Quotes About Art

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that others are behind the time.

Doodling is the brooding of the hand.

I am a choreographer. A choreographer is a poet. I do not create. God creates. I assemble, and I will steal from everywhere to do it.

Now I really make the little idea from clay, and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control, almost like God creating something.

It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives . . . most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity . . . when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.

I saw an angel in the block of marble and I just chiseled 'til I set him free.

Critics are the men who have failed in literature and art.

I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one.

To many people dramatic criticism must seem like an attempt to tattoo soap bubbles.

The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for the training of a mere beginner.

Nothing unites the English like war. Nothing divides them like Picasso.

What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

O lovely Sisters! is it true That they are all inspired by you, And write by inward magic charm'd, And high enthusiasm warm'd?

I am married to Beatrice Salkeld, a painter. We have no children, except me.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.

Now and then one sees a face which has kept its smile pure and undefiled. Such a smile transfigures; such a smile, if the artful but know it, is the greatest weapon a face can have.

It takes immense genius to represent, simply and sincerely, what we see in front of us.

The poet's scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. The Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.

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

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions, and composed our masterpieces. Never will the world know all it owes to them, nor all they have suffered to enrich us.