ART QUOTES XI
quotations about art
Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination
It is difficult to prove that any age has been propitious for the artist; Socrates was condemned to death, so were Seneca and Petronius, Dante was exiled, the age of Louis XIV was one of both civil and religious persecution; the nineteenth century, as the lawsuits against Flaubert, Baudelaire, Hugo, etc., show, was not much better; and in the twentieth century there are whole tracts of Europe where to be a writer is to invite a firing-squad. "Silence, exile, and cunning" are the artist's lot, and, exquisite though his happiness will be when his public, educated at last, mobs him like a film-star, we may be wiser to assume that, for our lifetime, "silence, exile, and cunning" it will remain.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Condemned Playground
Art cannot be subordinate to its subject, otherwise it is not art but biography.
TOM STOPPARD
The Invention of Love
I'm very picky when it comes to the art I like. What most people would consider to be a genius piece of work, I look at and feel absolutely nothing. I can appreciate and be impressed by the work that goes into creating something like a sculpture or a painting but if it doesn't "speak" to me then I'm simply not going to have some kind of emotional reaction.
JONATHAN BARKAN
"This Art is as Mysterious and Beautiful as it is Macabre", Bloody Disgusting, March 18, 2016
Art is what you can get away with.
ANDY WARHOL
attributed, If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend
The particulars of life do not matter to the artist; they merely provide him with the opportunity to lay bare his genius.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
Art is never chaste. We forbid it to the ignorant innocents, never allow a contact with it to those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. And, if it's chaste it isn't art.
PABLO PICASSO
Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views
Art is a means to enter, to play with, to dance with, to wrestle with anything that intrigues, delights, disturbs, or terrifies us.
PAT B. ALLEN
introduction, Art Is a Spiritual Path
The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.
ANDRE GIDE
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers--people who do now know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
Letters to a Young Artist
The swing of art is circular, from form to formalism, from formalism to formlessness, from formlessness to form again.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Back to Methuselah
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech to Royal Academy of Art, 1953
Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude,
All her majestic loveliness
Chastened and softened and subdued
Into a more attractive grace,
And with a human sense imbued.
He is the greatest artist, then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,
Who follows Nature.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Keramos
Artists need to be realistic as to why they create and whom they are painting for. The one caveat is that you must respect what you do. Potboilers, painted solely for the money, will only get you so far and then the truth will seep out and ... well, it's not a pretty sight.
JAMES GUPPY
"Judging art is a classic business", Echo Netdaily, March 16, 2016
That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Truman Capote: Conversations
The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
For the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Dagger with Wings
In every work of art, the artist himself is present.
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
Levels