"Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane."

Adorno, Theodor W. on Arts and Artists
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"Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values."

Alvarez, A. on Arts and Artists
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"Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem."

Anderson, Lindsay on Arts and Artists
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"Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman."

Apollinaire, Guillaume on Arts and Artists
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"Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere."

Apollinaire, Guillaume on Arts and Artists
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"Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb."

Arp, Jean on Arts and Artists
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"The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone."

Baldwin, James on Arts and Artists
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"Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future."

Ballard, J. G. on Arts and Artists
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"The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious."

Bangs, Lester on Arts and Artists
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"Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity."

Barenboim, Daniel on Arts and Artists
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"The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure"

Baryshnikov, Mikhail on Arts and Artists
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"Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning."

Barzun, Jacques on Arts and Artists
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"A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else."

Baudelaire, Charles on Arts and Artists
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"The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute."

Baudelaire, Charles on Arts and Artists
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"As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth."

Bayley, Stephen on Arts and Artists
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"In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men."

Beauvoir, Simone De on Arts and Artists
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"I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere."

Beck on Arts and Artists
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"Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?"

Beethoven, Ludwig Van on Arts and Artists
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"No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist."

Beethoven, Ludwig Van on Arts and Artists
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"As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near."

Bellow, Saul on Arts and Artists
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"Any artist should be grateful for a na?ve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately."

Bellow, Saul on Arts and Artists
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"The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion."

Benjamin, Walter on Arts and Artists
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"I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honor."

Berger, John on Arts and Artists
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"What is art but a way of seeing?"

Berger, Thomas on Arts and Artists
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"The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge."

Berle, Adolf on Arts and Artists
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"The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business."

Berryman, John on Arts and Artists
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"The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person."

Blackie, Professor on Arts and Artists
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"The great artist is a slave to his ideals."

Bovee, Christian Nevell on Arts and Artists
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"Art is the only thing that can go on mattering, once it has stopped hurting."

Bowen, Elizabeth on Arts and Artists
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"The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible."

Brancusi, Constantin on Arts and Artists
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"The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal."

Breton, Andre on Arts and Artists
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"What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?"

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett on Arts and Artists
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"Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well."

Buckingham, Duke of on Arts and Artists
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"In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important."

Bunuel, Luis on Arts and Artists
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"Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it."

Burgess, Anthony on Arts and Artists
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"Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact."

Burroughs, William S. on Arts and Artists
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"The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it."

Butler, Samuel on Arts and Artists
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"To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art."

Camus, Albert on Arts and Artists
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"It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it --just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore."

Camus, Albert on Arts and Artists
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"Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."

Capp, Al on Arts and Artists
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