Art Quotes

"A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable"

Lafcadio Hearn, Author

"When Socrates was about 30, and his father was long dead, he was still pursuing the art of sculpture, but from necessity, and without much inclination"

Moses Mendelssohn, Philosopher

"I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art. It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it"

Mary Cassatt, Artist

"To me art is a form of manifest revolt, total and complete"

Jean Tinguely, Sculptor

"It would be difficult, in this day and age, to fund art that made racial slurs"

Jane Alexander, Actress

"To change your phrase somewhat, I know that I like an art where disparate elements form an entity"

James Schuyler, Poet

"The first piece of art that I ever bought-when I could afford it-was a Warhol sketch from the period when he was just getting out of doing commercial work and more into art. It's a sketch of a young guy's face. I guess the gallery that I bought it from thought I would like it because the young guy kind of looked like James Dean"

James Franco, Actor

"Perhaps... I mean there are people who defend that it as an art. I don't. I like it but it's not an art form as far as I'm concerned, and yet it's a similar thing, once you can't land those jumps, you're disqualified - that precludes it from ever becoming a serious art form"

Mark Morris, Dancer

"I wish my work would be recognized by a larger crowd of people as more art than be stuck with the cartoonist label for the rest of my life"

Julie Doucet, Artist

"We have lost the art of sharing and caring"

Hun Sen, Statesman

"That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision"

Herbert Read, Poet

"I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film"

Jeff Bridges, Actor

"Art is more godlike than science. Science discovers; art creates"

John Opie, Artist

"When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art"

Jeanne Moreau, Actress

"There's a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don't believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed"

Dan Simmons, Author

"I realize that every picture isn't a work of art"

Conrad Hall, Artist

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see"

Edgar Degas, Artist

"Art is a sense of magic"

Stan Brakhage, Director

"Propaganda is that branch of the art of lying which consists in nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies"

Frances Cornford, Poet

"I like to cook, walk on the beach, go to concerts and look at fine art"

Fran Drescher, Actress

"There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art"

Douglas Sirk, Director

"Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something"

Laurie Anderson, Musician

"Art must not serve might"

Karel Capek, Writer

"I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something - a great success. I'm very proud of it"

Helmut Newton, Photographer

"When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon mastery of the medium"

Hans Hofmann, Artist

"What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation"

Hans Hofmann, Artist

"The art of pictorial creation is so complicated - it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization"

Hans Hofmann, Artist

"A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world"

Hans Hofmann, Artist

"Attack is only one half of the art of boxing"

Georges Carpentier, Athlete

"Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence"

Edmund C. Stedman

"The only advice I would give Christians entering the world of arts: give yourself a period of time, maybe three or four years. If you haven't made it in your chosen art form, dump it"

Cliff Richard, Musician

"Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist used and the record that's embedded in the work"

Chuck Close, Artist

"In Europe, there is so much tradition, and everyone has established ideas as to what art should be and what it has always been"

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Musician

"Wushu is a move in Chinese, a physical move. An attack. Wushu is like an art"

Jet Li, Actor

"In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it"

Georg Cantor, Mathematician

"We do not judge great art. It judges us"

Caroline Gordon, Writer

"Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them"

Carlisle Floyd, Composer

"It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else"

Carlisle Floyd, Composer

"Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art"

Dante G. Rossetti

"Comedy is really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title"

Joe Rogan, Comedian

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