Quotes about art

"Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature."

Rand, Ayn on art   

"Art is too serious to be taken seriously."

Reinhardt, Ad on art   

"He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machine. [On Leonardo Da Vinci]"

Renoir, Pierre Auguste on art   

"There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle."

Rich, Adrienne on art   

"Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth."

Riding, Laura on art   

"Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further."

Rilke, Rainer Maria on art   

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.]"

Rodin, Auguste on art   

"What better way to prove that you understand a subject than to make money out of it?"

Rosenberg, Harold on art   

"Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause --it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out."

Rosenberg, Harold on art   

"Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight."

Rumi, Jalal-Uddin on art   

"Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith."

Rushdie, Salman on art   

"What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry."

Ruskin, John on art   

"I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."

Ruskin, John on art   

"No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change."

Ruskin, John on art   

"Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth."

Sand, George on art   

"The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal."

Santayana, George on art   

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"The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite."

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von on art   

"As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys."

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von on art   

"Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm."

Schumann, Robert on art   

"The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart."

Schumann, Robert on art   

"All art is an imitation of nature."

Seneca on art   

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"The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]"

Shakespeare, William on art
9 fans of this quote   

"O, had I but followed the arts!"

Shakespeare, William on art   

"Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort."

Shaw, George Bernard on art   

"Art is the signature of civilizations."

Sills, Beverly on art   

"The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses."

Smith, Logan Pearsall on art   

"Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words."

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander on art   

"Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals."

Sontag, Susan on art   

"The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it."

Stein, Gertrude on art   

"What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real."

Tagore, Rabindranath on art
4 fans of this quote   

"Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised."

Thurber, James on art   

"To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it."

Tolstoy, Count Leo on art   

"A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment."

Trilling, Lionel on art   

"All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf."

Trocchi, Alexander on art   

"If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant."

Trotsky, Leon on art   

"If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!"

Truman, Harry S on art   

"Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art."

Tynan, Kenneth on art   

"Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding."

Tzara, Tristan on art   

"Labor is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art."

Unknown, Source on art   

"Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art."

Unknown, Source on art