ART QUOTES VI
quotations about art
I have never found anywhere, in the domain of art, that you don't have to walk to. (There is quite an array of jets, buses and hacks which you can ride to Success; but that is a different destination.) It is a pretty wild country. There are, of course, roads. Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction -- you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Language of the Night
Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
Art begins with resistance -- at the point where resistance is overcome.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.
THEODOR WIESENGRUND ADORNO
Minima Moralia
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
JEAN COCTEAU
Newsweek, May 16, 1955
Art, true 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
Tendencies in Modern Poetry
There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.
REBECCA WEST
The Strange Necessity
Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out. The cause of production of real art is the artist's inner need to express a feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the cause of sexual conception is love. The cause of counterfeit art, as of prostitution, is gain. The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into the intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife's love is the birth of a new man into life. The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man, pleasure which never satisfies, and the weakening of man's spiritual strength.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is 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
One of the things pounded in to my head at the university level was that art is communication. So showing your art is not only good for your ego, but it's discovering you can be part of this conversation that has been going on as long as people have been painting in caves.
ROBERT LEMMING
"Art Is Communication: Artist turned teacher encourages conversation", Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, March 11, 2016
The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.
EDWARD ALBEE
Stretching My Mind
Realism and art cannot live together.
JENNETTE LEE
The Ibsen Secret
I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.
LOUISE NEVELSON
"Dawns and Dusks", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings
Don't worry about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.
ANDY WARHOL
attributed, "Andy Warhol's Best Advice about Art", Flavorwire, August 6, 2012
Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
Letters to a Young Artist
But art consists not so much in the knowledge of principles, as in the manner of applying them; to reveal them to ignorant people is to put a razor in the hand of a monkey.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology
Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
But art not only exploits the variety of appearances, it also affirms the validity of individual outlook and thereby admits a further dimension of variety. Since the shapes of art do not primarily bear witness to the objective nature of the things for which they stand, they can reflect individual interpretation and invention.
RUDOLF ARNHEIM
Visual Thinking
True art, like nature, ever bears
Suggestions of some higher thing;
As more than form or tint of bird
We prize the song he stops to sing.
EDITH WILLIS LINN FORBES
"A Landscape in Oils"
Art ... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Art Objects