ART QUOTES XII
quotations about art
Art still has truth. Take refuge there.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Memorial Verses
Men are momentary but art is forever.
MAUREEN CORRIGAN
"Men Are Momentary, But Art Is Forever In 'Innocents And Others'", NPR, March 15, 2016
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
In every work of art, the artist himself is present.
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
Levels
For the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Dagger with Wings
Use your sensitive superpowers to create beauty. In a world where rudeness rules it is your art that inspires humanity to tap into kindness and silence.
ESTHER DE CHARON DE SAINT GERMAIN
"Why Art Is Important for Highly Sensitive Persons", Huffington Post, March 15, 2016
There's no art where there's no fee.
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
The only original part in a work of art is the infusion of the artist's own character, if he has one.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.
YANN MARTEL
Life of Pi
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
There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
I love my work. To paint, to write, to create and then start all over again is bliss. Viewing and celebrating creations by others artists is equally as thrilling. While it may be true that "there is nothing new under the sun," that we only see variations of what came before, I am continuously amazed that there is always something that feels brand new.
PATRICE DRAGO
"Gallery: The variety of art is exciting", Capital Gazette, March 6, 2016
How do you turn catastrophe into art? Nowadays the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? We'll have a play on the London stage within a year. A President is assissinated? You can have the book or the film or the filmed book or booked film. War? Send in the novelists. A series of gruesome murders? Listen for the tramp of the poets. We have to understand it, of course, this catastrophe; to understand it, we have to imagine it, so we need the imaginative arts. But we also need to justify it and forgive it, this catastrophe, however minimally. Why did it happen, this mad act of Nature, this crazed human moment? Well, at least it produced art. Perhaps, in the end, that's what catastrophe is for.
JULIAN BARNES
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination
No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society
Artists need to be realistic as to why they create and whom they are painting for. The one caveat is that you must respect what you do. Potboilers, painted solely for the money, will only get you so far and then the truth will seep out and ... well, it's not a pretty sight.
JAMES GUPPY
"Judging art is a classic business", Echo Netdaily, March 16, 2016
I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
The Economist, Sep. 15, 2010
Art is a jealous mistress.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Conduct of Life
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
We who are in the arts are at the risk of being in a popularity contest rather than a profession. If that fact causes you despair ... pick another profession.
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
Letters to a Young Artist