Quotes About Art

She was one of the people who say, I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like. - Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson

But in the military sphere, just as in science, economics, art, or culture, change is not evenly distributed across space and time. Sometimes innovations cluster together to produce a major change in the way people live—or, in the case of the military, the way they die.

Okay, now, fair warning: If you're super-sensitive to words, skip this paragraph. But I'm telling you, this smell, this growing stink drifting down toward me, could only be described as that word that's created when F meets Art.

When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement.

My paintings are not meant to be tasted.

He who says collage says the irrational.

I confessed I knew nothing about art—she based her view on a saying of her mother's that anyone can respond to a work of art except the cultured philistine. "That's very kind of your mother!" I said.

My work?" she said. "You can see for yourself, patching up fragments. That is supposed to have been a vase. From Crete. I stick the past together.

In Florence I rebelled and told her that frankly I thought her Fra Angelico rather mawkish. Then I corrected myself and said "naive." She didn't deny it, on the contrary, she was delighted; it couldn't be naïve enough for her. What I enjoyed was campari!

Être attentif à une branche prise dans le vent du matin. Observer le mouvement de la brume et des nuages. Vivre les lieux. Respirer les parfums de la nature. Saisir l'instant. Puis s'enfermer dans son atelier. Et reproduire en un trait unique les nuances de la réalité. Travail solitaire. Souffle divin. Comme tous les artistes sur cette terre, changer le monde de façon invisible. Et cependant évidente…

Pour lui, le pinceau est un pendule entre ciel et terre, et l'art de la calligraphie la meilleure façon de se tenir en suspens entre le monde terrestre et celui des dieux.

Children, everybody, here's what to do during war: In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment.

When I speak of life and love as expanding with age, sex seems the least important thing. At any age we grow by the enlarging of consciousness, by learning a new language, or a new art or craft (gardening?) that implies a new way of looking at the universe. Love is one of the great enlargers of the person because it requires us to take in the stranger and to understand him, and to exercise restraint and tolerance as well as imagination to make the relationship work.

I know that I myself have felt that prickling of the scalp that Emily Dickinson tells us is the sign of recognition before a true poem.

Art must be nourished by faith, the faith of an equal.

What I long for with a deep ache inside me is sacred music. I long for the Fauré Requiem, for the Haydn "Mass in Time of War," for some pure celestial music that could lift me above myself, into that sphere where great art lives, beyond what man can be in himself, the intimation of the sacred—what cannot be dirtied or smudged by wickedness or by anger, which no threat can touch.

There is always some sleight of hand going on in writing autobiography. So much has to be left out, especially things that might hurt or dismay people. But in a novel one can say everything. The novel is often autobiography distilled and / or transcended.

Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.

Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. . . Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us all that we are more alike than we are unalike.

Poetry is music for the human voice. Until you actually speak it or someone speaks it, it has not come into its own.

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.

Living well is an art which can be developed.

Without the presence and energy of art in our lives, we are capable of engaging in heartless activities without remorse and cruelties with clear consciences.