ART QUOTES II

quotations about art

Art quote

It's hard to believe that this long ago we--meaning Cro-Magnon modern humans--were the ones who invented art. Not every cave has gorgeous art, but the ones that do are spectacular. They utilize the bumps and the dips in the cave walls; it's not a flat surface like a painting. When you turn off the flashlight and strike a match instead, in that flickering light the shadows of these dips in the cave walls kind of move, and it almost makes you feel like those animals are alive. It's pretty spectacular.

JEAN M. AUEL

interview, goodreads, April 2011

Tags: Jean M. Auel


The perfection of art is to conceal the sources.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.

STEFAN ZWEIG

prelude, Paul Verlaine

Tags: Stefan Zweig


An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The Paris Review, spring 1956

Tags: William Faulkner, artists


The way to art was not to think too clearly, not to plan things out, but to follow where your heart and emotions led.

PAUL PARK

A Princess of Roumania

Tags: Paul Park, emotion


Whether it is the beautiful that brings to our hearts the love of truth and justice, or whether it is truth that teaches us how to find the beautiful in nature and how to love it, in either case art does a noble work. It drags out the soul from its everyday shell, and brings it under the spell of its own mysterious and wonderful power, so that a memory of this experience stays with the people, sustains them in their daily labors, and refines their minds.

HELENA MODJESKA

"Women and the Stage", The World's Congress of Representative Women

Tags: Helena Modjeska, soul


Art is not Nature, art is Nature digested. Art is a sublime excrement.

GEORGE MOORE

Confessions of a Young Man

Tags: George Moore, nature


It is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truths, to mouths like mine at least.

ROBERT BROWNING

The Ring and the Book

Tags: Robert Browning, truth


I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

"Riding with Death: The Final Years", Jean-Michel Basquiat: 1960-1988

Tags: life


The job of mass entertainment is to cajole, seduce and flatter consumers to let them know that what they thought was right is right, and that their tastes and their immediate gratification are of the utmost concern of the purveyor. The job of the artist, on the other hand, is to say, wait a second, to the contrary, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's reexamine it.

DAVIE MAMET

interview, Salon, 1997

Tags: David Mamet


Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.

HOWARD ZINN

"Artists of Resistance", The Historic Unfulfilled Promise

Tags: Howard Zinn


While our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

RAY BRADBURY

preface, Zen in the Art of Writing

Tags: Ray Bradbury


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


Don't make the mistake of believing it's enough to reproduce the realities of life.... The object of art is to give life a shape, and to do it by every conceivable artifice.

JEAN ANOUILH

The Rehearsal

Tags: Jean Anouilh


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

Tags: George Santayana


Art knows, life applies knowledge; art feels, life acts.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley, life


When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears.

HENRY MILLER

Tropic of Cancer

Tags: Henry Miller, chaos


Art is memory's mise-en-scene.

LUIS BARRAGÁN

The Architecture of Luis Barragán


All passes. Art alone
Enduring stays to us;
The Bust outlasts the throne,--
The Coin, Tiberius.

HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON

Ars Victrix

Tags: Henry Austin Dobson


Take a quart of nature, boil it down to a pint, and the residue is art.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley, nature