“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.”

—  Oscar Wilde , book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

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Oscar Wilde photo
Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

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“This is…how artists should be—we should be creators and also teach the public how to be creators, how to make art, so that we may all use that art together.”

Augusto Boal (1931–2009) Brazilian writer

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Context: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a dance piece where the dancers danced in the first act and in the second showed the audience how to dance? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a musical where in the first act the actors sang and in the second we all sang together?... This is... how artists should be—we should be creators and also teach the public how to be creators, how to make art, so that we may all use that art together.

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“There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

E. H. Gombrich, (1950, p. 15) cited in: Paul Smith, ‎Carolyn Wilde (2008). A Companion to Art Theory, p. 428.

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“If you love the art, you must love the artist. If you love the Creation, you must love the Creator.”

Mirza Tahir Ahmad (1928–2003) caliph of the Ahmadiyya

citation needed

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“An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

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“This is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche’s conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who “enjoy” and “experience” it.
That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche’s teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): “Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman’s aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of ‘what is beautiful.’ In all philosophy to date the artist is missing.” Philosophy of art means “aesthetics” for Nietzsche too—but masculine aesthetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 70

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“Italo Calvino said the artist reveals that bit of truth hidden at the bottom of every lie. Art is all about the art of lying. The artist’s imperative is to create a supreme fiction, a lie that, paradoxically, discloses a truth. It's precisely this kind of paradox that Calvino and Fellini adored.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On truth and lies, in O Estado de São Paolo (November, 2003)

“The art of 'figuring' or 'picturing' is not a fine art. An artist who is lobbying as a 'creature of circumstances' or log rolling as a 'victim of fate' is not a fine master artist. No one ever forces an artist to be pure.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), pp. 156-157

“Basically I hate categorical labels. As a young artist I already was very clear about this — that 'objectification' is not the final aim of art. For there are greater things than the object. The greatest thing is the human mind.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 118
1960s

“Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, or popularizing of abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist's artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd, in: American Dialog, Vol. 1-5, (1964), p. ix
1960s
Context: Any combining, mixing, adding, diluting, exploiting, vulgarizing, or popularizing of abstract art deprives art of its essence and depraves the artist's artistic consciousness. Art is free, but it is not a free-for-all. The one struggle in art is the struggle of artists against artists, of artist against artist, of the artist-as-artist within and against the artist-as- man, -animal, or -vegetable. Artists who claim their artwork comes from nature, life, reality, earth or heaven, as 'mirrors of the soul' or 'reflections of conditions' or 'instruments of the universe', who cook up 'new images of man' - figures and 'nature-in-abstraction' - pictures, are subjectively and objectively, rascals or rustics.

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