ART QUOTES VIII
quotations about art
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
THOMAS MERTON
No Man Is an Island
What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Lost Illusions
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
ANAIS NIN
attributed, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations
Doing a life study while drunk and in the process of being seduced is never a formula for quality art.
DAN SIMMONS
The Fall of Hyperion
The highest art is always the most religious; and the greatest artist is always a devout man. A scoffing Raphael or Michelangelo is not conceivable.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
On Beauty: three discourses delivered in the University of Edinburgh
There was a lot of time between early artists doing cave painting and the Sistine Chapel and more time until the first art museum was created. During this time and until the development of the press, not a lot was written about art, yet artists persevered and they were probably more appreciated.
BEN PERRONE
"Freedom to create art is a wonderful thing", Buffalo News, March 22, 2016
We few, we happy few. No, we lucky few! Artists, wake up. Be gratified when our art is not taken by museums to rot in their storage vaults, probably never to be seen again. We should appreciate that we can and will survive without museums and the finely crafted words of those who will never know what it's like to create. Pick up some sand and run it through your fingers. Consider the long span of geological history and realize that our civilization won't last. All paintings and sculpture, including the great works of art, will be treated equally by time -- reduced to ashes and dust. This recognition puts me in my place but it is also a relief. Accepting mortality gives me the freedom to work without restraint, boundary or expectation.
BEN PERRONE
"Freedom to create art is a wonderful thing", Buffalo News, March 22, 2016
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
TOM STOPPARD
"Artist Descending a Staircase"
Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it.... It's a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are a spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be an artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.
ANN PATCHETT
Bel Canto
The good thing about being an artist, is it's a legitimate way of looking at things cross-eyed.
JOHN CHAMBERLAIN
"Unshackled, Unconventional Sculptor", New York Times, Jun. 13, 1993
That art is best which suggests most.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Only lifeless mechanisms move along faultlessly straight lines and compass circles. In art the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy: that which is canonized quickly dies of obesity, of entropy.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The New Russian Prose
An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.
AD REINHARDT
"Twelve Rules for a New Academy", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings
The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.
TOM ROBBINS
Another Roadside Attraction
For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.
TONI MORRISON
interview with Don Swaim, 1987
All things that are living are expression and therefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, that is encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from my point of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs no handbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is.
MARSDEN HARTLEY
Adventures in Art
It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The artist is justified by his art.
LEWIS FOREMAN DAY
Stained Glass
This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son