ART QUOTES IV

quotations about art

Art quote

Keep doing what you like to do. That's all [art] is.

CORY ARCANGEL

interview with Stina Puotinen, Mar. 21, 2009


Like most art students, I expect I'll find that there is no demand for what I've learned so I'll teach other students so that one day they can teach as well.

GUY BELLAMY

The Secret Lemonade Drinker

Tags: Guy Bellamy


Nothing helps an artist's career more than a little death and obscurity.

DAN SIMMONS

The Fall of Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons, death


All passes. Art alone
Enduring stays to us;
The Bust outlasts the throne,--
The Coin, Tiberius.

HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON

Ars Victrix

Tags: Henry Austin Dobson


Art as Magic is a forbidden and illegitimate pleasure, and ... what we are ashamed of wanting most are our wishful apprehensions. The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true. Apart, that is, from the artist.

ADAM PHILLIPS

On Balance

Tags: Adam Phillips


I do get students that initially think they're never going to be that good an artist. I refuse to accept that. There's trained and untrained. It's OK for you to be working on your own level -- as long as you're working.

ROBERT LEMMING

"Art Is Communication: Artist turned teacher encourages conversation", Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, March 11, 2016


Modernity is the transitory, fugitive, contingent, is but one half of art, of which the other half is the eternal and immutable.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

"La Modernite", La Peintre de la Vie Moderne

Tags: Charles Baudelaire


Never judge a work of art by its defects.

WASHINGTON ALLSTON

attributed, A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern

Tags: Washington Allston


That is one of the things a great work of art does. It stays there waiting for you to come back to it, and it shows you who you are now, each time a little different.

DANA SPIOTTA

Innocents and Others


The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Death in the Afternoon

Tags: Ernest Hemingway, artists


The idea of a new art based upon science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it were, a new creed in a new civilization, filled me with wonder, and I stood dumb before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the ambition.

GEORGE MOORE

Confessions of a Young Man

Tags: George Moore, science


True art required the right amount of uncertainty, just as gourmet cooking needed the proper spices and flavors.

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

The Butlerian Jihad

Tags: Brian Herbert, cooking


We are all artists. We just have to believe it.

WILL GOMPERTZ

Think Like an Artist: and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life


Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term "Art," I should call it "the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul." The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of "Artist".

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"Marginalia"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe, soul


You need the art in order to love the life.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Anthologist

Tags: Nicholson Baker, life


Art is an organized response to what nature allows us to glimpse occasionally. Art sets out to transform the potential recognition into an unceasing one.

JOHN BERGER

The Sense of Sight

Tags: John Berger


Art is not a copy of the real world; one of the damn things is enough.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

attributed, Languages of Art

Tags: Virginia Woolf


Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only "liked": it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.

C. S. LEWIS

On Stories and Other Essays in Literature

Tags: C. S. Lewis


I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.

LOUISE NEVELSON

"Dawns and Dusks", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings

Tags: creativity, mind


The way to art was not to think too clearly, not to plan things out, but to follow where your heart and emotions led.

PAUL PARK

A Princess of Roumania

Tags: Paul Park, emotion