1. Quotations by Subject
Quotations by Subject: Art
(Related Subjects: Writing, Poetry, Music, Criticism)
Showing quotations 1 to 30 of 80 quotations in our collections
[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
Al Capp (1909 - 1979)
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the
pattern.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947), Dialogues (1954)
Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary
Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the
world he lives in.
Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925)
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Andre Gide (1869 - 1951)
I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term -- meaning
that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production
of a good watercolor or etching -- there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer
ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)
Let each man exercise the art he knows.
Aristophanes (450 BC - 388 BC), Wasps, 422 B.C.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
Art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to
disturb, in a constant search for truth.
Barbra Streisand (1942 - )
I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.
Ben Shahn (1898 - 1969)
So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
Brenda Ueland
I suppose no matter what I'm drawing, there will always be some sort of question in my mind
about it. A work of art (even cartoon art)is never really finished; it is abandoned.

2. Brooke McEldowney, Pibgorn commentary, 03-31-05
I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all
my doubts.
Charles Rosin, Northern Exposure, Aurora Borealis, 1990
Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)
Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither
did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of
democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.
David Cronenberg, Rocketboom, 07-19-06
The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.
David Cronenberg, Rocketboom, 07-19-06
I don't understand why people think everything has to have meaning. While painting the Mona
Lisa did Leonardo Da Vinci intend for it to have greater meaning than a work of art that he
made?
Devin J. Monroe (1983 - )
If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The
cat...you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas,
ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Cicely, 1992
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Duke Ellington (1899 - 1974)
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal
order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's
sake.
E. M. Forster (1879 - 1970)
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of
doing what has been done before.
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its
heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist
within the oppressors?
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

3. Edmond de Goncourt (1822 - 1896)
It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts
one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you
at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start
again.
Elizabeth Aston, The True Darcy Spirit, 2006
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899 - 1973)
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Eugene Delacroix (1798 - 1863)
I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the
artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely
this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
Federico Fellini (1920 - 1993)
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993)
I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint
whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.
Frida Kahlo (1907 - 1954)
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

4. If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be
silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh
Cannot, Means, Within
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Pablo Picasso
Life, Daily, Off
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
James Whistler
Vision, Artist, Labor
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton
Time, Find, Same
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
Oscar Wilde
Work, Unique, Result
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Words, Worth, Picture
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle
Aim, Appearance, Inward
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams
Yourself, Mistakes, Creativity
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
Twyla Tharp

5. Home, Without, Leaving
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Great, Beautiful, Gratitude
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
Henry Miller
Alone, Loneliness, Artist
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
Albert Camus
Work, Guilty, Conscience
Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Artist, Amateur
You don't take a photograph, you make it.
Ansel Adams
Photograph
A picture is a poem without words.
Horace
Without, Words, Picture
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
Henry David Thoreau
Canvas
Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.
Salvador Dali
Good, Bad, Honesty
A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.
HedyLamarr
Good, Friend, Company

6. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde
Great, Ever, Did
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Heart, Anything, Hand
An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
Charles Horton Cooley
Success, Cannot, Artist
Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.
Edgar Degas
Difficult, Easy, Painting
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
Jonathan Swift
Others, Vision, Seeing
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
Albert Einstein
True, Creative, Artist
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words
for.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Words, Found, Color
Share with your Friends
Share
Everyone likes a good quote - don't forget to share.
Popular Authors
Abraham Lincoln
Albert Einstein
Buddha

7. C. S. Lewis
Dalai Lama
Eleanor Roosevelt
Helen Keller
John F. Kennedy
Khalil Gibran
Marilyn Monroe
Mark Twain
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Maya Angelou
Mother Teresa
Oscar Wilde
Ronald Reagan
Socrates
Thomas Jefferson
William Shakespeare
Winston Churchill
More authors
GridList
o Prev
o 1
o 2
o 3
o 4
o ..
o 40
o Next
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_art.html#Jkfl5Jt5dU2tEQel.99

8. Get quotes daily
Sign in with Facebook
Sign in
options
Quotes About Art
Quotes tagged as "art" (showing 1-30 of 2,004)
“Everything you can imagine is real.”
― Pablo Picasso
tags: art, imagination, inspirational, life
13,652 people liked it
like
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing
nothing.”
― George Bernard Shaw
tags: art, life
4,694 people liked it
like

9. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
― Pablo Picasso
tags: art
3,736 people liked it
like
“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except
where exposed by the light.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
tags: art, inspirational
3,062 people liked it
like
“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
tags: art, poetry
3,048 people liked it
like

10. “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”
― Pablo Picasso
tags: art, truth
2,860 people liked it
like
“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: art, chaos
2,394 people liked it
like
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands
at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein
tags: art, philosophy, science
2,296 people liked it
like

11. “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”
― Émile Zola
tags: art, calling, life
2,050 people liked it
like
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
tags: art
1,923 people liked it
like
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much
stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me.
Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only
believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No
more walls.”
― Anaïs Nin
tags: anais-nin, art
1,807 people liked it
like

12. “It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs
much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
― Vincent van Gogh
tags: art, inspiration, love, strength
1,806 people liked it
like
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
― Pablo Picasso
tags: art
1,566 people liked it
like
“I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. Beauty and femininity are ageless and
can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured.
Not real glamour; it's based on femininity.”
― Marilyn Monroe
tags: art, beauty, glamour, sexuality
1,524 people liked it
like

13. “Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
― Woody Allen
tags: art, humor, life
1,492 people liked it
like
“I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
― Vincent van Gogh
tags: art, dreams, inspiration, painting
1,169 people liked it
like
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
― Edgar Degas
tags: art
1,102 people liked it
like

14. “If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is
go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of
making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul
grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend,
even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have
created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
tags: art, arts-and-humanities, creative-process, writing
1,087 people liked it
like
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you
simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine
times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
tags: art, books
1,079 people liked it
like
“We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”
― Bob Ross
tags: art, inspirational

15. 1,032 people liked it
like
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order
that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human
soul.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
tags: art, beauty, music, wonder
1,010 people liked it
like
“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the
purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.”
― Rick Riordan
tags: art, artist, painting, poem, poet, poetry
943 people liked it
like
“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.”
― Oscar Wilde
tags: art

16. 934 people liked it
like
“Creativity takes courage. ”
― Henri Matisse
tags: art, creativity
819 people liked it
like
“any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us
weep.”
― Clive Barker, Days of Magic, Nights of War
tags: art, inspirational, love, redemption, sadness
802 people liked it
like
“Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art
imitates life.”
― Oscar Wilde
tags: art, life, paradox

17. 793 people liked it
like
“Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if
you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb
does. Now, uh... now you tell me what you know.”
― Groucho Marx
tags: art, humor
781 people liked it
like
“I want to meet a guy named Art. I'd take him to a museum, hang him on the wall, criticize him, and
leave.”
― Jarod Kintz, I Want
tags: art, bizarre, criticize, funny, humor, meet, museum, strange, surreal
770 people liked it
like
“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone”
― Pablo Picasso