“The most perfect art was Greek art. Raphael is the greatest of all masters in painting.”
Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist
Such were the doctrines of every art teacher only twenty or thirty years ago.
1.
1900 - 1920, On Primitive Art – Emil Nolde, 1912
“All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.”
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director
“Art is for all — and the greatest art proves it.”
William Soutar (1898–1943) British poet
Diary, 29 August 1932.
Quotation posted with the permission of the National Scottish Library, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)
Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)
“Acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all.”
George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist
Impressions and Opinions (1891): "Mummer-Worship".
Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists
quoted by Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby (eds.) in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music; Schirmer, New York, 1996 ISBN 0028645812
after 1916
César Vallejo (1892–1938) Peruvian writer
Las artes (pintura, poesía, etc.) no son solo éstas. Artes son también comer, beber, caminar: todo acto es un arte.
Source: Aphorisms (2002), p. 60
“The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity.”
Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist
X magazine (1959-62)
Context: The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity. It may be labouring the obvious to say so but it is too little recognised in art journalism now that a picture is a unique and private event in the life of the painter: an object made alone with a man and a blank canvas... A real painting is something which happens to the painter once in a given minute; it is unique in that it will never happen again and in this sense is an impossible object. It is judged by the painter simply as a success or failure without qualification. And it is something which happens in life not in art: a picture which was merely the product of art would not be very interesting and could tell us nothing we were not already aware of. The old saying, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”, expresses the opposite idea to that which animates the painter before his canvas. It is precisely what he does not know which may destroy him.
