Art Quotes

"Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man"

Ezra Pound, Poet

"Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to '95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it's not written by an art historian"

Christo, Artist

"When I travel, I draw and paint sketches which is great fun. And as long as you are fully aware that it has nothing to do with actual art, I think that's all right"

Arne Jacobsen, Architect

"Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity"

Hippocrates, Scientist

"Art is man's expression of his joy in labor"

Henry A. Kissinger, Statesman

"The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle"

Stanley Kubrick, Director

"One must ease the public into it - that's an art in itself"

Robert Mapplethorpe, Photographer

"Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life"

Michael Korda, Novelist

"We're all so mauled by information, but it's recycled information. We need to shut it out. So, you've got to get bizarre. This is an artist's purpose - to break away from the recycled. Performance art can do that"

Jack Bowman, Actor

"I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film"

David Cronenberg, Director

"All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal partnership"

Ann Landers, Journalist

"I see things like they've never been seen before. Art is an accurate statement of the time in which it is made"

Robert Mapplethorpe, Photographer

"Managing bottom-up change is its own art"

Kevin Kelly, Editor

"I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do"

Lucian Freud, Artist

"I try to keep a low profile in general. Not with my art, but just as a person"

Alanis Morissette, Musician

"One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most"

Walter Pater, Critic

"Schools are really bad now. Schools are not only bad in reading, writing and arithmetic, they're worse in cultural aspects, like in music and art. They don't teach you anything"

John Kricfalusi, Artist

"Translation is the art of failure"

Umberto Eco, Novelist

"Layer by layer art strips life bare"

Robert Musil, Writer

"Pollock said several times that he couldn't separate himself from his art. Not knowing much about modern art when I began to read about him, I was much more his persona - his struggles as a human being - that was interesting to me"

Ed Harris, Actor

"The music is a personal expression, like art. It is something that you like doing that comes from within, and is an expression that comes from God. That is why artists are beautiful and why people who copy are not really artistic"

Michael Schenker, Musician

"The recognition of the art that informs all pure science need not mean the abandonment for it of all present art, rather it will mean the completion of the transformation of art that has already begun"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own"

Andy Warhol, Artist

"Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it"

Giorgio Vasari, Artist

"Art is my life and my life is art"

Yoko Ono, Artist

"Art does not need us, and it never did"

El Lissitzky, Artist

"Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper"

Gunter Grass, Author

"I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me"

Camillo di Cavour, Statesman

"Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one"

Stella Adler, Actress

"Now, there are so many movies, so many festivals, and so many awards going on, each judged with each other, like your work is worse than others and that's not fair. How can you tell what's best and what's worst from these awards? We're talking about art"

Javier Bardem, Actor

"Directing is the ultimate way to bring together all the art forms I've been involved with over the years"

Xander Berkeley, Actor

"An actress must be a woman whose emotional perceptions are true, and to make them so, she must have a fine contempt for any art or thought that betrays them for something false"

Nance O'Neil

"The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy"

Clive Bell, Critic

"Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV"

Ani DiFranco, Musician

"Now will I rehearse before you a very ancient Breton Lay. As the tale was told to me, so, in turn, will I tell it over again, to the best of my art and knowledge. Hearken now to my story, its why and its reason"

Marie de France, Poet

"Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art"

Lytton Strachey, Critic

"All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer. art is an action against death. It is a denial of death"

Jacques Lipchitz, Sculptor

"I never had a job. I bought my first house within a year of getting out of school, and I built a custom one four and a half years later. The Art Center didn't teach much about business, but I learned a lot from the Fortune 500 companies that were my clients"

Richard MacDonald, Sculptor

"Art is more engaging that propaganda"

Larry Norman, Musician

"Our thoughts fly therefore by themselves in this festive hour of our plant community, to the man whom we thank for the ressurection of our Nation: Adolf Hitler, the patron of German labour and German art"

Gustav Krupp, Businessman

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