Quotes About Art

Drawing is the most direct and personal kind of graphic expression. Unlike painting, it doesn't forgive. You put down your black line, and there it is - as inevitable as death.

My manuscripts sleep, while I cannot, for I am covered with poultices.

So many people seem to prefer my silver-screenings of movie stars to the rest of my work. It must be the subject matter that attracts them, because my death and violence paintings are just as good.

Didacticism is the death of art.

Acceptance spells death to a writer.

Never be sincere - sincerity is the death of writing.

The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.

Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.

Between my head and my hand, there is always the face of death.

The only way to kill death is through photography.

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

Watching 'The Sound of Music' is like being beaten to death by a Hallmark card.

Art is a protest against death.

The absolute worst thing a person can say about your pictures is, '"That's nice." It's the kiss of death.

La gente non legge pensando all'arte: legge pensando alle persone. E le giudica per quello che sono. E come credi che giudicherà i personaggi del tuo racconto? A quali conclusioni credi che arriverà? Ci hai pensato?

They don't know about art. Maybe I don't know about art myself. Maybe none of our family does, not the way that you do. But that's my point. People don't read art—they read about people.

Da professore di letteratura fervidamente coscienzioso qual ero, ho sempre gradito finire l'ora con qualcosa di commovente che gli studenti potessero portare con sè dalla classe incontaminata, fuori, nel mondo corrotto di stuzzichini preconfezionati e pop star e droga.

Mishima. Rothko. Hemingway. Berryman. Koestler. Pavese. Kosinski. Arshile Gorky. Primo Levi. Hart Crane. Walter Benjamin. Peerless bunch. Nothing dishonorable signing on there.

By the time she was their age, she'd seen all the Kurosawas, all the Tarkovskys, all the Fellinis, all the Antonionis, all the Fassbinders, all the Wertmullers, all the Satyajit Rays, all the René Clairs, all the Wim Wenderses, all the Truffauts, the Godards, the Chabrols, the Resnaises, the Rohmers, the Renoirs, and all these kids have seen is Star Wars.

The motive for writing serious literature is to write serious literature. You want to rebel against society? I'll tell you how to do it - write well .

For nothing from my wit or will doth flow, Since all my words thy beauty doth endite, And love doth hold my hand, and makes me write.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. ALBERT EINSTEIN

Civilisation once looked to art as the means of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. Writing itself was invented in part to convey the sacred: permanent things deserved a permanent place, hence the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs. But a modern civilisation that no longer believes in permanent things, one that accepts no certain narrative of meaning, resorts to deconstruction, not construction.

The arts are the best Time Machine we have. C. S. Lewis