Quotes about artist (2524 quotes, page 20)

“Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling. The artist is born, and art is the expression of his overflowing soul. Because his soul is rich, he cares comparatively little about the superficial necessities of the material world; he sublimates the pressure of material affairs in an artistic experience.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 56
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life , World , Art , Feeling

“Self-doubt, which is the artist’s bitterest enemy.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 43, p. 153

“Our society, it turns out, can use modern art. A restaurant, today, will order a mural by Míro in as easy and matter-of-fact a spirit as, twenty-five years ago, it would have ordered one by Maxfield Parrish. The president of a paint factory goes home, sits down by his fireplace—it looks like a chromium aquarium set into the wall by a wall-safe company that has branched out into interior decorating, but there is a log burning in it, he calls it a firelace, let’s call it a fireplace too—the president sits down, folds his hands on his stomach, and stares at two paintings by Jackson Pollock that he has hung on the wall opposite him. He feels at home with them; in fact, as he looks at them he not only feels at home, he feels as if he were back at the paint factory. And his children—if he has any—his children cry for Calder. He uses thoroughly advanced, wholly non-representational artists to design murals, posters, institutional advertisements: if we have the patience (or are given the opportuity) to wait until the West has declined a little longer, we shall all see the advertisements of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith illustrated by Jean Dubuffet.
This president’s minor executives may not be willing to hang a Kandinsky in the house, but they will wear one, if you make it into a sport shirt or a pair of swimming-trunks; and if you make it into a sofa, they will lie on it. They and their wives and children will sit on a porcupine, if you first exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art and say that it is a chair. In fact, there is nothing, nothing in the whole world that someone won’t buy and sit in if you tell him it is a chair: the great new art form of our age, the one that will take anything we put in it, is the chair. If Hieronymus Bosch, if Christian Morgenstern, if the Marquis de Sade were living at this hour, what chairs they would be designing!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 19–20
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Children , Lie , Age , World

“Brian Sewell is a fool. For some years he seemed to have it in for me and Hockney and Kitaj. Even if he wasn't writing about us he'd always find a way of bringing us in. He'd say, "so and so was a bad artist but not as bad as Hockney, Kitaj or Blake."”

Peter Blake (1932) British artist

Things like that.
Simon O'Hagan "Credo:Peter Blake", http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20051120/ai_n15851377 The Independent on Sunday, 2005-11-20. Accessed from findarticles.com, 2007-01-22
Life

Fools , Way

“I am not working for myself alone, I believe in the absolute necessity for a new art of color, of design, and - of the artistic life..”

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

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Spring 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 469) p. 22
1880s, 1888

Life , Art , Color

“Where the artist is concerned it is a question of the conscious immersion in himself, through which, once he has got beyond the individual and contingent level, he can probe deep down to reach the living germs of total humanity. Everything that is humanly communicable is derived from this, and it is through the discovery of the psychic substrata that all men have in common that the relationship of author-work-spectator is made possible. In this way the work of art has the totemic value of living myth, without symbolic or descriptive dispersion: it is a primary and direct expression.”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Source: For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', Piero Manzoni, 1957, pp. 16-17

Men , Art , Way , Question

“When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we escape our self-conscious selves.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 1.3
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Time

“The other conclusion is that art is the complement of science. Science as I have said is concerned wholly with relations, not with individuals. Art, on the other hand, is not only the disclosure of the individuality of the artist but also a manifestation of individuality as creative of the future, in an unprecedented response to conditions as they were in the past. Some artists in their vision of what might be, but is not, have been conscious rebels. But conscious protest and revolt is not the form which the labor of the artist in creation of the future must necessarily take. Discontent with things as they are is normally the expression of the vision of what may be and is not, art in being the manifestation of individuality is this prophetic vision.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Art , Science , Past , Future

“The 'Cercle et Carré' group owes its existence to my encounter with the Uruguayan painter Torrès-Gracia in 1929… However difficult our relationship, his obstinacy matching my patience, this unholy team of fire and water was bound to produce something. Towards the end of the year, after consulting sundry artists, including Arp, Mondrian, and Van Doesburg, we drew up the program for a new group and launched a magazine which was be called 'Cercle et Carré.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), pp. 97-98:

Water , Patience

“For an artist there is no more serious and, at the same time, more joyous task than to create, through art, a new aesthetic, and ultimately, a new way of being.”

Karel Zeman (1910–1989) Czech film director, artist and animator

Quoted in Pauline Sameshima, Seeing Red: A Pedagogy of Parallax: an Epistolary Bildungsroman on Artful Scholarly Inquiry http://books.google.com/books?id=rvbxuB9KioIC&pg=PA157 (Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press, 2007), pp. 156–157, accessed 26 August 2013

Art , Way , Time

“I had measured the difference that separated art prior to 1900 from the art which I felt was being born. I knew that all instruction was at an end. The age of personal expression had finally begun. The value of an artist was no longer to be judged by the finish of his execution, or by the analogies his work suggested with such-and-such an archetype. It would be judged – exclusively – by what distinguished this artist from all the others. The age of the master and pupil was finally over; I could see about me only a handful of creators and whole colonies of monkeys. But I could not ask Gleizes to see it that way. Happily, nothing of his social or mystical opinions remained when he was engaged in the work of painting. The work of reconciling an oval and a lozenge, a yellow and a blue, prevailed and saved him.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Age , Art , Way , Painting

“I didn't want to be a woman artist, I just wanted to be an artist.”

Isabel Bishop (1902–1988) American painter

Statement (16 December 1982) as quoted in The "New Woman" Revised : Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street (1992) by Ellen Wiley Todd, Ch. 7, p. 273.

“A great artist is always before his time or behind it.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Source: As quoted in Conversations with George Moore (1929) by Geraint Goodwin, p. 123

Time

“There is a special irony that this disappearance [of Catholic artists visibility despite Catholics constituting one-quarter of the US population] has occurred during a period when celebrating cultural diversity has become an explicit goal across the American arts. Some kinds of diversity are evidently more equal than others.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

Art

“We consider the artist a special sort of person. It is more likely that each of us is a special sort of artist.”

Elsa Gidlow (1898–1986) Canadian-American poet

As cited in West, Celeste, 1986, "In Memoriam: Elsa Gidlow", Feminist Studies, 12 (3), 614.

Personality

“Now we all know that new recordings carry Danger signs all over them. Danger: fantastic sound can subvert your judgement. Danger: artist’s names and reputations can affect the way we listen. Danger: a new recording has not had time to win you over—it may be unfair to compare it to one you have known for 20 years. […] Danger: things that irritate now may endear themselves to us in time. Danger: there was only one Stokowski.”

Donald Vroon (1942) American music critic

"The Art of Criticism III: Evaluating Performances", American Record Guide, September 1, 2009

Way , Time

“I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Death , Beauty , Fools , Color

“Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things. On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, "I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent." And I said, "Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something."”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did.
http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/160603396711/hi-i-read-that-youve-dealt-with-with-impostor (2017)

People , Music , Thinking , Night

“The conflict between the theories of Surrealism & pure abstraction leads many to look upon one as black & bad & the other as white & good. Yet it seems to me that a good work of art has always contained both abstract & surrealist elements – just as it has both classical & romantic elements (order & surprise?)... Surrealism is widening the field of contemporary art & is giving more freedom to the artist (& perhaps what is not unimportant, – stretching the appreciation of the public). Abstraction is re-establishing fundamental laws; bringing back form to painting & sculpture. There are many products of surrealism which I personally dislike,.... but equally Unimportant to me are the empty decorations produced in the name of abstraction.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, Unpublished notes' for 'The Sculptor Speaks' (1937), pp. 112-113

Law , Art , Freedom , Painting

“A good artiste should be able to portray any kind of role. Guide is closest to my heart because Rosie was a very mature character. She is married to Marco and yet decides to go in for a live-in relationship with Raju. Many producers saw it as a negative role, a wrong step at that stage of my career and advised me not to do it, but to me a role was a role. But sometimes personalities do come in the way.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Queen of hearts

Way , Heart , Personality

“Great art is never extreme. Criticism moves in a false direction, as does art, when it aspires to be a social science... In this world modern artists form a kind of spiritual underground.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Motherwell's writing in 1944; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker' https://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert-life-and-legacy.htm#writings_and_ideas_header, on 'Artstory'
1940s

World , Art , Science , Falseness

“.. I saw Gauguin; he told me his theories about art and assured me that the young [artists] would find salvation by replenishing themselves at remote and savage sources. I told him that this art did not belong to him, that he was a civilized man and hence it was his function to show us harmonious things. We parted, each unconvinced. Gauguin is certainly not without talent, but how difficult it is for him to find his own way! He is always poaching on someone's ground; now he is pillaging the savages of Oceania.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote about Paul Gauguin 23 Nov. 1893, in Racontars d'un Rapin, Paul Gauguin; as quoted by John Rewald, in 'Introduction' of Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro – (translated from the unpublished French letters by Lionel Abel); Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 221
1890's

Art , Way , Parting

“Besides (and I now quote the artist's own words) I never put a bullet in my gun, but only pretended, to do so!”

Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) Dutch painter

Quote of Matthijs Maris, as cited by David Croal Thomson (1907), in: The Brothers Maris (James – Matthew – William), ed. Charles Holme; text: D.C. Thomson https://ia800204.us.archive.org/1/items/cu31924016812756/cu31924016812756.pdf; publishers, Offices of 'The Studio', London - Paris, 1907, p. BMxiii
In 1870 Matthijs Maris was enrolled in the Municipal Guard of Paris, but avoided there any kind of fight.

Quotes

“I have always said that, with any sculpture, you have to be able to say, 'although this is not a ready-made, it could be one'. That's what a sculpture has to look like. It must have a certain relation to reality. I mean, not airy-fairy, let alone fabricated, so aloof and polite… And I don't see this aspect in many artists' work. Often, my feeling is that they think something up that is supposed to be art. That's not what I want at all. Rather, a sculpture is really a photo – although it can be shifted, it must still always have an aspect that reality has too.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Art , Feeling , Photo , Thinking

“When we met in Berlin [1910], I arranged with Heckel and Kirchner that the three of us would go and work together on the lakes of Moritzburg near Dresden. We had long been familiar with the region, and we knew that we would have the opportunity tp paint nudes in the open air without interference... We had to find two or three people who were not professional models and would therefore pose for us without falling into studio routines.... we artists set out early every morning, laden with our equipment, followed by the models with bags full of good things toe at and drink. We lived in complete harmony, we worked and went swimming.... each of us [three] executed a great number of paintings and drawings.”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

Pechstein is recalling the Summer of 1910; as quoted in Expressionism, Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 30

People , Drink , Drawing , Painting

“The artist is the bearer of life.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Life

“The assumption that effective cartographic technique and its evaluation is based in part on some subjective artistic or aesthetic sense on the part of the cartographer and map reader is somewhat disconcerting. For example, E. Raisz claims that the “effective use of lines or colors requires artistic judgment,” and J. K. Wright explains that the suitability of a symbol “depends on the map maker's taste and sense of harmony.” Throughout the literature there are numerous similar assertions regarding the assumed subjective aesthetic and artistic content of cartography.”

Arthur H. Robinson (1915–2004) American geographer

Source: The Look of Maps (1952), p. 16; as cited in: Kirk Patrick Goldsberry (2007) Real-time Traffic Maps. p. 23

Color , Literature , Sense , Parting

“If I were a better artist, I'd be a painter, and if I were a better writer, I'd write books — but I'm not, so I draw cartoons!”

Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) American cartoonist

1992, as quoted by Tom Tomorrow in his comic strip This Modern World (21 February 2000) http://archive.salon.com/comics/tomo/2000/02/21/tomo/index.html

Books , Drawing

“We [the American Abstract-expressionist artists of the 1940's] were formed by the Depression [1930's], when the American dream lay in pieces on the floor. The possibility of making money was inconceivable to us. America was innocent in relation to modern art, and no one cared. The reigning painters in America were very parochial in relation to the international tradition... What held us together was our ambition to use the standards of international modernism as a gauge, not those of Thomas Hart Benton or Grant Wood or Guy Pene du Bois. We did have a terrible struggle, but not for success. It was to make painting that would stand up under international scrutiny, and all the rest was a byproduct.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/18/obituaries/robert-motherwell-master-of-abstract-dies.html
Undated

Money , Dreams , Art , Guy

“It is clear that the building of models is not a purely mechanical process but requires skill of a high order – not merely mathematical skill but a sensitivity to the relative importance of different factors and a critical, almost an artistic, faculty in the selection of behaviour equations which are reasonable, tentative hypotheses in explaining the behaviour of actual economies.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Skills of the Economist, 1958, p. 16-17 as cited in Andrew Mearman (2011).

Mathematics

“My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don't need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let's play him more.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Interview with John C. Tibbetts http://www.murphywong.net/barzuncentennial/JohnCTibbetts.htm (1986-12-04)

Music , Reading

“Painting has turned back from the non-objective way to the object, and the development of painting has returned to the figurative part of the way that had led to the destruction of the object. But on the way back, painting came across a new object that the proletarian revolution had brought to the fore and which had to be given form, which means that it had to be raised to the level of a work of art... I am utterly convinced that if you keep to the way of Constructivism, where you are now firmly stuck, which raises not one artistic issue except for pure utilitarianism and in theater simple agitation, which may be one hundred percent consistent ideologically but is completely castrated as regards artistic problems, and forfeits half its value... If you go on as you are.... then Stanislavski will emerge as the winner in the theater and the old forms will survive. And as to architecture, if the architects do not produce artistic architecture, the Greco-Roman style of Zyeltovski will prevail, together with the Repin style in painting..”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich from his letter 8 April 1932, to Meyerhold, in 'Two Letters to Meyerhold', in Kunst & Museumjournaal 6, (1990), pp. 9-10; as quoted by Paul Wood in The great Utopia, - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 24 – note 112
This quote clarifies Malevich's famous return to the figuration of the Russian peasant life, in the time of forced collectivization of Russian agriculture: 'for him [= Malevich] the return to figuration was not a break with the Revolution but a way of safeguarding it and preventing the return of Classicism and Naturalism' (Paul Wood in The great Utopia; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 24 – note 112)
1931 - 1935

Art , Way , Problem , Parting

“I can bear this - that I am not the young wild guy [as he was in the 1970's]. I hope that the lust to work doesn't leave me. That would be sad. I am glad to get honors and high prices. But artists are valued today in terms of money, auctions. I wish society would need art more, but it doesn't. So I feel very lonely in this culture.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Money , Sadness , Hope , Art

“But I've noticed something with other artists who do use the whole range of forms of colours and black - in Albers, for instance, who experiments with yellow, red, blue, the whole scale. Of course I love his colour paintings, but when I see a black-and-white such as 'The Homage to a Black and White Square' [ Josef Albers painted more versions], I like that best, you know. I think it has something to do with deciding just exactly what you really like best. There is always that wonderful element of doubt. I like the black painters really, even if they did work in color.... Velasquez.... also Tintoretto, and Rembrandt... Goya..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

Quote of Kline in an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Living Arts', Spring 1963; as cited in Interviews with American Artists, David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, pp. 61-62
1960's

Love , Color , Thinking , Painting

“The author had not followed the precedents of any other artist, nor has he been able to copy Nature itself.... He who departs from Nature will surely merits high esteem, since he has to put before thee yes of the public forms and poses which have existed previously in the darkness and confusion of an irrational mind..”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

1790s, Goya's announcement about 'Los Caprichos', 6 Febr. 1799

Nature

“The second conception of the world via the medium of matter required both a visual and a tactile perception of things. In this case the whole design process tends to emanate from the specific characteristics of the respective medium used. The leader of this movement (Tatlin) assumed.... that the intuitive and artistic mastery of materials would lead to inventions on the basis of which objects could be constructed. He believed he could prove this theory with his design for the 'Monument to the Third International' (1920), [never built]. He accomplished this task without having any special technical knowledge of construction.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

Quote from: 'Basic Premises'
1926 - 1941, Rußland: Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowjetunion' (1929)

World , Knowledge

“Far from affording artists continuous inspiration, mass-media sources for art have become a dead end. They have combined with the abstractness of institutional art teaching to produce a fine-arts culture given over to information and not experience. This faithfully echoes the drain of concreteness from modern existence— the reign of mere unassimilated data instead of events that gain meaning by being absorbed into the fabric of imaginative life.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

"Introduction: The Decline of the City of Mahagonny"
Nothing If Not Critical (1991)

Life , Art , Imagination , Dead

“What they are saying is okay [the Futurist artists like Severini, Carra and Russolo, who debated in Paris intensively with the Cubist artists].”

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) French painter

Quote in Delaunay's letter, February 1912; as cited in Futurism, ed. by Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 184
1910 - 1915

“The complaint of the French artist against the Norman, is the "mesquin" treatment of dividing his tower into stories of equal height. Even in the twelfth century and in religious architecture, artists already struggled over the best solution to this peculiarly American problem of the twentieth century, and when tourists return to New York, they may look at the twenty-story towers which decorate the city, to see whether the Norman or the French plan has won; but this at least will be sure in advance:— the Norman will be the practical scheme which states the facts, and stops; while the French will be the graceful one, which states the beauties and more or less fits the facts to suit them.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mesquin: paltry, unimaginative, prosaic
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Beauty , Problem

“An artist who theorizes about his work is no longer artist but critic.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Temptaion of Harringay (1929)

“The so-called bourgeoisie doesn't provide any substance for my art. The character [of the models] there is too faint and without any spirit. It doesn't represent a race in an artistic sense. So there is no other choice for me [than folk women].”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner, in het Nederlands:) De zogenaamde burgerij levert geen stof voor mijn kunst. Het karakter [van de modellen] dáár is te flauw en geesteloos. Het vertegenwoordigt in artistieken zin geen ras. Mij rest dus geen andere keuze [dan volksvrouwen].
Quote of Breitner; as cited by B. van Garrel, in his article 'Het getekende bestaan van G.H. Breitner', Dutch newspaper Haagse Post, 23 June 1973, jrg. 60, nr. 25
The young saleswoman of hats, nl:Geesje Kwak was Breitner's model for several years
undated quotes

Women , Art , Sense

“The subject matter of creation is chaos. The present feeling seems to be that the artist is concerned with form, color, and spatial arrangement. This objective approach to art reduces it to a kind of ornament. The whole attitude of abstract painting, for example, has been such that it has reduced painting to an ornamental art whereby the picture surface is broken up in geometrical fashion into a new kind of design-image. It is a decorative art built on a slogan of purism where the attempt is made for an unworldly statement…”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 1. 1943-1945, p. 139

Art , Color , Feeling , Fashion

“Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom.”

Paul Kurtz (1925–2012) American professor of philosophy

Paul Kurtz (1983) In defense of secular humanism, p. 15

Communication , Freedom

“After every war, there's an immense overhaul of language, which in the Western world has created really the cultural and artistic phenomenon of what we call modernism; that is, a paring down of everything to minimal size, including language and ideas of grandeur, and ideas of a possibility of the state making everybody happy, and things like that. That modernism is really a form of skepticism or minimalism. You cut out everything that has deceived you and throw it away, and that leaves you with things like the Eames chair and Picasso and numerous other outcrops of modernism.”

Paul Fussell (1924–2012) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Humanities interview (1996)

War , World , Idea , Happiness

“True artistic experience is never passive, for the spectator is obliged to participate, as it were, in the continuous or discontinuous variations of proportions, positions, lines and planes. Moreover, he must see clearly how this play of repeated or non-repeated changes may give rise to a new harmony of relations which will constitute the unity of the work. Every part becomes organized into a whole with the other parts. All the parts contribute to the unity of the composition, none of them assuming a dominant place in the whole.”

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

Quote from 'Grundbegriffe der neuen Gestaltenden Kunst', essay by Van Doesburg (published between 1921-23 in De Stijl) - last Chapter; as quoted in 'Fifty Years of Accomplishment, From Kandinsky to Jackson Pollock', by Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co. 1964, p. 86
1920 – 1926

Change , Parting

“The theory of perspective was taught in painting schools from the sixteenth century onward according to principles laid down by the masters… However, their treatises on perspective had on the whole been precept, rule, and ad hoc procedure; they lacked a solid mathematical basis. In the period from 1500 to 1600 artists and subsequently mathematicians put the subject on a satisfactory deductive basis, and it passed from quasi-empirical art to a true science. Definitive works on perspective were written much later by eighteenth-century mathematicians Brook Taylor and J. H. Lambert.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 183

School , Art , Mathematics , Science

“This is the way in which the artist has set about the construction of the world - an activity which affects every human being and carries work beyond the frontiers of comprehension. We see how its creative path took it by way of cubism to pure construction, but there was still no outlet to be found here.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

World , Way

“Injure a businessman and he'll try to make you sorry; injure an artist and he'll try to make you immortal.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“What I propose is that dialogue should take place among cultures and civilizations. And as a first step, I would suggest that cultures and civilizations should not be represented by politicians but by philosophers, scientists, artists and intellectuals. […] Dialogue will lead to a common language and a common language will culminate in a common thought, and this will turn into a common approach to the world and global events.”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

March 24, 2009 , Lecture in The Australian National University DIALOGUE, JUSTICE AND PEACE Source http://cais.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/bulletins/CAIS%20Bulletin%20Vol%2016%20No%201%20sm.pdf

World

“I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn [the art of decorative or hand lettering]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And I found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Life , Beauty , Hope , Art

“The superior artist is the one who knows how to be influenced.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

Influences of Matisse, exhibition catalog essay 1973, Aquavella Gallery NYC: On Henri Matisse
1970s

“The representation of an object, in itself (the objectivity as the aim of the representation), is something that has nothing to do with art, although the use of representation in a work of art does not rule out the possibility of its being of a high artistic order. For the Suprematist, therefore, the proper means is the one that provides the fullest expression of pure feeling and ignores the habitually accepted object. The object in itself is meaningless to him; and the ideas of the conscious mind are worthless. Feeling is the decisive factor.... and thus art arrives at non-objective representation – at Suprematism.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich, 1927 in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 452
1921 - 1930

Art , Feeling , Idea , Decision

“Those who are placed in positions which demand the surrender of personality, which insist on strict conformity to definite political policies and opinions, must deteriorate, must become mechanical, must lose all capacity to give anything really vital. The world is full of such unfortunate cripples. Their dream is to “arrive,” no matter at what cost. If only we would stop to consider what it means to “arrive,” we would pity the unfortunate victim. Instead of that, we look to the artist, the poet, the writer, the dramatist and thinker who have “arrived,” as the final authority on all matters, whereas in reality their “arrival” is synonymous with mediocrity, with the denial and betrayal of what might in the beginning have meant something real and ideal. The “arrived” artists are dead souls upon the intellectual horizon. The uncompromising and daring spirits never “arrive.” Their life represents an endless battle with the stupidity and the dullness of their time. They must remain what Nietzsche calls “untimely,” because everything that strives for new form, new expression or new values, is always doomed to be untimely.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Intellectual Proletarians (1914)

Life , Stupidity , World , Dreams

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Books , Color , Communication , Idea

“He [Tolstoy] tried to persuade his wife to permit him to give away every penny of his possessions, to leave their large house, and to live in a peasant's cottage, where together they could share the manual labor of a small farm. The Countess was a most devoted wife but in this she could not follow her husband. …The Countess had to suffer all the trials which it is said the wife of every artist and genius must suffer and, in addition, some of those that must come to the wife of any man who tries to follow literally in modern society the teachings of Jesus. …He felt so keenly the opposition of his wife and children that he was led to believe what he said repeatedly—that the institution of the family was one of the greatest obstacles to a truly Christian life.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 38-41

Life , Children , Family , Suffering

“I would say that I was just as anxious to leave Utah as any other kid in any other part of the world wants to get out of where they're from. It's definitely a hard place, especially if you're an artist. There's not much support for art, especially rock 'n' roll music. It wasn't really about escaping Utah, though. It was about getting out and being able to do what I wanted to do with my whole life. And now I am.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Daniel Durchholz (March 10, 2005) "Top billing at Taste of Chaos: Can the Used get used to this?", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 16.

Life , World , Art , Music

“Opponents of the New Art fall back on this calculation, rejecting its self-sufficient meaning and, having declared it 'Transitional,' being unable even to understand properly the conception of this Art, lumping together Cubism, Futurism, and other phenomena of artistic life, not ascertaining for themselves either their essential differences or the shared tenets that link them.”

Olga Rozanova (1886–1918) Russian artist

Olga Rozanova, in 'Osnovy Novogo Tvorchestva i printsipy ego neponimaniia,' Soiuz molodezhi 3 (March 1913), p. 18; as quoted by Svetlana Dzhafarova, in The great Utopia - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932 (transl. Jane Bobko); Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 477
Olga Rozanova accused the critics and their brethren of bad faith, citing as a prime example Aleksandr Benua's "Kubizm ili Kukishizm" ("Cubism or Je-m'en-foutisme"), a scathing 1912 review

Life , Art , Understanding , Future

“Bob Ezrin about Waters: "I hate the word "artist," but I would definitely concede that Roger is a great artist…as well as a total obsessive and psychiatrist's dream."”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Hate , Dreams , Water

“The bizarre but all too common transformation of the woman artist from a producer in her own right into a subject for representation forms a leitmotif in the history of art. Confounding subject and object, it undermines the speaking position of the individual woman artist by generalizing her. Denied her individuality, she is displaced from being a producer and becomes instead a sign for male creativity.”

Whitney Chadwick (1943)

Women, Art, and Society: Fourth Edition (2007) ISBN 0-500-20393-8

Art , History

“As collage technique replaced oil paint, the cathode ray tube will replace the canvas. Someday artists will work with capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors as they work today with brushes, violins and junk. There are 4,000,000 dots per second on one television screen, just think of the variety of images you can get. It's so cool. It's like going to the moon.”

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) American video art pioneer

Manifesto, New York, October 1965, as cited in Jasia Reichardt (1971). The computer in art. p. 95
1960s

Thinking , Painting

“The critical sense is so far from frequent that it is absolutely rare, and the possession of the cluster of qualities that minister to it is one of the highest distinctions… In this light one sees the critic as the real helper of the artist, a torchbearing outrider, the interpreter, the brother… Just in proportion as he is sentient and restless, just in proportion as he reacts and reciprocates and penetrates, is the critic a valuable instrument.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Criticism.

Sense , Light

“Chopin is the true inventor of the concert etude, at least in the sense of being the first to give it complete artistic form—a form in which musical substance and technical difficulty coincide.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 6 : Chopin: Virtuosity Transformed

Music , Sense

“Why should we do as those who do not have other joys than to believe, as night falls, in their double beds... that it is to be great and sanctified by love to jostle the companions of their bed. Our passion must be like our love – illusory and artistic, having no other end than the desire to be beautiful. To remain beautiful in unsated [unstated? ] passion…”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Love , Beauty , Passion , Joy

“Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 88

Learning , Forgetting

“A primitive power of artistic sensuousness speaks from the prints, which itself develops directly from the graphic technique that is tied to painstaking effort. Like the 'savage' who with patience cuts the figure.... out of the hard wood, so the artist creates perhaps his purest and strongest pieces.... following the primordial curse, if one may so understand it: from the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

de:Louis de Marsalle, Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921):, p. 263; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, pp. 52-53
1920's

Understanding , Effort , Patience

“An artistic impression is substantially the resultant of two components. One what the work of art gives the onlooker — the other, what he is capable of giving to the work of art.”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

"An Artistic Impression" (1909) in Style and Idea (1985), p. 189
1900s

Art

“Patchwork? Ah, no! It was memory, imagination, history, biography, joy, sorrow, philosophy, religion, romance, realism, life, love and death; and over all, like a halo, the love of the artist for his work and the soul's longing for earthly immortality.”

Eliza Calvert Hall (1856–1935) American author, women's rights advocate and suffragist

Hall, Eliza Calvert. Aunt Jane of Kentucky. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co, 1907. Aunt Jane's Album p. 82.
Hall, Eliza Calvert, and Melody Graulich. Aunt Jane of Kentucky. Masterworks of literature series. Albany, NY: NCUP, 1992. In the reprinted edition, Graulich discusses the quote on page xxiv.
Aunt Jane of Kentucky (1907)

Love , Life , Death , Religion

“Fortunately, a sculptor's style and aim are, to a great extent, dictated to him by his materials. To make a sculpture seem at all moving or inspiring, an artist must, of course, be gifted with a certain personality that speaks movingly through the subject and materials of his work. But he must select appropriate materials, and use them appropriately, too... My materials often dictate my change of aims, and I choose to work in a different material much as a man may suddenly feel an appetite for a change in diet.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, pp. 154-155

Feeling , Change , Personality

“Paris remained Parisian in spite of change, mistress of herself though China fell. Scores of artists — sculptors and painters, poets and dramatists, workers in gems and metals, designers in stuffs and furniture — hundreds of chemists, physicists, even philosophers, philologists, physicians, and historians — were at work, a thousand times as actively as ever before, and the mass and originality of their product would have swamped any previous age, as it very nearly swamped its own; but the effect was one of chaos, and Adams stood as helpless before it as before the chaos of New York.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Age , Change , Time

“There was one artist who wrote as beautifully as he painted. That was Hokusai - He speaks for all artists, whether they are painters or not. [He wrote]: "I have been in love with painting ever since I became conscious of it at the age of six. I drew some pictures I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all. At seventy three I have at last caught every aspect of nature-birds, fish, animals, insects, trees, grasses, all. When I am eighty I shall have developed still further. And I will really master the secrets of art at ninety. When I reach a hundred my work will be truly sublime, and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line and dot I draw will be imbued with life."”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Love , Life , Secret , Age

“I’m turned on by guys who are cultured. That’ll keep me intrigued. They don’t have to have a single degree, but they should speak other languages or know things about other parts of the world or history or certain artists or musicians. I like to be taught. I like to sit on that side of the table.”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

World , Guy , History , Parting

“One must realize that, apart from considerations of color and form, there are two fundamentally different ways of regarding a medium of expression: one is based on taste only — an approach in which the external physical elements of expression are merely pleasingly arranged. This way results in decoration with no spiritual reaction. Arrangement is not art. The second way is based on the artist’s power of empathy, to feel the intrinsic qualities of the medium of expression. Through these qualities the medium comes to life... In this life, an intuitive artist discovers the emotive and vital substance which makes a work of art.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 46
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life , Art , Color , Way

“The artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does violence not only to the artist but to the living source of a new and better future.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Future

“.. the universal cannot be expressed purely so long as the particular obstructs the path. Only when this is no longer the case can the universal consciousness (intuition, that is) which is at the origin of all art, be rendered directly, giving birth to a purified art expression.
This, however, cannot appear before its proper time. For it is the spirit of the times that determines artistic expression, which, in turn, reflects the spirit of the times. But at the present moment, that form of art alone is truly alive which expresses our present - or future - consciousness.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

Art , Birth , Universe , Appearance

“So does he strive to rescue your shade from the pyre and wages a mighty contest with Death, wearying the efforts of artists and seeking to love you in every material. But beauty created by toil of cunning hand is mortal.”
Sic auferre rogis umbram conatur et ingens certamen cum Morte gerit, curasque fatigat artificum inque omni te quaerit amare metallo. Sed mortalis honos, agilis quem dextra laborat.

Statius Silvae

i, line 7
Silvae, Book V

Love , Death , Beauty , Effort

“My theory has been to discover the modern synthesis by methods based upon science, methods based upon the theory of colors discovered by M. Chevreul, in conformity with the experiments of Maxwell and the measurements of N. 0. Rood; to substitute the optical mingling for the mingling of pigments; in other words, the decomposition of all the colors into their constituent elements; because the optical mingling excites much more intense luminosity than the mingling of pigments. As for the execution, we regard it as nothing; it is at any rate only unimportant, art having nothing to do with it. According to us, the sole originality consists in the character of the drawing and the vision individual to each artist.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter, circa 1886-87; as quoted in Brush and Pencil, Vol. XIII, no. 6 , article: 'Camille Pissarro' Impressionist', by Henry G. Stephens; March, 1904, pp. 414-15
1880's

Art , Color , Science , Drawing

“An epidemic of destruction sweeps the world today. The mind of civilized man is set to stop it. What the enemy would destroy, however, he must first see. To confuse and paralyze this vision is the role of camouflage. Here the artist and more particularly the modern artist can fulfill a vital function for opposed to this vision of destruction is the vision of creation. Historically, it has been the artist's role to make manifest the beautiful inherent in all the objects of nature and man. In the study of the object, as a thing seen, he has acquired a profound understanding and sensibility concerning its visual aspects..”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Gorky's quote refers to the heavy swift in modern art because of the appearance of Cubism
1942 - 1948
Source: 'Camouflage', 1942; an announcement for a teaching program [set up by Gorky and the director of the Grand Central School of Art, Edmund Greasen]

World , Beauty , Understanding , Nature

“It is because we are predominantly purposeful beings that we are perpetually correcting our immediate sensations. But men are free not to be utilitarianly purposeful. They can sometime be artists, for example. In which case they may like to accept the immediate sensation uncorrected, because it happens to be beautiful.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” p. 11
Do What You Will (1928)

Men , Beauty

“Like art, science is born of itself, not of nature. There is no neutral naturalism. The artist, no less than the writer, needs a vocabulary before he can embark on a 'copy' of reality.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

E. H. Gombrich (1962), quoted in: Robert Maxwell Young. Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, 1970. p. 101.

Art , Nature , Reality , Science

“In short it is my concern to emphasize that Gorky is, of all the surrealist artists, the only one who maintains direct contact with nature – sit down to paint before her. Furthermore, it is out of the question that he would take the expression of this nature as an end in itself – rightly he demands of her that she provide sensations that can serve as springboards for both knowledge and pleasure in fathoming certain profound states of mind... Here for the first time nature is treated as a cryptogram. The artist has a code by reason of his own sensitive anterior impressions, and can decode nature to reveal the very rhythm of life, in the discovery of the very rhythm of life.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Quote of Breton, from Introduction to the exhibition of Gorky's first show', Julien Levy Gallery', March 1945; as quoted in Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London, 2009, p. 258
after 1930

Life , Pleasure , Question , Nature

“To get straight to the point, the local group of artist called Die Brücke would reckon it a high honour to be able to welcome you as a member. Of course you will know as little about Die Brücke as we knew about you before your ehibition at [Arnold’s [gallery Arnold at Dresden. Now, one of the aims of Die Brücke is to attract all the revolutionary and fermenting elements to itself – that’s the menaing of the name Brücke. The gruop also arranges several exhibitions a year, which it sends on tour in Germany... Now, dear Herr Nolde, think as you like and what you like, we hope this offer is the proper price for your tempests od colour.”

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976) German artist

In a letter of Schmidt-Rottluff from Dresden, 1906 to Emil Nolde; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 32
Schmidt-Rottluff was one of the founders of Die Brücke and invited Emil Nolde to participate, and emphasized the group's spirit of experimentation which they recognized in Nolde's painting art

Hope , Thinking

“Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take pleasure in his own sufferings, the artist has a huge advantage over you and me.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. XV

Pleasure , Suffering

“I am not an artist and never have been. Rather I am like a craftsman and feel very close to the mediaeval artisans who produced their work anonymously and who, along with their apprentices, had a true feeling for the physical materials they were working with.”

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

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Feeling

“Around late 1961 to 1962, right around there, somewhat unevenly and sort of spottily, I began to do pieces that were based upon a short text of actions that only involved a handful of friends or students at some specific site — a site that was not marked as an art site, a ravine somewhere, or a roadway, or somebody's apartment, or the telephone, that is, the places of everyday life, not designated as sites of art. And the work itself, the action, the kind of participation, was as remote from anything artistic as the site was.... I chose the word Happening from its normal language usage somewhat earlier for that philosophical reason, but I didn't categorize that as lifelike until much later. But in fact, looking back, that's exactly what Happening meant.”

Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) American artist

In an interview with Robert C. Morgan, 1991; in the 'Journal of Contemporary Art, 4', no. 2, p. 56-69

Life , Art

“There is a train track in the history of art that goes way back to Mesopotamia. It skips the whole Orient, The Mayas, And American Indians. Duchamp is on it. Cézanne is on it. Picasso and the Cubists are on it; Giacometti, Piet Mondrian, and so many... I have some feeling about all these people – millions of them – on this enormous track, a way into history. They had a peculiar way of measuring. They seemed to measure with a length similar to their own height... The idea that the thing that the artist is making can come to know for itself, how high it is, how wide and how deep it is, is a historical one, - a traditional one I think. It comes from man's own image.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning’s lecture Trans/formation at Studio 35, 1950.
1950's

People , Art , Way , Feeling

“Artistic expression might be seen as a Darwinian protection device for the psyche of fragile individuals, for whom sensuous contact with the outside world is too much to bear, and is repressed, and must be brought up and thrust out into the open from time to time at great effort in order for them to simply survive emotionally.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary

World , Effort , Time

“As an Indian, I remained convinced that the bhav or the feeling of a painting is important, and these put together, can make a good artistic expression. This is what I tried to do during my years in France.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

This is a sum of all my experiences: SH Raza

Feeling , Painting

“One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.”

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Russian composer, pianist and conductor

1962, quoted in Andriessen and Schoenberger, The Apollonian Clockwork (1989). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1960s

“.. the present painter is not concerned with the process. Herein lies the difference between them and the Surrealists. At the same time in his desire, in his will to set down the ordered truth.... it can be said that the artist like a true creator is delving into chaos. It is precisely this that makes him an artist for the Creator in creating the world began with the same material, for the artist tries to wrest truth from the void..”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 2. 1943-1945, p. 126

Truth , World , Time

“[T]he job of mass entertainment is to cajole, seduce and flatter consumers to let them know that what they thought was right is right, and that their tastes and their immediate gratification are of the utmost concern of the purveyor. The job of the artist, on the other hand, is to say, wait a second, to the contrary, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's reexamine it.”

David Mamet (1947) American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director

Inteview by Richard Covington, Salon, October 25, 1997, 2013-06-17 http://www.upstartfilmcollective.com/portfolios/jcharnick/mamet-museum/salon-interview.html,

Waiting

“The fault of many of our artists and intellectuals lies in their original sin: they are not true revolutionaries. We can try to graft the elm tree so that it will bear pears, but at the same time we must plant pear trees. New generations will come that will be free of original sin.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Tree , Time

“I have the utmost respect for her because, even as an established actress, she still comes to class. She still works on developing herself as an artist.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

On Laura Dern; as heard in the Laura Dern episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGmZx1-eZrU&t=307 of Intimate Portrait; broadcast February 16, 1999

“Even the act of peeling a potato can be an artistic act if it is consciously done.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Three quotes of Joseph Beuys, in 'An interview with Joseph Beuys,', Willoughby Sharp, published in 'Artforum,' November 1969; as quoted in Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, Lucy R. Lippard, University of California Press, 1973, p. 121
1960's

“I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness (1976)

God , Truth

“It is my profound wish that this entire collection shall be devoted to the advancement of fine music for the continued enjoyment of music enthusiasts throughout the United States, be they students of the arts, performing artists, or members of that vast audience of music lovers among the American public.”

Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) British conductor

From his will, in which he provided for his conducting scores, manuscript orchestral transcriptions, and recordings to archived and accessible to the public. The Stokowski Archives are now housed in the University of Pennsylvania Library.

Art , Music , Lovers

“In most writers, style is a welcome, an invitation, a letting down of the drawbridge between the artist and the world. Shaw had no time for such ruses. Unlike most of his countrymen, he abominated charm, which he regarded as evidence of chronic temperamental weakness.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"Bernard Shaw" (1956), p. 102
Profiles (1990)

World , Time