99 Art Quotes

1.  The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle
2. Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. Salvador Dali
3. So vast is art, so narrow human wit. Alexander Pope
4. Art does not reproduce what we see rather, it makes us see. Paul Klee
5. That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind. James Taylor
6. What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real. Rabindranath Tagore
7. An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates. Thomas Mann
8. The art of Peace I practice has room for each of the world's eight million gods, and I cooperate with them all. The God of Peace is very great and enjoins all that is divine and enlightened in every land. Morihei Ueshiba
9. The downfall of the industry seems to actually be good for art. I think the industry will find their way once the focus shifts from its greed-based origins, downsizes, and begins to support creative visions that speak to our times and shifting ideals. Saul Williams
10. What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. John Updike
11. The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you. Oscar Wilde
12. Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. John Ruskin
13. Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast. Jerry Saltz
14. Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does. Walter Murch
15. Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. Gilbert K. Chesterton
16. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Sun Tzu
17. It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946, when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met, principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art. Jerry Saltz
18. I did this Super-8 film at art school called 'Tissues,' this black comedy about a family whose father has been arrested for child molestation. I was absolutely thrilled by every inch of it, and would throw my projector in the back of my car and show it to anybody who would watch it. Jane Campion
19. It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence. Isadora Duncan
20. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton
21. Robert Rauschenberg was not a giant of American art he was the giant. No American created so many aesthetic openings for so many artists. Jerry Saltz
22. What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life. Michel Foucault
23. I would no more quarrel with a man because of his religion than I would because of his art. Mary Baker Eddy
24. Mild autism can give you a genius like Einstein. If you have severe autism, you could remain nonverbal. You don't want people to be on the severe end of the spectrum. But if you got rid of all the autism genetics, you wouldn't have science or art. All you would have is a bunch of social 'yak yaks.' Temple Grandin
25. I never called my work an 'art'. It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment. Walt Disney
26. Trying to force creativity is never good. Sarah McLachlan
27. Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need. Will Rogers
28. Poor Georgia O'Keeffe. Death didn't soften the opinions of the art world toward her paintings. Jerry Saltz
29. Any fool can have bad luck the art consists in knowing how to exploit it. Frank Wedekind
30. My trade and art is to live. Michel de Montaigne
31. Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally goodness is always the product of some art. Charles Baudelaire
32. Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication. Simone Weil
33. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. Oscar Wilde
34. The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization. Frank Lloyd Wright
35. Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion. Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art. Remy de Gourmont
36. Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television. Rita Mae Brown
37. I'm not dead and I don't have blue hair but some people say there are similarities. It is usually intolerable to watch myself onscreen but this time it's fine. I think it's beautiful and a real work of art. Helena Bonham Carter
38. The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. Friedrich Nietzsche
39. The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. Salvador Dali
40. The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly. Aldous Huxley
41. Space is the breath of art. Frank Lloyd Wright
42. Art allows people a way to dream their way out of their struggle. Russell Simmons
43. I owe much to mother. She had an expert's understanding, but also approached art emotionally. David Rockefeller
44. Vision is the true creative rhythm. Robert Delaunay
45. There is nothing new in art except talent. Anton Chekhov
46. Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art. William Ralph Inge
47. Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time. Karl Marx
48. The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
49. The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. George Edward Moore
50. It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully. Aristotle
51. Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. Sylvia Plath
52. Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. Edward Hopper
53. All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy. Jerry Saltz
54. It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas. David Byrne
55. Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. George Jean Nathan
56. Be true to yourself, help others, make each day your masterpiece, make friendship a fine art, drink deeply from good books - especially the Bible, build a shelter against a rainy day, give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day. John Wooden
57. Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. Igor Stravinsky
58. Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value. George Jean Nathan
59. Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas! David Herbert Lawrence
60. Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art. F. Scott Fitzgerald
61. The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds. Nehru, Jawaharial
62. When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God. Robert Mapplethorpe
63. People who don't like me talk about it as though I'm trash because I have tattoos. I find that insane because it's 2008, not the 1950s. Tattoos aren't limited to sailors. It's a form of art I find beautiful. I love it. Megan Fox
64. To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine. Henry Ward Beecher
65. The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness. Joan Miro
66. I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them. Nelson Mandela
67. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. Voltaire
68. For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
69. In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects. Rabindranath Tagore
70. All good art is an indiscretion. Tennessee Williams
71. I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things. Henri Matisse
72. Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. Oliver Wendell Holmes
73. Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. Samuel Butler
74. Winners have the ability to step back from the canvas of their lives like an artist gaining perspective. They make their lives a work of art - an individual masterpiece. Denis Waitley
75. After its hothouse incubation in the seventies, appropriation breathed important new life into art. This life flowered spectacularly over the decades - even if it's now close to aesthetic kudzu. Jerry Saltz
76. Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary. Boris Pasternak
77. My age and health will never allow me to realize the dream of art I've been pursuing all my life. Paul Cezanne
78. Painting is by nature a luminous language. Robert Delaunay
79. Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. Dorothea Lange
80. Be slow to fall into friendship but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. Socrates
81. Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books. Jerry Saltz
82. Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God. Martin Luther
83. Art is changing. Again. Here. Now. Opportunities to witness this are rare, so attend and observe. Jerry Saltz
84. The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes. Tony Blair
85. What is art? Prostitution. Charles Baudelaire
86. Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology. Mason Cooley
87. I can't satisfy myself with just trying to tie all of my imagination into music, especially when music is not appreciated as an art form as much as it used to be. Marilyn Manson
88. What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying. Oscar Wilde
89. The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute. Honore de Balzac
90. An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. James Whistler
91. Art is so subjective, and people can react however they want. Jennifer Aniston
92. I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss! Victor Hugo
93. It is a myth that art has to be sold. It is not like stocking a grocery store where people fill a pushcart. Art is a product that has no apparent need. The salesperson builds the need in the mind of the buyer. Jack White
94. Money is something that can be measured art is not. It's all subjective. Jerry Saltz
95. In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. Patti Smith
96. Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest. Friedrich Nietzsche
97. I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something. Eddie Vedder
98. Politics is the art of controlling your environment. Hunter S. Thompson
99. If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. Vincent Van Gogh