ART QUOTES VI

quotations about art

Art quote

Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH

Letters to a Young Artist

Tags: Anna Deavere Smith, perfection


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


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

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That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men.

OSCAR WILDE

"Art and the Handicraftsman"

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Art ... is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM

interview, July 5, 2005

Tags: Stephen Sondheim, chaos


There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

REBECCA WEST

The Strange Necessity

Tags: Rebecca West, mobs


Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.

HOWARD ZINN

"Artists of Resistance", The Historic Unfulfilled Promise

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The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

NORMAN MAILER

Western Review, winter 1959

Tags: Norman Mailer, morality


Realism and art cannot live together.

JENNETTE LEE

The Ibsen Secret

Tags: realism


The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.

EDWARD ALBEE

Stretching My Mind

Tags: Edward Albee, reality


I believe that economic prosperity and cultural wealth go hand in hand. This is why it is important to even further promote the cultural arts during times of economic slowdown.

OH SEUNG-JE

"All That Korean Art Is There for a Reason", New York Times, March 16, 2016


Art is one of man's few serious activities.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

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The transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.

JOHN BERGER

The Sense of Sight

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Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move.

DAN SIMMONS

The Rise of Endymion

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Art, true 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

Tendencies in Modern Poetry

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Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

Strong Opinions

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Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the songs of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them.

PABLO PICASSO

Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views

Tags: Pablo Picasso, understanding


True art, like nature, ever bears
Suggestions of some higher thing;
As more than form or tint of bird
We prize the song he stops to sing.

EDITH WILLIS LINN FORBES

"A Landscape in Oils"


The difference between the first and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition -- it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind -- yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!

WILLIAM JAMES

letter to Henry Rutgers Marshall, Feb. 7, 1899

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