Art Quotes

"The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous. Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead"

Harold Rosenberg, Writer

"The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick"

Sophie Swetchine, Author

"I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true"

Luigi Pirandello, Playwright

"When I went to college, I wasn't interested in fashion anymore - I was interested in art"

Stephen Sprouse, Designer

"Juggling is sometimes called the art of controlling patterns, controlling patterns in time and space"

Ronald Graham, Mathematician

"The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history"

Harold Rosenberg, Writer

"There are periods in history when change is necessary, and other periods when it is better to keep everything for the time as it is. The art of life is to be in the rhythm of your age"

Oswald Mosley, Politician

"A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two"

Will Eisner, Cartoonist

"If advertising is not an official or state art, it is nonetheless clearly art"

Michael Schudson, Sociologist

"There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating"

Louis Leakey, Scientist

"The end of the trial and the 'not guilty' verdicts on all counts, clearing Michael of all charges, mean that he can now concentrate on the future and his art"

LaToya Jackson, Musician

"No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow - and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals"

Kenneth Clark, Author

"Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things"

Nicholas Meyer, Writer

"I think it should be ambitious and good music does deal with life and art and all these wonderful things"

Jonny Greenwood, Musician

"I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable"

Richard Avedon, Photographer

"With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art"

Sydney Pollack, Director

"I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form"

Sydney Pollack, Director

"It is not that Shakespeare's art is in technicolor and fancy, and that real life is black and white and tedious. The life that Shakespeare was living was the only life he had, and he had to use it to create what he was doing"

Stephen Greenblatt, Critic

"Everybody thinks they know what art should be. But very few of them have the sense that is necessary to experience painting, that is the sense of sight, that sees colors and forms as living reality in the picture"

Otto Dix, Artist

"I was an art student at the time, like thousands of others"

Ray Davies, Musician

"Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move"

Ossie Davis, Actor

"I have always been making art from an early age but for nearly forty years did computer programming to earn a living. I bought a house and put my wife and three children through college. Now that diversion is over so I can finally paint full time"

Mike Thompson, Politician

"I was not interested in irony; I wanted to emphasize the primacy of the idea in making art"

Sol LeWitt, Artist

"The idea is to bring art to people who might never really interact with it. It's for all citizens, and it's about making the city more interesting and more visually significant"

Susan Davis, Politician

"The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance"

Sol LeWitt, Artist

"The narrative of serial art works more like music than like literature"

Sol LeWitt, Artist

"Just as the development of earth art and installation art stemmed from the idea of taking art out of the galleries, the basis of my involvement with public art is a continuation of wall drawings"

Sol LeWitt, Artist

"I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position"

Marcel Duchamp, Artist

"Criticism really used to hurt me. Most of these critics are usually frustrated artists, and they criticise other people's art because they can't do it themselves. It's a really disgusting job. They must feel horrible inside"

Rosanna Arquette, Actress

"It's always been performance art, but now it's on a different level"

Mark Roberts, Actor

"There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing"

Clarence Day, Author

"To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry"

Laura Riding, Poet

"Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship"

Laura Riding, Poet

"We're actually doing something scripted that's totally, you know, we kind of know what's going on, however, we're having to live life and death as the art"

Josh Holloway, Actor

"There is no work of art that has ever been made that is absolutely truthful about life"

Richard Foreman, Playwright

"Art is the triumph over chaos"

John Cheever, Writer

"Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own"

Peter Wright, Celebrity

"If I didn't choose art, I would have become an astronomer"

Peter Max, Artist

"Allan had come down wanting to do some sort of crucial music and I'd been involved in so-called Art Music and wanted to explore other areas - we were approaching it in some quite tongue-in-cheek ways and we had a lot of fun - we spent more time laughing than playing music"

Jamie Muir

"The establishment in Britain is certainly against the arts and against education. If something doesn't make a profit, it's invalid, and art doesn't make a profit in that sense"

Peter Maxwell Davies, Composer

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