Quotes About Meaning

The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.

Wanting to become stronger than everybody else has no meaning.

I think it's important to make art that is not that easily absorbable, that is a challenge to the authorities.

Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.

Art solves nothing, either for the artist himself or for those who receive his art.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

When works of art are presented like rare butterflies on the walls, they're decontextualized. We admire their beauty, and I have nothing against that, per se. But there is more to art than that.

The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

Art still has truth. Take refuge there.

But I do believe architecture, and all art, should be content-driven. It should have something to say beyond the sensational.

Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art.

The arts are not a way to make a living.

Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.

It doesn't matter the genre or type of art, if it's authentic there's an apparent beauty to it and as an artist, that's very inspiring.

As a painter I shall never signify anything of importance. I feel it absolutely.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Art is one of the dirtiest words in our language; it's mucked up with all kinds of meanings. There's the art of plumbing; there's the art of almost anything that you can say.

Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

Too much art was no art at all. Like candy instead of bread!

Art does not imitate, but interpret.

This idea of art for art's sake is a hoax.

A picture might be worth a thousand words but a good sentence is worth a thousand windows