quotations about art
It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
All things that are living are expression and therefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, that is encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from my point of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs no handbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is.
MARSDEN HARTLEY
Adventures in Art
Art reminds us that in fact the world always exceeds our grasp and perception.
JEREMY BEGBIE
Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music
Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it.... It's a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are a spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be an artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.
ANN PATCHETT
Bel Canto
Art is a vehicle that allows us to transcend linear time, to travel backward and forward into personal and transpersonal history, into possibilities that weren't realized and those that might be.
PAT B. ALLEN
introduction, Art Is a Spiritual Path
The history of art is the history of revivals.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Note Books
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
ANAIS NIN
attributed, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations
That art is best which suggests most.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Art is a way of knowing what it is we actually believe.
PAT. B. ALLEN
Art Is a Way of Knowing
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Art functions pyramidally: all new achievements are based on the utilization of everything that has been accumulated below, at the foundations of the pyramid. Revolutions do not occur here; this field, more than any other, is governed by evolution. And we must know what has been done before us in the field of verbal art. This does not mean that you must follow in trodden paths: you must contribute something of your own. A work of art is of value only when it is original, both in content and in form. But in order to leap upward, it is necessary to take off from the ground. It is essential that there be a ground.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Psychology of Creative Work
Life is art's rival and vice versa.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
Tarr
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
BERTOLT BRECHT
attributed, Decade of Protest
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
THOMAS MERTON
No Man Is an Island
The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.
TOM ROBBINS
Another Roadside Attraction
I want to meet a guy named Art. I'd take him to a museum, hang him on the wall, criticize him, and leave.
JAROD KINTZ
I Want
Only lifeless mechanisms move along faultlessly straight lines and compass circles. In art the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy: that which is canonized quickly dies of obesity, of entropy.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The New Russian Prose
There was a lot of time between early artists doing cave painting and the Sistine Chapel and more time until the first art museum was created. During this time and until the development of the press, not a lot was written about art, yet artists persevered and they were probably more appreciated.
BEN PERRONE
"Freedom to create art is a wonderful thing", Buffalo News, March 22, 2016
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
TOM STOPPARD
"Artist Descending a Staircase"
Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth.
ANAIS NIN
The Journals of Anais Nin