Quotes About Art

Art-speech is the only truth.

Sunday night meant, in the dark, wintry, rainy Midlands ... anywhere where two creatures might stand and squeeze together and spoon.... Spooning was a fine art, whereas kissing and cuddling are calf-processes.

After all,' he said in a declamatory voice, `one gets all one wants out of Racine. Emotions that are ordered and given shape are more important than disorderly emotions. She watched him with wide, vague, veiled eyes. `Yes, I'm sure they are,' she said.

He hated you for what you said: that his tubified art is sentimental and self-important.

And out of a pattern of lies art weaves the truth.

Do you like singing? Miriam asked her. If it is good, she said. Paul, of course, coloured. You mean if it is high-class and trained? he said. I think a voice needs training before the singing is anything, she said. You might as well insist on having people's voices trained before you allowed them to talk, he replied. Really, people sing for their own pleasure, as a rule. And it may be for other people's discomfort.

Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.

The institutions of human society treat us as parts of a machine. They assign us ranks and place considerable pressure upon us to fulfill defined roles. We need something to help us restore our lost and distorted humanity. Each of us has feelings that have been suppressed and have built up inside. There is a voiceless cry resting in the depths of our souls, waiting for expression. Art gives the soul's feelings voice and form.

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent.

Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.

That's often the case, of course—that creation and madness begin to dance with each other.

If you want people to flock to art, lure them with pancakes.

It's as if the work on your canvas has a will of its own. When that happens, it can be quite exciting. But disturbing, too, when, as the painter, you are not in control of your painting.

When a painting I'm working on becomes my singular focus—when I am "in the zone," as I've heard people put it—a trancelike state will sometimes overtake me.

AFTER I DELIVERED VELVET BACK to the farmhouse that night, I entered the condo and walked over to my Minotauromachia. And as I stood before it, it was crystal clear to me that the terrible monster was doomed in the face of the powerful little girl.

I celebrate art that shakes complacency by the shoulders and shouts, 'Wake up!

That's often the case, of course—that creation and madness begin to dance with each other." "Like Van Gogh.

function of art? What is its value? Is it about form and composition? Uniqueness of vision? The relationship between the painter and the painting? The painting and the viewer?

My art comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.

Your very flesh shall be a great poem...

The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.