ART QUOTES III

quotations about art

Art quote

I do get students that initially think they're never going to be that good an artist. I refuse to accept that. There's trained and untrained. It's OK for you to be working on your own level -- as long as you're working.

ROBERT LEMMING

"Art Is Communication: Artist turned teacher encourages conversation", Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, March 11, 2016


The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Death in the Afternoon

Tags: Ernest Hemingway, artists


Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

JOHN BARTH

attributed, Writers Dreaming


The transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.

JOHN BERGER

The Sense of Sight

Tags: John Berger


There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

REBECCA WEST

The Strange Necessity

Tags: Rebecca West, mobs


Art -- the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

JAMES THURBER

Collecting Himself

Tags: James Thurber


Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.

LEO TOLSTOY

What Is Art?

Tags: Leo Tolstoy, life


It was the job of art to bring true feelings alive. To shock people into awareness.

MICHAEL CRICHTON

Next

Tags: Michael Crichton


Art is always aimed (like a rifle, if you wish) at the middle class. The working class has its own culture and will have no truck with fanciness of any kind. The upper class owns the world and thus needs know no more about the world than is necessary for its orderly exploitation. The notion that art cuts across class boundaries to stir the hearts of hoe hand and Morgan alike is, at best, a fiction useful to the artist, his Hail Mary. It is the poor puzzled bourgeoisie that is sufficiently uncertain, sufficiently hopeful, to pay attention to art. It follows (as the night the day) that the bourgeoisie should get it in the neck.

DONALD BARTHELME

"On the Level of Desire"

Tags: Donald Barthelme


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".

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"Marginalia"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe, soul


Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

G. K. CHESTERTON

Art Like Morality Consists in Drawing the Line Somewhere

Tags: G. K. Chesterton, morality


Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man.

ROBERT M. PIRSIG

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Tags: Robert M. Pirsig


Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

preface, Salon of 1846

Tags: Charles Baudelaire


An artist cannot fail; it is success to be one.

CHARLES HORTON COOLEY

Life and the Student

Tags: Charles Horton Cooley


Keep doing what you like to do. That's all [art] is.

CORY ARCANGEL

interview with Stina Puotinen, Mar. 21, 2009


An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

JEAN COCTEAU

Newsweek, May 16, 1955

Tags: Jean Cocteau, artists


That is one of the things a great work of art does. It stays there waiting for you to come back to it, and it shows you who you are now, each time a little different.

DANA SPIOTTA

Innocents and Others


Our mistake has been to categorize things as art by considering certain phases of the process of creation. But logically this can make all man-made objects art. It is more useful to categorize art by what has become its social function. It functions as property.

JOHN BERGER

Selected Essays of John Berger

Tags: John Berger


Art is made by the alone for the alone.

LUIS BARRAGÁN

attributed, The Architects' Journal, 1976


The work of art still has something in common with enchantment: it posits its own, self-enclosed area, which is withdrawn from the context of profane existence, and in which special laws apply.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Tags: Theodor W. Adorno