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Quotes about Art

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Every artist was first an amateur.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)

CP Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
- Frank Zappa, US musician, singer, & songwriter (1940 - 1993)

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
- Scott Adams, US cartoonist (1957 - )

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
- W. Somerset Maugham, English dramatist & novelist (1874 - 1965)

Life isn't long enough for love and art.
- W. Somerset Maugham, English dramatist & novelist (1874 - 1965)

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
- Andre Gide, French critic, essayist, & novelist (1869 - 1951)

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
- Pablo Picasso, Spanish Cubist painter (1881 - 1973)

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
- Pablo Picasso, Spanish Cubist painter (1881 - 1973)

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
- Pablo Picasso, Spanish Cubist painter (1881 - 1973)

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
- Pablo Picasso, Spanish Cubist painter (1881 - 1973)

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
- Elizabeth Bowen, Irish novelist & short story author (1899 - 1973)

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
- Edith Wharton, US novelist (1862 - 1937)

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?
- Edith Wharton, US novelist (1862 - 1937)

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
- Ambrose Bierce, US author & satirist (1842 - 1914)

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.
- John F. Kennedy, 35th president of US 1961-1963 (1917 - 1963)

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
- Henry Ward Beecher, US abolitionist & clergyman (1813 - 1887)

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.
- Cicero, Roman author, orator, & politician (106 BC - 43 BC)

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
- G. K. Chesterton, English author & mystery novelist (1874 - 1936)

CP I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
- Orson Welles, US actor & director (1915 - 1985)

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
- Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician & philosopher (1861 - 1947)

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision.
- Penn Jillette, US magician & showman (1955 - )

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
- Walt Whitman, US poet (1819 - 1892)

All art is an imitation of nature.
- Seneca, Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD)

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.
- Amy Lowell, US critic & poet (1874 - 1925)

CP [Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
- Al Capp, US cartoonist (1909 - 1979)

CP Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.
- Isak Dineson

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
- Paul Gauguin, French Post-Impressionist painter (1848 - 1903)

I shut my eyes in order to see.
- Paul Gauguin, French Post-Impressionist painter (1848 - 1903)

What I dream of is an art of balance.
- Henri Matisse, French Impressionist & Fauvist painter (1869 - 1954)

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.
- Edmond de Goncourt, French artist & novelist (1822 - 1896)

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.
- Simonides, Greek poet (556 BC - 468 BC)

Let each man exercise the art he knows.
- Aristophanes, Greek Athenian comic dramatist (450 BC - 388 BC)

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.
- E. M. Forster, British novelist (1879 - 1970)

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it.
- Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish adventurer, author, & poet (1547 - 1616)

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.
- Piet Mondrian, Dutch Abstractionist painter (1872 - 1944)

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

What we play is life.
- Louis Armstrong, US jazz musician, scat singer, & trumpeter (1900 - 1971)

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.
- M. C. Richards

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.
- Stephen Nachmanovitch

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.
- Ben Shahn, US (Lithuanian-born) painter (1898 - 1969)

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.
- George Tooker

CP The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.
- Jackson Pollock, US Abstract Expressionist painter (1912 - 1956)

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
- Duke Ellington, US jazz bandleader, musician, & songwriter (1899 - 1974)

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
- Eugene Delacroix, French Romantic painter (1798 - 1863)

Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.
- William Baziotes

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.
- John Singer Sargent, US (Italian-born) portrait painter (1856 - 1925)

If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat...you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life.
- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

Repetition is the death of art.
- Robin Green

CP You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.
- Jeff Melvoin

CP It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it.
- Jeff Melvoin

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts.
- Charles Rosin

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
- Federico Fellini, Italian movie director (1920 - 1993)

I suppose no matter what I'm drawing, there will always be some sort of question in my mind about it. A work of art (even cartoon art)is never really finished; it is abandoned.
- Brooke McEldowney

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.
- Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter (1907 - 1954)

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own.
- Piero Milani

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.
- Nickolas Muray

I know just how frustrating it can be when you're tired and exhausted, but you still want to draw something.
- Ward Jenkins

CP It doesn't matter if people are interested. It's about you taking your stuff and shouting out into the void.
- Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.
- David Cronenberg

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.
- David Cronenberg