Quotes About Art

A thing of beauty is a joy forever Keats

Take John Constable's The Cornfield (1826; Fig. 4). A recent exhibition of this work held at the National Gallery in London showed how this revered image of the English countryside has been used on a range of items such as biscuit tins and calendars, as well as for posters and prints.

we must not forget the discovery of perspective in the Renaissance period in northern Europe

as well as in Italy

This relocation of the picture raises an important issue when looking at works of art – quite often they are no longer in their original location, and we see them as part of a historical sequence

presented by a gallery.

The second issue this picture raises is the idea of the patron – the painting has two titles: one describes the subject matter, the other refers to the family who commissioned it.

The close relationship between the patron and the painting might lead us to question what this image was for.

An abundance of gold leaf and rich colours enhance the jewel-like appearance of the altarpiece.

the patron must have been wealthy enough to afford these expensive materials – we know that paintings such as these were seen as symbols of wealth since in the contracts between artists and patrons there were often clauses stating how much gold and semi-precious pigments were to be used.

Here, as in most of art history, 'International' refers only to the West, and in this particular case to Europe since America was not really known about when this work was made.

identifying, categorizing, interpreting, describing, and thinking about works of art.

In this painting the artist has become more dominant than his subjects

Dali dreamed of Hitler as a white-skinned girl- impossibly pale, luminous and lifeless as the moon.

Breton considered suicide the truest art, though life seemed hardly worth the trouble to discard.

Her hand jerked, leaving an angry slash in the middle of the canvas. A headache drummed to life in the back of her skull. It's not going to happen today. She ignored the shiver that skipped down her spine. This is a normal day. I'm painting a normal composition. But it was too late. It was happening already. She squeezed her eyes shut against the images flooding her brain, but no resistance would help now. She couldn't escape.

She drew the main outline, keeping her fingers on the ferrule—the metal piece that clamped the bristles to the handle—and created a nose, mouth, and eyelids. For a moment, she wondered what color his eyes might be, then shoved aside the macabre thought. He had a strong, square jaw, his hair pushed back, looking sticky from the dirt that had been thrown directly onto his face.

Do you need an audience to create work, or does not having an audience liberate you and make you a truer artist?

That is the thing about films. They don't change. You change. The immutability of the film (or a book or a painting or a piece of music) is something to measure yourself against. That is one of the things a great work of art does. It stays there waiting for you to come back to it, and it shows you who you are now, each time a little different.

To be a writer is to embrace rejection as a way of life.

Think of a ballet dancer at the barre. Plie, eleve, battement tendu. She is practicing, because she knows that there is no difference between practice and art. The practice is the art.

To forget oneself-to lose oneself in the music, in the moment- that kind of absorption seems to be at the heart of every creative endeavor.

One of the most amazing things about mathematics is the people who do math aren't usually interested in application, because mathematics itself is truly a beautiful art form. It's structures and patterns, and that's what we love, and that's what we get off on.

You don't sound like a scientist, you sound like a poet." Rey smiled, "Can I be both?" But you'd rather be a poet." Who wouldn't?" he said.