ART QUOTES VIII
quotations about art
Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth.
ANAIS NIN
The Journals of Anais Nin
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
TOM STOPPARD
"Artist Descending a Staircase"
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
THOMAS MERTON
No Man Is an Island
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
ANAIS NIN
attributed, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations
The function of the artist is to provide what life does not.
TOM ROBBINS
Another Roadside Attraction
All things that are living are expression and therefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, that is encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from my point of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs no handbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is.
MARSDEN HARTLEY
Adventures in Art
We few, we happy few. No, we lucky few! Artists, wake up. Be gratified when our art is not taken by museums to rot in their storage vaults, probably never to be seen again. We should appreciate that we can and will survive without museums and the finely crafted words of those who will never know what it's like to create. Pick up some sand and run it through your fingers. Consider the long span of geological history and realize that our civilization won't last. All paintings and sculpture, including the great works of art, will be treated equally by time -- reduced to ashes and dust. This recognition puts me in my place but it is also a relief. Accepting mortality gives me the freedom to work without restraint, boundary or expectation.
BEN PERRONE
"Freedom to create art is a wonderful thing", Buffalo News, March 22, 2016
An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.
AD REINHARDT
"Twelve Rules for a New Academy", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings
Creating our own art is scary. We sensitive peeps have set some pretty high standards for ourself. We fear we are not good enough at it. How can we get the multitude of ideas in our head on a sheet of paper? All we can see is how flawed it will be.
ESTHER DE CHARON DE SAINT GERMAIN
"Why Art Is Important for Highly Sensitive Persons", Huffington Post, March 15, 2016
Beauty today can have no other measure except the depth to which a work resolves contradictions. A work must cut through the contradictions and overcome them, not by covering them up, but by pursuing them.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
attributed, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique
It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
There was a lot of time between early artists doing cave painting and the Sistine Chapel and more time until the first art museum was created. During this time and until the development of the press, not a lot was written about art, yet artists persevered and they were probably more appreciated.
BEN PERRONE
"Freedom to create art is a wonderful thing", Buffalo News, March 22, 2016
Art functions pyramidally: all new achievements are based on the utilization of everything that has been accumulated below, at the foundations of the pyramid. Revolutions do not occur here; this field, more than any other, is governed by evolution. And we must know what has been done before us in the field of verbal art. This does not mean that you must follow in trodden paths: you must contribute something of your own. A work of art is of value only when it is original, both in content and in form. But in order to leap upward, it is necessary to take off from the ground. It is essential that there be a ground.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Psychology of Creative Work
Only lifeless mechanisms move along faultlessly straight lines and compass circles. In art the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy: that which is canonized quickly dies of obesity, of entropy.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The New Russian Prose
For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.
TONI MORRISON
interview with Don Swaim, 1987
The good thing about being an artist, is it's a legitimate way of looking at things cross-eyed.
JOHN CHAMBERLAIN
"Unshackled, Unconventional Sculptor", New York Times, Jun. 13, 1993
This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?
HONORE DE BALZAC
Lost Illusions
Life is art's rival and vice versa.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
Tarr