Quotes about art

A collection of quotes on the topic of art.

„In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.“

— Yi-Fu Tuan Chinese-American geographer 1930
Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, ch. 10 (1993).

Life, Mood, Summer, Painting

„You don't have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day.“

— Viggo Mortensen American actor 1958

People

„The noblest art is that of making others happy“

— P.T. Barnum American showman and businessman 1810 - 1891

„Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful“

— William Shakespeare English playwright and poet 1564 - 1616

Beauty

„We [at Apple] worry about the humanity being drained out of music, about it becoming a bits-and-bytes kind of world instead of the art and craft.“

— Tim Cook American business executive 1960
TechSpot: "Tim Cook thinks Spotify is 'draining the humanity out of music'" https://www.techspot.com/news/75875-tim-cook-thinks-spotify-draining-humanity-out-music.html (8 August 2018)

World, Music

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon photo

„[F]rom the earliest periods of time [man] alone has divided the empire of the world between him and Nature.... [H]e rather enjoys than possesses, and it is by constant and perpetual activity and vigilance that he preserves his advantage, for if those are neglected every thing languishes, changes, and returns to the absolute dominion of Nature. She resumes her power, destroys the operations of man; envelopes with moss and dust his most pompous monuments, and in the progress of time entirely effaces them, leaving man to regret having lost by his negligence what his ancestors had acquired by their industry. Those periods in which man loses his empire, those ages in which every thing valuable perishes, commence with war and are completed by famine and depopulation. Although the strength of man depends solely upon the union of numbers, and his happiness is derived from peace, he is, nevertheless, so regardless of his own comforts as to take up arms and to fight, which are never-failing sources of ruin and misery. Incited by insatiable avarice, or blind ambition, which is still more insatiable, he becomes callous to the feelings of humanity; regardless of his own welfare, his whole thoughts turn upon the destruction of his own species, which he soon accomplishes. The days of blood and carnage over, and the intoxicating fumes of glory dispelled, he beholds, with a melancholy eye, the earth desolated, the arts buried, nations dispersed, an enfeebled people, the ruins of his own happiness, and the loss of his real power.“

— Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon French natural historian 1707 - 1788
Buffon's Natural History (1797) Vol. 10, pp. 340-341 https://books.google.com/books?id=respAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA340, an English translation of Histoire Naturelle (1749-1804).

War, People, Age, World

„Boccioni and I were swiftly persuaded that with this show in Paris we were staking our all; for a flop would have meant kissing our fine aspirations goodbye. This is why we decided to go to Paris, to see what the art situation there was like.“

— Carlo Carrà Italian painter 1881 - 1966
Quote in: Éclat de choses ordinaries Carrà, (1913), as quoted in Futurism, Didier Ottinger (ed.), 2008, p. 27

Kiss

„[Do you have a motto or creed that as an artist you live by? ] Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will — through work — bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great "art idea". And the belief that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you'll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you did today, and at least for a certain period of time you can just work. If you hang in there, you will get somewhere.“

— Chuck Close American artist 1940
Inside the Painter's Studio, Joe Fig, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, p. 42

Idea, Sense, Time

„Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.“

— Groucho Marx American comedian 1890 - 1977
Variant: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. Apparently attributed to Marx in Bennett Cerf's Try and Stop Me, first published in 1944. A citation of this can been seen in the Kentucky New Era on November 9, 1964 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=X-orAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZWcFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4581,3323702&dq=art-of-looking-for-trouble&hl=en. Also attributed to Marx by Rand Paul in "The Long Stand," ch. 1 of Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to Unite America (New York, N. Y.: Center Street, 26 May 2015), p. 5. The original quotation belongs to Sir Ernest Benn (Henry Powell Spring, What is Truth?, Orange Press, 1944, p. 31 https://books.google.com/books?id=snxbAAAAMAAJ&q=Ernest+benn+%22Politics+is+the+art+of%22&dq=Ernest+benn+%22Politics+is+the+art+of%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAjgUahUKEwiK3Zm-qojIAhWGVZIKHdFYBqY); a first known citation reportedly appears in the Springfield (MA) Republican on July 27, 1930.

Funny

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

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

Life

„The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.“

— William James American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842 - 1910
Ch. 22

„Everyone should consider his
body as a priceless gift from
one whom he loves above all, a
marvelous work of art, of
indescribable beauty, and
mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that
a word, a breath, a look, nay, a
thought may injure it.“

— Nikola Tesla Serbian American inventor 1856 - 1943

Love, Beauty

„I have a high art: I hurt with cruelty those who wound me.“

— Archilochus Ancient Greek lyric poet -680 - -645 BC
As quoted in Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Vol. 20 (2001), p. 184 Variant: I have a high art; I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. As quoted in Quotations for Martial Artists : Hundreds of Inspirational Quotes to Motivate and Enlighten the Modern Warrior (2003) edited by John D. Moore

Hurt

„Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.“

— Daisaku Ikeda Japanese writer 1928

Life, Pain, Flowers

„Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.“

— Werner Herzog German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director 1942

Country

„Then indeed, pierced by grief's bitterest pang, she clutched the hand of Jason and humbly besought him thus: "Remember me, I pray, for never, believe me, shall I be forgetful of thee. When thou art gone, tell me, I beg, on what quarter of the heaven must I gaze?"“

— Gaius Valerius Flaccus Roman poet and writer 45 - 95
Lines 475–479

Forgetting

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