There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Art is lies that tell the truth.
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
Fantasie ist wichtiger als Wissen.
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting.
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
All art is solitary and the studio is a torture area.
Art is what you can get away with.
People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.
Creative minds have been known to survive any sort of bad training.
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a huge granite mountain cannot be denied--it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.
An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.
If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!
Kunst ist Scheisse
Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all thedifference in art.
Little kids draw pictures of the ground, the sky, and space in between. If you ask them what the in-between space is, they say 'that's where we are.'
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Kandinsky was right to appreciate Cézanne. The emergence of triangularity in the ‘Large Bathers’ was an unconscious step in the right direction, a step about to break through the crust of the future’s pictorial surface. However, agile and muscular as it may have been, Cézanne’s triangle could not shake the pyramid anchoring Raphael’s composition. The dogged perseverance of this pyramid illuminates the mystical dead weight which Kandinsky and all abstract painting following him have always had difficulty accounting for, and which in the end we, if not they, cannot live without.
But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.
Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it.
Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life. Psychologically speaking, to discover something mysterious in objects is a symptom of cerebral abnormality related to certain kinds of insanity. I believe, however, that such abnormal moments can be found in everyone, and it is all the more fortunate when they occur in individuals with creative talent or with clairvoyant powers. Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.
A great artist… must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl.
It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision -- a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.
Precision is not reality
Art among a religious race produces relics; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.
All art is an individual's expression of a culture. Cultures differ, so art looks different.
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance . . . and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions. Beside the perfection of Turgenev I put the perfection of Dostoevski (is there anything more perfect than "The Ethernal Husband"?). Here, then, in one and the same medium, we have two kinds of perfection. But in van Gogh's letters there is a perfection beyond either of these. It is the triumph of individual over art.
Vita brevis, ars longa,
When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?"
When this girl at the museum asked me who I liked better, "Monet" or "Manet", I said, "I like mayonnaise." She just stared at me, so I said it again, louder. then she left. I guess she went to try to find some mayonnaise for me.
Art is coming face to face with yourself. That's what's wrong with Benton. He came face to face with Michelangelo-- and he lost
The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state and an attempt to point out the direction of the future - without arriving there completely.
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.
If you want to have a million dollars and be an artist, start with two.
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.
I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.
There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
Nobody ever called Pablo Picasso an asshole
The function of the artist is the mythologization of the culture and the world. In the visual arts there were two men whose work handled mythological themes in a marvelous way: Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso
Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.
It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.
If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.
If you really want to upset your parents, and you are not brave enough to be gay, go into the arts!
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man-we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling. The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means-by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspection, etc.-should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside. And it is only art that can accomplish this.
Art renders accessible to men of the latest generations all the feelings experienced by their predecessors and also those felt by their best and foremost contemporaries . . . [Art] is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling . . . Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by those feelings and also experience them . . . A real work of art destroys in the consciousness of the recipient the separation between himself and the artist, and . . . also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.
Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working.
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.
I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.
Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him.
Art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it. Art has absolutely no existence as varacity, as truth. People speak of it with great, religious reverence, but I don't see why it is to be so much revered. I'm afraid I'm an agnostic when it comes to art. I don't believe in it with all the mystical trimmings. As a drug it's probably very useful for many people, very sedative, but as a religion it's not even as good as God.
Art is like a shipwreck .. it's everyman for himself.
Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only be explored by those willing to take the risks.
The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. He is an outsider.
Great designers innovate, good designers emulate.
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that the others are behind the time.
Talent and all that are really for the most part just baloney. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude can perhaps draw better than I; but what he lacks in most cases is that tenacious desire to make it reality, that obstinate gnashing of teeth and saying, "Although I know it can't be done, I want to do it anyway
Lord, let me always desire more then I think I can do.
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
Art is the highest task and proper metaphysical activity of this life.
It is through… Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
The proper school to learn art is not life but art
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
Art is the most intense mode of invidualism that the world has known.
The past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?
I do not seek. I find.
The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.
Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?
The more horrifing the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.
An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.
Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be the indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.
The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel.
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.
Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider
Art is a way of saying what it means to be alive, and the most salient feature of existence is the unthinkable odds against it. For every way that there is of being here, there are an infinity of ways of not being here. Historical accident snuffs out whole universes with every clock tick. Statistics declare us ridiculous. Thermodynamics prohibits us. Life, by any reasonable measure, is impossible, and my life—this, here, now—infinitely more so. Art is a way of saying, in the face of all that impossibility, just how worth celebrating it is to be able to say anything at all.
One might truthfully say that abstract art is stripped bare of other things in order to intensify it, its rhythms, spatial intervals, and color structure. Abstraction is a process of emphasis . . . Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come into existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience -- intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.
Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.
There must be something about art... almost all cultures have done art. Its a refining of the senses, which are there to keep us alive. As far as we know, no other animals do that.
Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms.
Since mechanically obtained randomness contains all kinds of possible permutations, including the most regular ones, it cannot be relied upon always to exhibit a pervasive irregularity.
Art is a half-effaced recollection of a higher state from which we have fallen since the time of Eden.
The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
The difference between mediocrity and excellence is attention to detail.
He who knows how to appreciate color relationships, the influence of one color on another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinitely diverse imagery.
Life is not a support system for art. It is the other way around.
Great art can communicate before it is understood.
You can never do too much drawing.
In the staircase of life, Art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
My dear Tristan, to be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war.
Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in destructive action: Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners: Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memroy: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity: Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere; trajectory of a word tossed like a screeching phonograph record; to respect all individuals in their folly of the moment: whether it be serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, determinded, enthusiastic; to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them - with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least - with the same intensity in the thicket of one's soul - pure of insects for blood well-born, and gilded with bodies of archangles. Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colours, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE
An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance. Almost dull, in fact. In reality, however, [it's] crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and [is] full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged ... It can contain anything but cannot sustain everything ... An empty canvas is a living wonder -- far lovelier than certain pictures.
I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.
I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.
...dass in Wirklichkeit nichts Kunstlerischer ist als die Menschen zu lieben
There is no must in art because art is free.
The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remembered the people, because they created.
I've decided, I'm going to feed every little addiction and silently go mad 'cause right now my writing sucks
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Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.
Art degraded, Imagination denied.
Hear Peter Halley at the College Art Association conference, scolding academics for the jargon-laden obscurantism of critical prose, although his own writings on behalf of Baudrillard and the simulacrum thickened the stew more than a little.
People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
I'm not really foreign, you know. I just do it to appear more sophisticated! I mean, nobody'd buy Evian water if it was called Blackburn water, would they? Nobody'd wear Kicker boots if they were made in Scunthorpe! Abba? Abba, Swedish? I knew then when they were a Lancashire clog-dancing trio! Arthur, Betty, Boris and Angela! Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn--a former pipe-fitter welder from Harrogate!
Garlic is to Food what Insanity is to Art
Arthur Dent hoped and prayed there wasn't an afterlife. Then, realizing the contradiction, he merely hoped there wasn't an afterlife.
[Art] is about as outrageous and murderous an act a person can do short of really doing one physically.
Art is why i get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know i don't think its fair that I'm living for something i can't even define.
Technique! The very word is like a shriek of outraged Art. It is the idiot name given to effort by those who are too weak, too weary, or too dull to play the game. The mighty have no theory of technique.
Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'
