“Art is no longer a visual sensation that we gather, like a photograph, as it were, of nature. No, it is a creation of our spirit, for which nature is only the occasion.”
Quote of Denis, 1909: from Bouillon 2006, pp. 17-18; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [9]
1890 - 1920
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Maurice Denis 17
French painter 1870–1943Related quotes

“Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.”
Part 1: "The Creative Mind", §9 (p. 20)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)

Source: Art, 1912, Preface, p. 7-8
Context: Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit by which Nature herself is animated. It is the joy of the intellect which sees clearly into the Universe and which recreates it, with conscientious vision. Art is the most sublime mission of man, since it is the expression of thought seeking to understand the world and to make it understood.

In a letter to Rudolph Steiner, c. 1921-23; as quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 85
1920's

“Reductionism can expand our vision and give us new insights into the nature and creation of art.”
The Age of Insight (2012)

“Love, like medicine, is only the art of encouraging nature.”
L'amour est, comme la médecine, seulement l'art d'aider à la nature.
Letter 10: La Marquise de Merteuil to le Vicomte de Valmont. Trans. P.W.K. Stone (1961). http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Liaisons_dangereuses_-_Lettre_10
Les liaisons dangereuses (1782)

Suffering and Greatness of Richard Wagner (1933)

“There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.”
XI, 10
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book XI