Quotes about art

„Love — thou art Veiled —
A few — behold thee —
Smile — and alter — and prattle — and die —
Bliss — were an Oddity — without thee —
Nicknamed by God —
Eternity“

—  Emily Dickinson, Love — thou art high —

453: Love — thou art high —

„Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.“

—  Emily Dickinson, book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Variant: Art is a house that tries to be haunted.
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

„The sole substitute for an experience we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Russian writer 1918 - 2008

„The people who have discovered something important in any of the more noble arts have principally done so when they have abandoned the body and taken refuge in the citadel of the soul.“

—  Marsilio Ficino, book Platonic Theology

Platonic Theology, Book 13, Chapter 2

„Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.“

—  Claude Debussy French composer 1862 - 1918

As quoted in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought (1992) by John Paynter, p. 590
Unsourced variant: Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

„Struck intensely tonight by the thought that we live in a great age. We can make music, food, pictures, art, & love with unbelievable unprecedented freedom. It's all there, there for the taking & the making, all the time.“

—  Tom Hiddleston English actor, producer and musical performer 1981

„Music comes first; lyrics are secondary. Most of my lyrics are contradictions. I'll write a few sincere lines, and then I'll have to make fun of [them]. I don't like to make it too obvious, because if it is too obvious, it gets really stale. You shouldn't be in people's faces 100% all the time. We don't mean to be really cryptic or mysterious, but I just think that lyrics that are different and weird and spacey paint a nice picture. It's just the way I like art.“

—  Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

Date unknown, but appears on Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!.
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

„Art is sacred.
Punk rock is freedom.
Expression and right to express is vital.
Anyone can be artistic.“

—  Kurt Cobain, book Journals

Source: Journals

„I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music, they just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.“

—  Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

As quoted in Melody Maker (1991-09-14).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

„Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.“

—  Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

„The art system operates on its own terms, but an observer of art can choose many different distinctions to indicate what he observes.“

—  Niklas Luhmann German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist 1927 - 1998

Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 102.

„Observation is a dying art.“

—  Stanley Kubrick American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor 1928 - 1999

Source: Stanley Kubrick: Interviews

„The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins with the eyes of the beholder, through imagination, invention and confrontation.“

—  Keith Haring American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing… 1958 - 1990

Haring – Art in Transit http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/haring-art-in-transit#.V1cw0tIrKyw The Keith Haring Foundation

„Does the painter imitate the body correctly if he guides his brush without any method, and if his hand is moved at random and the lines are not drawn with art? In the same way you will not put the sentiment of your mind in front of the others’ eyes unless you use appropriate and distinct words, a fitting arrangement of words and the right order of sentences. For, just as we represent bodies by colours, we represent the sentiment of our mind by speech.“

—  Philip Melanchthon German reformer 1497 - 1560

Source: Praise of Eloquence (1523), p. 63

„Wild roses are fairest, and nature a better gardener than art.“

—  Louisa May Alcott, A Long Fatal Love Chase

Source: A Long Fatal Love Chase

„Art is to console those who are broken by life.“

—  Vincent Van Gogh Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853 - 1890

„Administration, which calls for the application of wide knowledge and many personal qualities, is above all the art of handling men, and in this art, as in many others, it is practice that makes perfect. This is one of the reasons why we should release our future engineers for practical work as early as possible; there are many drawbacks to staying too long at school.“

—  Henri Fayol Developer of Fayolism 1841 - 1925

p. 909

„Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain.“

—  George Steiner American writer 1929 - 2020

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 4 (p. 11).

„Tool is not Slayer. I went to art school. I spent three years in the military. There's more to me than throwing devil horns.“

—  Maynard James Keenan musician 1964

Aidin Vaziri (January 2, 2009) "Maynard James Keenan: Hard rocker, winemaker. 5 Questions.", San Francisco Chronicle, p. E3.