ART QUOTES XIV

quotations about art

Art quote

The purpose of art ... is not to reflect life but to organize it, to build it.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

The Goal

Tags: Yevgeny Zamyatin


Surely to root politics out of art is a highly necessary undertaking: for the freedom of art, like that of science, depends entirely upon its objectivity and non-practical, non-partisan passion.

WYNDHAM LEWIS

"My Bill of Rights", The Diabolical Principle


At some point you have to set aside snobbery and what you think is culture and recognize that any random episode of Friends is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than ninety-nine percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history every published. Think of that. Of course yes, Tolstoy and of course yes Keats and blah blah and yes indeed of course yes. But we're living in an age that has a tremendous richness of invention. And some of the most inventive people get no recognition at all. They get tons of money but not recognition as artists. Which is probably much healthier for them and better for their art.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

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The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.

MAXIM GORKY

Untimely Thoughts

Tags: Maxim Gorky, soul


Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.

JOHN GALSWORTHY

Vague Thoughts on Art

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I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.

J. D. SALINGER

"Seymour: An Introduction"

Tags: J. D. Salinger, beauty


Art arises in those strange complexities of action that are called human beings. It is a kind of human behavior. As such it is not magic, except as human beings are magical. Nor is it concerned in absolutes, eternities, "forms," beyond those that may reside in the context of the human being and be subject to his vicissitudes. Art is not an inner state of consciousness, whatever that may mean. Neither is it essentially a supreme form of communication. Art is human behavior, and its values are contained in human behavior.

BAKER BROWNELL

Art Is Action

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There's no art where there's no fee.

ARISTOPHANES

Plutus

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Art is long, and the talk about it is even longer.

WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE

attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes

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Art is a jealous mistress.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Conduct of Life

Tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson


If you are really creatively engaged with the thing we call ART, it is a 24/7 preoccupation. It can and does seep into all areas of your life.

JAMES GUPPY

"Judging art is a classic business", Echo Netdaily, March 16, 2016


The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.

HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

Journal Intime

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Art is man added to Nature.

FRANCIS BACON

Descriptio Globi Intellectus

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Art is two things: a search for a road and a search for freedom.

ALICE NEEL

"Art Is a Form of History", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings

Tags: freedom


No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great art as an outgrowth of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is "artistic" because it involves giving and finding shape and meaning, so the artist's conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are.

RUDOLF ARNHEIM

Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye


Making art is dealing with people on your own terms. The ideal way of using people is using them like clay, but that being out of the question, except for lunatics and leaders, art is a good alternative.

LUCAS SAMARAS

"Another Autointerview", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings


Art is not imitation but illusion.

CHARLES READE

Christie Johnstone

Tags: Charles Reade, illusion


If they don't know what you're doin'
Babe it must be art.

U2

"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me"

Tags: U2


In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.

TOM ROBBINS

Skinny Legs and All

Tags: Tom Robbins, life


The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist's imaginative life there is purpose. There is determination to give the tale, the song, the painting, form -- to make it true and real to the theme, not to life.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

"A Note on Realism", The Literary Review, Oct. 25, 1924