ART QUOTES XIV
quotations about art
The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist's imaginative life there is purpose. There is determination to give the tale, the song, the painting, form -- to make it true and real to the theme, not to life.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"A Note on Realism", The Literary Review, Oct. 25, 1924
The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
letter to his son John, 1927
Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Decay of Lying", The Works of Oscar Wilde
The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for "art" that leaves him unmoved--if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
It seems to me that the arts are rather flourishing. There's an awful lot of bad art about because of this, but that's true of every great era. I'm sure there was a lot dreadful art in the Renaissance that we fortunately don't see today.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Atlantic, Oct. 15, 1997
Bullfighting can be an art
Boxing can be an art
Loving can be an art
Opening a can of sardines can be an art
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
New York Quarterly, 1985
Art is like politics. Any theory carried too far ends in sterility, and freshness is only gained by following some other line.
AMY LOWELL
Tendencies in Modern American Poetry
Perhaps there is no other way of reaching some understanding of being than through art? Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope. To say this is not to mystify the process of writing but to make an image out of the intense inner concentration the writer must have to cross the chasms of the aleatory and make them the word's own, as an explorer plants a flag.
NADINE GORDIMER
Nobel Lecture, Dec. 7, 1991
Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is Art?
It's frightening for one artist to see another one, any other one turn away from art.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Dhalgren
Art is but a mirror, which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully only while unsullied.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Making art is dealing with people on your own terms. The ideal way of using people is using them like clay, but that being out of the question, except for lunatics and leaders, art is a good alternative.
LUCAS SAMARAS
"Another Autointerview", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings
The artist's path sometimes is slippery as well. I just have to stay on it.
KRISHNA MATHIAS
"With preparation, making art is inevitable", Press of Atlantic City, March 8, 2016
Computers creating art is an upsetting concept mostly because of what it means about humans.
JASON LEE MILLER
"Automated Content Will Unmake Existence"
If they don't know what you're doin'
Babe it must be art.
U2
"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me"
If you are really creatively engaged with the thing we call ART, it is a 24/7 preoccupation. It can and does seep into all areas of your life.
JAMES GUPPY
"Judging art is a classic business", Echo Netdaily, March 16, 2016
It's not a bad thing for a man to have to live his life--and we nearly all manage to dodge it. Our first round with the Sphinx may strike something out of us--a book or a picture or a symphony; and we're amazed at our feat, and go on letting that first work breed others, as some animal forms reproduce each other without renewed fertilization. So there we are, committed to our first guess at the riddle; and our works look as like as successive impressions of the same plate, each with the lines a little fainter; whereas they ought to be--if we touch earth between times--as different from each other as those other creatures--jellyfish, aren't they, of a kind?--where successive generations produce new forms, and it takes a zoologist to see the hidden likeness.
EDITH WHARTON
"The Legend", Tales of Men and Ghosts
Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Art is the signature of man.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Everlasting Man