Good Art quotes: Best famous quotes about Art
I don’t have big anxieties. I wish I did. I’d be much more interesting. – Roy Lichtenstein
I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me. – Roy Lichtenstein
The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress. – Hendrik Willem Van Loon
Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma. – Hendrik Willem Van Loon
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
Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout. – Melvin Maddocks
I just think it’s important to be direct and honest with people about why you’re photographing them and what you’re doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul. – Mary Ellen Mark
Time extracts various values from a painter’s work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is. – Henri Matisse
I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things. – Henri Matisse
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover. – Henri Matisse
A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I’ve been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light. – Henri Matisse
Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul. – Henri Matisse
I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me. – Henri Matisse
Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence. – Henri Matisse
It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color – not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression. – Henri Matisse
I have been no more than a medium, as it were. – Henri Matisse
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter – a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue. – Henri Matisse
All autobiography is self-indulgent. – Daphne du Maurier
Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century. – Marshall McLuhan
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. – Michelangelo
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. – Michelangelo
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. – Michelangelo
I always try to balance the light with the heavy – a few tears of human spirit in with the sequins and the fringes. – Bette Midler
The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. – Henry Mille
It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work. – Henry Moore
A great artist is always before his time or behind it. – George Moore
A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds. – Henry Moore
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. – Friedrich Nietzsche
If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it. – Anais Nin
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist. – Novalis
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for. – Georgia O’Keeffe
It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it. – Georgia O’Keeffe
Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue – that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished. – Georgia O’Keeffe
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them. – Thomas Paine
Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers… What we call art is a game. – Octavio Paz
You’ve gotta be original, because if you’re like someone else, what do they need you for? – Bernadette Peters
The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. – Pablo Picasso
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. – Pablo Picasso
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. – Pablo Picasso
Give me a museum and I’ll fill it. – Pablo Picasso
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. – Pablo Picasso
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. – Pablo Picasso
We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. – Pablo Picasso
My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso. – Pablo Picasso
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. – Plutarch
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man’s nature. – Marcel Proust
While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality… true art lies in a reality that is felt. – Odilon Redon
Our natures are a lot like oil, mix us with anything else, and we strive to swim on top. – Joan Rivers
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need. – Auguste Rodin
Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about. He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight. – Auguste Rodin
I invent nothing, I rediscover. – Auguste Rodin
The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it. – Carl Rogers
I don’t want to be interesting. I want to be good. – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous. – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. – John Ruskin
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. – George Santayana
To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist. – Robert Schumann
All art is but imitation of nature. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. – George Bernard Shaw
Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. – Ted Shawn
I didn’t have any interest in traditional art. – Cindy Sherman
May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine. – Frank Sinatra
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. – Isaac Bashevis Singer
I don’t invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions. Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them. – Isaac Bashevis Singer
If you’re a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes. – Mickey Spillane
You know… that a blank wall is an apalling thing to look at. The wall of a museum – a canvas – a piece of film – or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something – that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you. – Edward Steichen
Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man. – Edward Steichen
Photography is a major force in explaining man to man. – Edward Steichen
When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration. – Edward Steichen
Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product. – Edward Steichen
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears. – Gertrude Stein
The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep. – Paul Strand
I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good. – Barbra Streisand
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. – Jonathan Swift
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. – Twyla Tharp
This is the river of the great 19th-century landscapists; of Cole, Cropsey and Church, and at the end of the summer it lies motionless under the haze as under a light coat of varnish. – Judith Thurman
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal. – Lionel Trilling
There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances. – Leon Trotsky
The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional. Although they conceal an essential orifice, these pointless globes are as near as the human form can ever come to abstract art. – Kenneth Tynan
What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit. – John Updike
The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all. – John Updike
Why not say it? I’m bursting out of my cocoon. It was all too nice in the past – it never knocked anyone out. But last year… my first opening night at the Met – I looked out and heard all that cheering… for me… And I loved it. – Benita Valente
An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. – Paul Valery
An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs. – Edgard Varese
For half a century photography has been the “art form” of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? to the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? tso the law of averages? – Gore Vidal
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason. – Leonardo da Vinci
An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would be a good idea to give them. – Andy Warhol
I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning. – Andy Warhol
Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. – Andy Warhol
Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches. – Andy Warhol
Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details. – Andy Warhol
I like boring things. – Andy Warhol
Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. – Andy Warhol
I am a deeply superficial person. – Andy Warhol
Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes. – E. B. White
For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros. – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. – Oscar Wilde
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. – Oscar Wilde
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. – Oscar Wilde
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. – Oscar Wilde
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. – William Wordsworth
Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them. – William Wordsworth
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines – so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings. – Frank Lloyd Wright
Art for art’s sake is a philosophy of the well-fed. – Frank Lloyd Wright
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. – Emile Zola
Page topic: Good Art quotes: Best famous quotes about Art
