, for art is a kind of religion.

The ones who constantly make us laugh are the hardest of friends to know - for comedians are the caricatures among us.

... an artist should paint from the heart, and not always what people expect. Predictability often leads to the dullest work, in my opinion, and we have been bored stiff long enough I think.

Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches.

While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy.

To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.

That's something that tends to happen with new technologies generally: The most interesting applications turn up on a battlefield, or in a gallery.

There has to be a cut-off somewhere between the freedom of expression and a graphically explicit free-for-all.

All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.

...as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.

You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take them to a museum and say, 'This is art, and you can't do it.

Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

Maybe you are a poet and a dreamer, but don't you realize that those two species are extinct now?

Art is communication.

If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.