Quotes About Art

Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.

I strove with none for none were worth my strife. Nature I loved and next to nature, Art. I warmed both hands before the fire of life; it sinks, and I am ready to depart. - Walter Savage Landor 1776-1864

What skilful limner e'er would choose To paint the rainbow's varying hues, Unless to mortal it were given To dip his brush in dyes of heaven?

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.

I burned incense, swept the earth, and waited for a poem to come... Then I laughed, and climbed the mountain, leaning on my staff. How I'd love to be a master of the blue sky's art: see how many sprigs of snow-white clouds he's brushed in so far today

The designer George Lois, who claims some of his best ideas have come while meandering through the Metropolitan Museum, says, "Museums are the custodians of epiphanies.")

Songs were the place he took his loss and turned it into something else. Which may not have been the same as grieving, but it was something.

Never judge a work of art by its defects.

The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.

The love of gain never made a Painter; but it has marred many.

If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another as in his own.

Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject.... It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause.

Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.

The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.

lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to "walk about" into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.

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.

The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.

Empty canvas. In appearance - really empty, silent, indifferent. Stunned, almost. In effect - full of tensions, with thousand subdued voices, heavy with expectations. A little frightened because it may be violated

The artist must be blind to distinction between 'recognized' or 'unrecognized' conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age.

Art becomes so specialized as to be comprehensible only to artists, and they complain bitterly of public indifference to their work. Competition arises. The wild battle for success becomes more and more material. Small groups who have fought their way to the top of the chaotic world of art and picture-making entrench themselves in the territory they have won. The public, left far behind, looks on bewildered, loses interest and turns away.

The impact of the acute angle of a triangle on a circle is actually as overwhelming in effect as the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo.

A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in motion.