ART QUOTES IV
quotations about art
The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.
STEFAN ZWEIG
prelude, Paul Verlaine
Nature is a haunted house -- but Art -- a House that tries to be haunted.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to T. W. Higginson, 1876
Keep doing what you like to do. That's all [art] is.
CORY ARCANGEL
interview with Stina Puotinen, Mar. 21, 2009
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
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 lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is Art?
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
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Paris Review, summer-fall 1964
Art ... is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
interview, July 5, 2005
An artist cannot fail; it is success to be one.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Life and the Student
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.
JAMES BALDWIN
Esquire, April 1960
We are all artists. We just have to believe it.
WILL GOMPERTZ
Think Like an Artist: and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life
There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.
CHARLES DICKENS
Nicholas Nickleby
The transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.
JOHN BERGER
The Sense of Sight
If you are not passionate in life, you can't be passionate in art.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir
Art is not a copy of the real world; one of the damn things is enough.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
attributed, Languages of Art
Art is becoming one of the indispensable factors influencing the organization of everyday life. It is present everywhere and nowhere. It is becoming a fluid. It stands outside all professions. It cannot be isolated, it cannot be worshipped, it cannot be converted into money. None of this is possible. It is irreversibly dissolved in the solution of burgeoning human existence.
MILAN KNIZAK
"Aktual Univerzity: Ten Lessons", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings
Art is always aimed (like a rifle, if you wish) at the middle class. The working class has its own culture and will have no truck with fanciness of any kind. The upper class owns the world and thus needs know no more about the world than is necessary for its orderly exploitation. The notion that art cuts across class boundaries to stir the hearts of hoe hand and Morgan alike is, at best, a fiction useful to the artist, his Hail Mary. It is the poor puzzled bourgeoisie that is sufficiently uncertain, sufficiently hopeful, to pay attention to art. It follows (as the night the day) that the bourgeoisie should get it in the neck.
DONALD BARTHELME
"On the Level of Desire"
Art is a language that doesn't need to be translated.
AHMAD HARIRI
"How art is helping Syrian refugees keep their culture alive", The Guardian, March 2, 2016
Art -- the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.
JAMES THURBER
Collecting Himself