Quotes about art

page 12

“Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.”

“Art hurts. Art urges voyages—
and it is easier to stay at home.”

“Art is something out of the ordinary commenting on the ordinary.”

“No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

“When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down.”

“All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.”

“The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.”

“In the traditional Islamic world, the hierarchy of the arts was not based on whether they were "fine" or "industrial" or "minor". It was based upon the effect of art on the soul of the human being.”

“Although the photographer and the art thief were close friends, neither had ever taken the other's picture.”

“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.”

“Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance,
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.”

“The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.”

“Every artist is linked to a mistake with which he has a particular intimacy. All art draws its origin from an exceptional fault, each work is the implementation of this original fault, from which comes a risky plenitude and new light.”

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.”

“You know how you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it's real difficult in life”

“Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.”

“Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.”

“Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.”

“Art is not in some far-off place.”

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.”

“Your life is your art.”

“Please do not strain yourself, Miss Doyle. I won't have my girls going cross-eyed in the name of art.”

“O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:”

“A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.”

“Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.”

“The real reality is there, but everything you KNOW about “it” is in your mind and your
to do with as you like. Conceptualization is art, and YOU ARE THE ARTIST”

“I’ve always felt that a lot of modern art is a con, and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists.”

“I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

“Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.”

“Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.”

“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us”

“All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.”

“To create art means
to be crazy alone
forever.”

“The art of reading consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting non essentials.”

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

“I would like to perfect the art of being studiously aloof”

“Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?”

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Expierience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”

“I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish to prove… that nothing is explained in the mysteries which surround us.”

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

“You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take them to a museum and say, 'This is art, and you can't do it.”

“I've mastered many things in my life. Navigating the strets of London, dancing the quadrille, the Japanese art of flower arranging, lying at charades, concealing a highly intoxicated state, delighting young women with my charms…”

“It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.”

“Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches.”

“Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite — getting something down.”

“If a person is confident enough in the way they feel, whether it's an art form or whether it's just in life, it comes off---you don't have anything to prove; you can just be who you are.”

“I believe that treating other people well is a lost art.”

“The water caught the Falselight glimmer like layers of shifting, translucent mirrors and formed split-second works of art in the air, but men cursed it anyway, because it made their heads wet.”

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

“When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time.”

“Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.”

“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”

“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem become a sod.”

“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.”

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”

“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.”

“Surely only boring people went in for conversations consisting of questions and answers. The art of true conversation consisted in the play of minds.”

“He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress - or a nunnery.”

“The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist”

“I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect.”

“A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class”

“Art is the accomplice of love.”

“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”

“Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort.”

“There's no such thing as autobiography, there's only art and lies”

“Love art. Of all lies, it is the least untrue.”

“Art and life are subjective. Not everybody's gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.”

“My art and profession is to live.”

“Patti, did art get us?'
I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.'
Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.”

“Art is whatever you can get away with.”

“All the arts come from God and are to be respected as divine inventions”

“Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos, we see despite all the chaos.”

“… a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.”

“Serious art is born from serious play.”

“In truth, I wanted her to read my mind so I didn't have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation.”

“Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.”

“Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god.”

“The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.”

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power… Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”

“Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”

“The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness”

“Politics is the Art of Controlling Your Enviroment.”

“It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.”

“What are you doing with the child?" I inquired cautiously.
"I'm teachin' young James here the fine art of not pissing on his feet," he explained.”

“The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seemed filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster”

“Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.”

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world... The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.”

“Man," I cried, "how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!”

“Fix your mind on truth, hold firm to virtue, rely on loving kindness, and find your recreation in the Arts.”

“You're an enemy of art and I pity your ignorance," Domingo said.”

“There are lives lived for love, and lives lived for art. We, happy band, have chosen the later persuasion.”

“One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it.”

“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way."

- Tristan Tzara "Dada Manifesto 1918”

“It's funny how the beauty of art has so much more to do with the frame than the artwork itself.”

“The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.”

“Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.”

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

“In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.”