ART QUOTES XI

quotations about art

Art quote

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.

AUGUST WILSON

The Paris Review, Winter 1999

Tags: August Wilson, politics


Art is a means to enter, to play with, to dance with, to wrestle with anything that intrigues, delights, disturbs, or terrifies us.

PAT B. ALLEN

introduction, Art Is a Spiritual Path

Tags: Pat B. Allen


The swing of art is circular, from form to formalism, from formalism to formlessness, from formlessness to form again.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


Aesthetic culture is not the high-road to all the virtues, and, indeed, certain of the vices have been known to infest it. Neither, on the other hand, is there any special grace in ugliness. Art is only utterance. It must express something; and the vital question is, what does it express?

LEWIS FOREMAN DAY

Everyday Art

Tags: Lewis Foreman Day


The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.

ROBERT ALTMAN

interview with F. Anthony Macklin, 1976

Tags: Robert Altman


If the world were clear, art would not exist.

ALBERT CAMUS

The Myth of Sisyphus

Tags: Albert Camus


The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.

ANDRE GIDE

Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality

Tags: Andre Gide, success


They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers--people who do now know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.

ANNA DEAVERE SMITH

Letters to a Young Artist

Tags: Anna Deavere Smith


In every work of art, the artist himself is present.

CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN

Levels

Tags: Christian Morgenstern


Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Back to Methuselah

Tags: George Bernard Shaw, dreams


There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art; and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Art achieves all little things by absolute truth: but all her great things need some admixture of illusion.

RICHARD GARNETT

De Flagello Myrtes

Tags: truth, illusion


It is difficult to prove that any age has been propitious for the artist; Socrates was condemned to death, so were Seneca and Petronius, Dante was exiled, the age of Louis XIV was one of both civil and religious persecution; the nineteenth century, as the lawsuits against Flaubert, Baudelaire, Hugo, etc., show, was not much better; and in the twentieth century there are whole tracts of Europe where to be a writer is to invite a firing-squad. "Silence, exile, and cunning" are the artist's lot, and, exquisite though his happiness will be when his public, educated at last, mobs him like a film-star, we may be wiser to assume that, for our lifetime, "silence, exile, and cunning" it will remain.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

The Condemned Playground

Tags: Cyril Connolly


The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life

Tags: Leonardo da Vinci, artists


An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

CHINUA ACHEBE

The Massachusetts Review, Summer, 1987

Tags: Chinua Achebe


Men are momentary but art is forever.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN

"Men Are Momentary, But Art Is Forever In 'Innocents And Others'", NPR, March 15, 2016


What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature... (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms).

DONALD BARTHELME

"The Sandman"

Tags: Donald Barthelme, failure


It's a great life except for the money. If you are into STUFF, being an artist is probably not your thing unless you can marry yourself off to a financier. But as an artist, you get to do what you love doing and has meaning for you.

JAMES GUPPY

"Judging art is a classic business", Echo Netdaily, March 16, 2016


Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

OSCAR WILDE

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Tags: Oscar Wilde, painting


In the arts, people are always waiting for someone or some movement to "fulfill her/its/his promise." Then, half-a-dozen or a dozen years on, others begin to realize that, really, something extraordinary was actually happening.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

interview, SF Site, Apr. 2001

Tags: Samuel R. Delany