Art Quotes

That kind of pursuit is not beneficial to mankind: art for self aggrandizement at the cost of love.

~ Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Your art is so abstract that I can only see it through my mind’s eye and touch it through my heart.

~ Debasish Mridha

I've found that people reveal nothing of their true selves except within their art and their sin. ~ Dacey Sinnett, 'ROAM

~ Dez Schwartz

When she started with the first empty canvas, she didn’t know what she was going to paint, she just let her paint brushes glide and they religiously followed the trajectory of her angst; the choice of colours and the strokes, they were all a reflection of what was going through her mind. The reds were the embers within her that refused to die. The blues were the rare instances when she was spent by her grief. The blacks were her moments of absolute weakness, the colour of the bottomless pit within her that she had plunged into, falling through and through. The brush strokes moved around blank canvases like snakes with fangs of elixir that filled her scars with a deluge of hope and a gale of faith in herself. The colours spoke to her in whispers, narrating their own tale while she poured out hers to them. They allowed her to channel her life through them. They listened. They cared. They laughed. They cried. They reassured her that there was life waiting ahead, staring at her past, urging her forward with eager arms. And Preeti rushed into them with her brush in hand that rose along with her and fell along with her.

~ Faraaz Kazi

One is reminded in this connection of a story concerning Kobori-Enshiu. Enshiu was complimented by his disciples on the admirable taste he had displayed in the choice of his [art] collection. Said they, Each piece is such that no one could help admiring. It shows that you had better taste than had Rikiu, for his collection could only be appreciated by one beholder in a thousand. Sorrowfully Enshiu replied: This only proves how commonplace I am. The great Rikiu dared to love only those objects which personally appealed to him, whereas I unconsciously cater to the taste of the majority. Verily, Rikiu was one in a thousand among tea-masters.

~ Kakuzō Okakura

Some thoughts you underestimate but may be capable of energizing the world. Never delay to put your thoughts into words.

~ Bikash Bhandari

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

~ Maya Angelou

Artists, as a rule, understand nothing about business, or, for some reason or other, they aren’t allowed to understand anything about it.

~ Robert Walser

I create beautiful art, so I can look back on the life my body fell short of in such a way that it brings me peace.

~ Nikki Rowe

Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for art's sake: it exists for people's sake.

~ Julian Barnes

Behind every creative act is a statement of love. Every artistic creation is a statement of gratitude.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Any person whom seeks to live a historical existence must devote their efforts to learning about the world, care about people and nature, and seek to express their thoughts in the artistic methodology most appropriate to their particular talent. A person cannot fake self-awareness or imitate an artistic nature. A person must honestly earn a heightened level of conscious awareness.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one's senses play, drank full at the primitive mother's breast—which brought great bliss but was no protection against death; then one lived like a mushroom in the forest, colorful today and rotten tomorrow. Or else one put up a defense, imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life—then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process and lost one's freedom, scope, lust for life...Ach, life made sense only if one achieved both, only if it was not split by this brittle alternative! To create, without sacrificing one's senses for it. To live, without renouncing the mobility of creating. Was that impossible?

~ Hermann Hesse

In each painting, I think, it’s as if  God were giving up on finishing the world.

~ Yves Bonnefoy

Great artists need great clients.

~ I.m. Pei

I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity.

~ I.m. Pei

The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us.

~ Oscar Wilde

linear brains can't curve a thought.

~ Douglas M Laurent

The contemporary art world is what Tom Wolfe would call a statusphere. It's structured around nebulous and often contradictory hierarchies of fame, credibility, imagined historical importance, institutional affliction, perceived intelligence, wealth, and attribution such as the size of one's art collection.

~ Sarah Thornton

Generations cometh and generations passeth, but the earth abideth forever. While successive generations live and die, and all things change, man can never rest until death claims us. I choose to use my time alone to contemplate human existence, probe the human condition, and trace what it means to be one man in our modern world. There can be no profit from my labor, no lasting yield realized from this laborious and painful sojourn. We will leave everything behind. The earth shall dissolve all of our acquisitions and obliterate all traces of our petty affections. Passage of time shall alter, not annihilate the products of any artistic labors. The substance of our artistic enterprises shall continue forward in a renewed and redefined state.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

It is by continuing to put out good work that the artist best shows his gratitude.

~ Criss Jami

All forms of art are parallel expressions. Writing is not unlike painting or other artistic endeavors. Each artistic endeavor is an expression of the mystery of the world. The job of the artist is to deepen that mystery, express reverence for the mystery of life, and explore the enigmatic aspects of human nature.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Creating art is paradoxical because an artist seeks to express truth by penetrating and destroying illusions. Art is always the outpouring of a mind striving to achieve the impossible reconciliation of all the fragmented shards that make people human: frivolous amusements, idle moments, feelings of tenderness and pain, stored memories, future expectations, and unquenchable thirst to experience love and witness beauty.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

An invisible, yet active current of mental energy, underscores any book as well as any other form of artistic creation. A creative burst of psychological energy ignites any creative project. The emotional energy that underlies the artistic work propels it forward endowing it with articulation, texture, rhythm, and movement. When the expressive energy of the artist flags, the work comes to a stopping point and it takes on its final composition.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

However, an artist is limited only by his own skill and imagination. He’s in total control of his art. Whereas nature is the artist here, and I merely try to interpret and manage her design.

~ Crit Kincaid

She puts away four small plastic cups of red wine and then stares at a painting of a topless girl with a large silver sword for a half hour and then she begins to think: You call this art? This isn’t art! This is a joke! All of you are a joke! Fuck you and fuck Jeff Koons and the rest of those ‘80s art-star wannabes. Where’s the art that makes people weep? Where’s the art that makes people want to go to church? None of this is the least bit interesting. All of this stuff, all of this is so self-aware. It’s for ironic art snobs. I want something brilliant. I want something stunning. I want something that makes me look in wonder…

~ Joe Meno

No one cares about the artist Kafka, who troubles us with his puzzling aesthetic, because we'd rather have Kafka as the fusion of experience and work, the Kafka who had a difficult relationship with his father and didn't know how to deal with women.

~ Milan Kundera

I was not out to paint beautiful pictures, even painting good pictures was not important to me. I wanted only to help the truth burst forth.

~ Alice Miller

He printed business cards celebrating his shift. They read, 'Ars gratia pecuniae.' Translated, it meant, 'Art for money's sake.

~ Kliph Nesteroff

And someday,when the partiesdon’t dazzle you anymore,and when the alcohol failsto amuse your senses,come to me.We’ll lie on the grass,stare at the stars,and talk about Life.Maybe I will become the Momentyou rediscover yourself again.

~ Meraaqi

Art exists not inside the piece itself, but inside the mind of the viewer.

~ Noah Hawley

The forger was too exacting, too superficial. Only the real artist has the false beginning.

~ Dominic Smith

Life imitates art, but clumsily, copying its movements when it thinks it isn't looking.

~ Neil Gaiman

Each of our five senses contains an art.

~ Lawrence Durrell

Have you ever taken a good look at a public garbage can in Paris, a paving stone in Rio de Janeiro, or a doorway in Dublin? Trust me -- the man or woman responsible for making those utilitarian objects was creating art.

~ Shawn Coyne

My mind is my canvas, my thoughts are my color and paintbrush.

~ Debasish Mridha

And if, as all philosophers on the subject have noted, art is a human activity that relies on the senses to reach the soul, did it not also stand to reason that dogs -- at least dogs of Mr. Bones' caliber -- would have it in them to feel a similar aesthetic impulse? Would they not, in other words, be able to appreciate art? As far as Willy knew, no one had ever thought of this before. Did that make him the first man in recorded history to believe such a thing was possible? No matter. It was an idea whose time had come. If dogs were beyond the pull of oil paintings and string quartets, who was to say they wouldn't respond to an art based on the sense of smell? Why not an olfactory art? Why not an art for dogs that dealt with the world as dogs knew it?

~ Paul Auster

I bring the girl to a museum, try to show her a little culture, and she turns a Chihuly into a giant phallus.

~ Nicki Elson

Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch?

~ Hugo Ball

Why should a real chair be better than an imaginary elephant?

~ Virginia Woolf