Quotes About Art

For art is about desire, is it not, and never its consummation?

I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognized by burning. from A Poem is a Walk, Epoch 18 (Fall 1968): 114-19.

In your opinion, where do private and political life, personal history and History meet? You know the answer, Maya. You say it unhesitatingly - in art and literature.

drip and fling and pour color onto the glass. Then I push the paint around. You have to have some faith. If it looks like nothing, if you think you've destroyed what might have been a good painting, keep at it. If you've scraped all but a few streaks away, chances are those streaks will suggest something else. Don't give up. Don't be afraid of the mess.

THERE WAS A YOUNG MAN WHO HAD ARRIVED AT the Northeast Center angry and belligerent, as inclined to take a swing at you as not. He began showing up in Bill's studio and started to paint. Bill watched him become an artist, and gradually he stopped being at the mercy of his rages. He got well enough to leave the center and move to a group home. This is what he said to Bill before he left: "What is art, anyway, except not pounding on walls.

I watch the dogs, one tiny dachshund so skinny he looks like a single stroke of calligraphy.

The Sabbath is the day on which we learn the art of surpassing civilization.

Above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live as if it were a work of art. You're not a machine. When you're young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.

Above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live it as if it were a work of art. You're not a machine. When you're young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.

I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.

Among the books there were also some containing bombast. They didn't try to portray Nature as it is within and outside of man; rather, they tried to make it more beautiful, seeking to elicit certain effects. I turned away from them. If reality isn't sacred to them, how are they capable of creating something more beautiful than God's Creation?

We pursued the muses, instead of the mirrors.

Soccer writers seemed as starved for entertainment as art critics, anything vaguely enjoyable gets promoted to the level of genius.

_Not really liking it much_ is a precondition of art criticism of all kinds.

Art is a way of expanding our resonances, civilization our way of resonating to those expansions

J.-P. Quélin: 'The voluptuous cruelty of filling pages is what kills us.

Jokes were a good way to talk about something while acting like you weren't really talking about it.

todas las demás artes y manufacturas las consecuencias de la división del trabajo son semejantes a las que se dan en esta industria tan sencilla, aunque en muchas de ellas el trabajo no puede ser así subdividido, ni reducido a operaciones tan sencillas. De todas formas, la división del trabajo ocasiona en cada actividad, en la medida en que pueda ser introducida, un incremento proporcional en la capacidad productiva del trabajo.

The problem with Double Fantasy was the arrangement whereby they alternated John Lennon tracks with Yoko Ono tracks. You couldn't escape Yoko for more than four minutes at a time.

In Europe, what seems to bond toads and toadstools strongly is their shared role as potentially toxic agents of death, and their close associations with magic and the supernatural. In Christian thought, both were seen to represent the dark and evil threads of nature's tapestry. Both appeared in late medieval art in representations of hell, particularly in the work of Flemish artists.

graphic design has a cultural and aesthetic value beyond the mere trumpeting of commercial messages.

If a man walks in beauty, he will create, and when he creates, he prospers.

I used to believe my art had to be about the things that brought me joy and gave me hope. But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain. --Valentine, while in Italy (pg 267)

He figured that all the threads of his experience would eventually be sewn together, taking shape in harmony and form to create a glorious work of art.