Quotes about art
page 16

Eduard Hanslick photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Averroes photo
Madonna photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo
Pauline Kael photo
Julie Taymor photo
Robert Lloyd (poet) photo
Layal Abboud photo
Henri Fantin-Latour photo
Bel Kaufmanová photo

“One of our core beliefs was that significant art could be made by anyone, anywhere and anytime. You didn’t have to live and work in New York City to be an artist. It was in line with the philosophy of Outsider art and movements for artistic "localism."”

Joe Lewis (artist) (1953) American photographer

Walter Robinson. " Joe Lewis: Clairvoynace http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/robinson/robinson8-16-07.asp" at artnet.com, 2015.

Andy Goldsworthy photo
Paul Klee photo
H. Havelock Ellis photo
George Mason photo

“Slavery discourages arts and manufactures.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

August 22
Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)

Marcus Aurelius photo

“In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; “I am rising to a man’s work.””

Meditations. v. 1.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo
Henry Morgenthau, Sr. photo
Ernest Flagg photo

“The qualities called personal… and the ability to impart them, in greater or less degree, is the gage of genius in art.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Statement to John Hill Brinton, at the start of his Tennessee River Campaign, early 1862, as quoted in Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Major and Surgeon U.S.V., 1861-1865 (1914) by John Hill Brinton, p. 239.
1860s

Henry Fielding photo
George Sand photo

“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”

L'art n'est pas une étude de la réalité positive; c'est une recherche de la vérité idéale.
La Mare au Diable, ch. 1 (1851); Frank Hunter Potter (trans.) The Haunted Pool (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1895) p. 15

Alexej von Jawlensky photo
Gerhard Richter photo

“Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God... The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1988; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Art' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/art-1
1980's

“Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.”

René Daumal (1908–1944) French poet and writer

Vol. 2, Essais et Notes
The Lie of the Truth (1938)

Eric Hobsbawm photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“In trying to be perfect, he perfected the art of anonymity.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Nowhere http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nowhere-2/
From the poems written in English

Charles Wesley photo

“Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down,
Fix in us thy humble dwelling,
All thy faithful mercies crown;
Jesu, thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love thou art,
Visit us with thy salvation,
Enter every trembling heart.”

Charles Wesley (1707–1788) English Methodist and hymn writer

Osborn G (1868), "The poetical works of John and Charles Wesley. Vol 4.", London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office. Page 219, at archive.org. https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofj04wesl

Joseph Beuys photo

“Art is the only power to free humankind from all repression.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Source: 1970's, Joseph Beuys... Public Dialogue' 1974, p. 5

Jean Dubuffet photo

“Man's need for art is absolutely primordial, as strong as, and perhaps stronger than, our need for bread. Without bread, we die of hunger, but without art we die of boredom.”

As quoted in Jean Dubuffet, Works, writings Interviews, ed. Valerie da Costa and Fabrice Hergott; Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona 2006, p. 14
1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967

Martin Niemöller photo
Isaac Barrow photo
James McNeill Whistler photo
Kazimir Malevich photo
Hans Haacke photo

“A standard line, promoted by people like Clement Greenberg,… is that politics contaminates art, and Manet is often cited as an example of art for art's sake.”

Hans Haacke (1936) conceptual political artist

1990s, Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhere, 1998

Yasunari Kawabata photo
Isaac Watts photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“From the ancient strife of territorial acquisition we are labouring, I trust and believe, to substitute another, a peaceful and a fraternal strife among nations, the honest and the noble race of industry and art.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

An Examination of the official reply of the Neapolitan Government (London: John Murray, 1952), p. 50.
1850s

Auguste Rodin photo
Ambrose Bierce photo
Raja Ravi Varma photo

“…the importance of recovering the customs and the institutions of the past thus inaugurating the archaeological approach to art”

Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906) Indian painter

Varma spoke on the occasion of the exhibition of his painting of the Sabine Woman who were supposed to have inspired him .[Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations, http://books.google.com/books?id=9mRTtkri8E0C&pg=PA406, 1994, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-44354-8, 411]

David Hume photo

“My aim has always been modest; I wanted to transform the arranged marriage (of art and architecture) into a love match.”

Marcelle Ferron (1924–2001) Canadian artist

Original in French: Mon propos a toujours été modeste, je voulais transformer ce mariage de raison en un mariage d'amour.
Cited at : Ferron, Marcelle; Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas 1983; Catégorie : Culturelle http://www.prixduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/recherche/desclaureat.php?noLaureat=183 at prixduquebec.gouv.qc.ca, 2012-10-29

Louis Althusser photo
Joseph Addison photo
Theo van Doesburg photo

“Only a radical cleaning of social and artistic life as, in the domain of art, is already done by Dada, which is anti-sentimental and healthy to the core, since it is anti-art. Only unscrupulously striking down any systematically bred amateurism in any field, can prepare civilization for the 'New Vision's happiness which is greatly and purely alive in a dew people.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from Van Doesburg's article: 'Is a Universal Plastic Notion Possible Today?', as cited in 'Bouwkundig weekblad' [a Dutch architectural magazine], XLI 39, 1920, pp. 230–231
this quote of Theo van Doesburg is one of his earliest Dada expressions
1920 – 1926

Ossip Zadkine photo
Robert Ardrey photo
James Macpherson photo
Paul Klee photo

“In art, too, there is room enough for exact research... What was accomplished in music before the end of the eighteenth century has hardly been begun in the pictorial field.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

quote of Paul Klee from the text Exact experiments in the realm of art, 1928; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1921 - 1930

James Allen photo
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“Do not waste your faith and love on the political world, but, in the divine world of science and art, offer up your inmost being in a fiery stream of eternal creation.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Nicht in die politische Welt verschleudere du Glauben und Liebe, aber in der göttlichen Welt der Wissenschaft und der Kunst opfre dein Innerstes in den heiligen Feuerstrom ewiger Bildung.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 106

Piet Mondrian photo
Marcel Duchamp photo

“Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N. Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

long quote from Duchamp's letter to his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York, c. 15 Jan. 1916; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 157-158
1915 - 1925

Howard S. Becker photo
Henry Clay photo
Albert Einstein photo
Dana Gioia photo
John Galsworthy photo

“Is not the training of an artist a training in the due relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of expressing that relation clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self the very essence of self — and passing that essence into other selves by so delicate means that none shall see how it is done, yet be insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all men, foe and nullifier of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions and extravagance, the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern — Truth; for, if Truth be not Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is. Truth it seems to me — is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the concrete expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it were, spiritually selected — that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and as little to be bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule — nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

William Blake photo

“He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars;
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer:
For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 3, plate 55, line 60

Luciano Pavarotti photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Northrop Frye photo
Ludwig Van Beethoven photo

“Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Letter to Bettina von Arnim (11 August 1810)

Lyubov Popova photo

“The role of the 'representational arts' - painting, sculpture, and even architecture…. has ended, as it is no longer necessary for the consciousness of our age, and everything art has to offer can simply be classified as a throwback.”

Lyubov Popova (1889–1924) Russian artist

Quote, c. 1921; from Lyubov' Popova, in 'Commentary on Drawings', trans. ed. James West, in Art Into Life: Russian Constructivism, 1914-1932; catalogue for exhibition Rizzoli, New York: 1990, p. 69 (Popova's original text, in the Manuscript Division, State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow, f. 148, ed. khr. 17, 1. 4.)

Lama Ole Nydahl photo
William Saroyan photo

“All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The Greek “point of view” in both art and chronology has little in common with ours but was much like that of the Middle Ages.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 64

Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
Edmund Spenser photo
George H. W. Bush photo

“It just isn't going to work, and it's very interesting that the man who invented this type of what I call a voodoo economic policy is Art Laffer, a California economist.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

George H. W. Bush, Speech at Carnegie Mellon University (10 April 1980)

Norman Mailer photo

“I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Source: The Man Who Studied Yoga (1956), Ch. 5

Will Cuppy photo

“[Footnote] At the age of twelve Nero had shown a lively interest in the arts, particularly music, painting, sculpture, and poetry. Why was nothing done about this?”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Nero

Theo van Doesburg photo
Margaret Fuller photo

“I prize thy gentle heart,
Free from ambition, falsehood, or art,
And thy good mind,
Daily refined,
By pure desire
To fan the heaven-seeking fire.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), A Greeting

Camille Paglia photo

“The artist makes art not to save mankind but to save himself. Every benevolent comment by an artist is a fog to cover his tracks, the bloody trail of his assault against reality and others.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 29

Maria Mitchell photo

“I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!”

Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 189.

Albert, Prince Consort photo

“The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence.”

Albert, Prince Consort (1819–1861) husband of Queen Victoria

"Albert, Prince" The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Ed. Elizabeth Knowles. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed on 20 November 2008 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t115.e51

Albert Camus photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“In the vaunted works of Art
The master-stroke is Nature's part. 5.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Art
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: In the vaunted works of Art
The master-stroke is Nature's part. 5.

William Saroyan photo

“There is only good and bad art.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Nathanael Greene photo