ART QUOTES III

quotations about art

Art quote

True art required the right amount of uncertainty, just as gourmet cooking needed the proper spices and flavors.

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

The Butlerian Jihad

Tags: Brian Herbert, cooking


The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.

STEFAN ZWEIG

prelude, Paul Verlaine

Tags: Stefan Zweig


Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.

TONI MORRISON

Sula

Tags: Toni Morrison, artists


If you are not passionate in life, you can't be passionate in art.

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

Walk Through Walls: A Memoir

Tags: Marina Abramovic


Art was as much in the activity as in the results. Works of art were not just the finished product, but the thought, the action, the process that created them.

JEAN M. AUEL

The Mammoth Hunters

Tags: Jean M. Auel


I do get students that initially think they're never going to be that good an artist. I refuse to accept that. There's trained and untrained. It's OK for you to be working on your own level -- as long as you're working.

ROBERT LEMMING

"Art Is Communication: Artist turned teacher encourages conversation", Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, March 11, 2016


We live in a world full of urgent problems: climate change, terrorism and poverty, to name but three. We won't resolve them with brawn; they are obstacles we can only overcome by using our brains--when we are thinking like artists and not behaving like animals.

WILL GOMPERTZ

Think Like an Artist: and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life


Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only "liked": it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.

C. S. LEWIS

On Stories and Other Essays in Literature

Tags: C. S. Lewis


Art as Magic is a forbidden and illegitimate pleasure, and ... what we are ashamed of wanting most are our wishful apprehensions. The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true. Apart, that is, from the artist.

ADAM PHILLIPS

On Balance

Tags: Adam Phillips


Art is memory's mise-en-scene.

LUIS BARRAGÁN

The Architecture of Luis Barragán


We are all artists. We just have to believe it.

WILL GOMPERTZ

Think Like an Artist: and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life


Art should have political, spiritual, and surprising elements. It should try to find new language of communicating in order to give awareness to the public. Then every society can use the layer it needs at the moment. If one is interested in the political, they can take that. If the next one needs spiritual, it can be found in the same work. So if you just did one level, for example only political, it's like an old newspaper, you read it today and tomorrow it's old news. The art dies. Art with this kind of complexity has many lives where many societies can take something different at different times. It can live for centuries, otherwise who cares?

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

"Marina Abramovic Makes Sundance Shut Up", Interview Magazine

Tags: Marina Abramovic


The job of mass entertainment is to cajole, seduce and flatter consumers to let them know that what they thought was right is right, and that their tastes and their immediate gratification are of the utmost concern of the purveyor. The job of the artist, on the other hand, is to say, wait a second, to the contrary, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's reexamine it.

DAVIE MAMET

interview, Salon, 1997

Tags: David Mamet


Art is an organized response to what nature allows us to glimpse occasionally. Art sets out to transform the potential recognition into an unceasing one.

JOHN BERGER

The Sense of Sight

Tags: John Berger


Like most art students, I expect I'll find that there is no demand for what I've learned so I'll teach other students so that one day they can teach as well.

GUY BELLAMY

The Secret Lemonade Drinker

Tags: Guy Bellamy


One of the things pounded in to my head at the university level was that art is communication. So showing your art is not only good for your ego, but it's discovering you can be part of this conversation that has been going on as long as people have been painting in caves.

ROBERT LEMMING

"Art Is Communication: Artist turned teacher encourages conversation", Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, March 11, 2016


I have never found anywhere, in the domain of art, that you don't have to walk to. (There is quite an array of jets, buses and hacks which you can ride to Success; but that is a different destination.) It is a pretty wild country. There are, of course, roads. Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction -- you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Language of the Night

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


Take a quart of nature, boil it down to a pint, and the residue is art.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley, nature


When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears.

HENRY MILLER

Tropic of Cancer

Tags: Henry Miller, chaos


Art, even as poetry, was to become not an escape from the narrowness of lived reality, but the overflow of intensified life.

ANNA BALAKIAN

Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute

Tags: Anna Balakian