Quotes About Art

Although a man be not a painter, he may have just opinions of the forms of men.

The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard: but if he will apply himself to learn from the objects of nature he will produce good results. This we see was the case with the painters who came after the time of the Romans, for they continually imitated each other, and from age to age their art steadily declined.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not." ~ Leonardo da Vinci

Wenn auch der menschliche Geist durch vielfache Erfindungen mit verschiedenen Instrumenten auf dasselbe Ziel zugeht, nie wird er eine Erfindung machen, die schöner, leichter und kürzer wäre als die Natur.

art is never finished, only abandoned

Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen.

It was the opinion of Leonardo that the temporary nature of music caused its inferiority to painting. Although durability was in itself no absolute test,—else the work of coppersmiths would be the highest art,—yet in any final scale, permanence could not altogether be disregarded. Music perished in the very act of its creation, while painting preserved the beautiful from the hand of time.

He had searched to find a scientific basis for art, and discovered it in the imitation of nature, based on rational experience.

Although attempting to bridge the gulf which separated the real from the unreal, he refused to treat the latter supernaturally. That mystery which lesser minds found in the occult, he saw in nature all about him. He denied the existence of spirits, just as he urged the foolishness of the will-o'-the-wisps of former ages,—alchemy and the black art.

But the noblest painters,—Michelangelo and Raphael, Titian and Leonardo,—in addition to possessing the solid grasp of technical mastery, reflected some aspect of their nation's life and civilization.

Titian, who painted the living man of action, the man of parts, susceptible alike to the appreciation of ideal beauty and heroic impulse, but guided withal by expediency, reflected this more practical aspect of life. In his portraiture he expressed the statecraft for which Italians found opportunity beyond the Alps, since in Italy it was denied them; and Titian found even Venice too narrow for the scope of his art.

For I know that there are numberless people who, in order to gratify one of their appetites, would destroy God and the whole of the universe. If this art has never remained among men, although so necessary to them, it never existed, and never will exist.

Tomaso of Florence. known as Masaccio, showed by his perfect works how those who took their nourishment from anything but nature, mistress of masters, were laboring in vain.

A painter without a brush is like a weasel without a tongue

Beauty perishes in life, but is immortal in art.

I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess.

Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.

Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.

One of the deepest motives (as you are aware) in the human beast (so deep that many have failed to detect it) is Alliteration.

the only painting worth anything was done with the heart.

Life is an art we are required to practice without preparation, a score that we play at sight even before we have mastered our instruments.