Quotes About Art

a gunpowder factory exploded at Delft in the 1600s, that the painter had been so haunted and obsessed by the destruction of his city that he painted it over and over.

Blacks and blues, that's the ticket, blacks and blues.

The line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn't matter if it's been through the Xerox a hundred times. [...] You know what Picasso says. 'Bad artists copy, good artists steal.' Still with real greatness, there's a jolt at the end of the wire. It doesn't matter how often you grab hold of the line, or how many people have grabbed hold of it before you. It's the same line. Fallen from a higher life. It still carries some of the same shock.

It's crazy," she'd said, "but I'd be perfectly happy if I could sit looking at the same half dozen paintings for the rest of my life. I can't think of a better way to go insane.

It's crazy," she'd said, "but I'd be perfectly happy if I could sit looking at the same half dozen paintings for the rest of my life. I can't think of a better

La belleza altera la textura de la realidad.

Todos los grandes cuadros son en realidad autorretratos.

The line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn't matter if it's been through the Xerox machine a hundred times. [...] You know what Picasso says. 'Bad artists copy, good artists steal.' Still with real greatness, there's a jolt at the end of the wire. It doesn't matter how often you grab hold of the line, or how many people have grabbed hold of it before you. It's the same line. Fallen from a higher life. It still carries some of the same shock.

the only light came from a lamp which threw a sharp white circle on melted candles, computer cables, empty beer bottles and butane cans, oil pastels boxed and loose, many catalogues raisonnés, books in German and English including Nabokov's Despair

And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought for them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

between 'reality' on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there's a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.

there's a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.

every great painting is really a self-portrait

For that you should read the original. In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian.

Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair. But the painting has also taught me that we can speak to each other across time.

Si un cuadro te llega de verdad al corazón y cambia tu forma de mirar, de pensar, de sentir, no piensas: «Oh, me encanta este cuadro porque es universal» o «Me encanta este cuadro porque habla a toda la humanidad». Esa no es la razón por la que alguien ama una obra de arte. Es un susurro secreto desde un callejón: «Psss. Eh, chico. Sí, tú».

Beauty is terror

Se uma pintura realmente se nos entranha no coração e muda a maneira como vemos e pensamos e sentimos, não dizemos para connosco: Oh, adoro esta pintura porque é universal. Adoro esta pintura porque diz algo a toda a humanidade. Não é essa a razão por que quem quer que seja adora uma peça de arte.

Shortly before she left for New York, she received an unwelcome present from South Carolina—a painting depicting Lincoln "with a rope around his neck, his feet chained and his body adorned with tar and feathers.

People don't mind immoral messages. They don't mind art which says that murder is good, cruelty is good, sex for sex's sake is good. They like it, provided the message is wrapped up a little. And they like messages saying that murder is bad, cruelty is bad, and love is love is love is love. What they can't stand is to be told it all doesn't matter, they can't stand formlessness.

Ich glaube, dass Literatur – ein Roman, eine Erzählung, sogar eine Zeile aus einem Gedicht – die Macht hat, Reiche zu zerstören. (Schritte im Schatten)

But the fact is, again and again in my lifetime, the vicious vituperations, the polemics, the dialectics, the sophistries of politics have become vapour and mist, while what remains is the literature and the art, which at the time might have been merely tolerated by the politicos.

That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.