Quotes About Art

Nous connaîtrions-nous seulement un peu nous-mêmes, sans les arts? Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?

Écrire, me dit-elle tristement, c'est dur. Ce doit être ce qu'il y a de plus exigeant au monde... pour que ce soit vrai, tu comprends!

If you are an artist, you learn how to trap the yearning and put it where you want it, put it where it goes. That's the secret all true artists come to know.

What we feel compelled to do, whether it's making art or giving your life to God, evolves out of the inner fabric of our lives, however disguised the patterns may be to us. The work, the vocation, is an attempt on the part of the would-be artist to fulfill in an inner way, in a symbolic way, what the outer world is failing to provide him with in the service of wholeness.

The Four Noble Truths for writers. 1. Writers write. 2. Writing is a process. 3. You don't know what your writing will be until the end of the process. 4. If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.

During her life she was in Rivera's shadow. She was framed as the 'Wife of the Master Mural Painter [who] Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art', as the patronizing headline of the Detroit News proclaimed in February 1933. Today, Rivera is known as Frida's husband.

Kahlo's paintings offer a visual vocabulary with which trauma and pain can be transmitted or communicated with dignity and compassion. Through the language of her innovative art Kahlo gives voice to silenced, unresolved traumata. She thus obliterates the barrier between the individual experiencing pain and the viewer, and evokes empathy for our shared human fragility.

Unlike Rivera and the other muralists, who painted a monolithic hegemonic national narrative, Kahlo visually articulated a multidimensional Mexican past.

Her physical and emotional experiences, which thwarted these ambitions, were powerful but not unique. Many people suffer from illness, accidents, a bad marriage and divorce. It was Kahlo's responses to the experiences of her life, rather than the experiences themselves, combined with her rare talent for articulating them visually and giving meaning to them that distinguish Kahlo as a towering cultural figure.

The essential in Frida is a sick woman, intelligent, with a great passion for life beyond her sickness.

Kahlo's paintings offer a visual vocabulary with which trauma and pain can be transmitted or communicated with dignity and compassion.

for Kahlo, painting was a way of coping with being alone. That is, she painted herself as a second self, or 'imaginary companion', because she was so often emotionally alone.

It was Kahlo's responses to the experiences of her life, rather than the experiences themselves, combined with her rare talent for articulating them visually and giving meaning to them that distinguish Kahlo as a towering cultural figure.

I do not like to influence others. I would not like to become famous. I have done nothing deserving of acknowledgment in my life.2 When Kahlo made this statement she had already produced virtually all the iconic paintings for which she is well known – indeed, venerated – today.

From 1926 until her death she would continue to paint and draw numerous self-portraits, bestowing them as binding gifts to her husband, Diego Rivera, and to friends, lovers and admirers, beseeching them to remember her, always.

Kahlo signed several letters as 'La Malinche' and referenced her repeatedly through her imagery, thus cementing her identification with the Chingada-Malinche. In doing so she rehabilitated the most despised and misunderstood character of Mexican history and exposed the misogynist forces that maligned her and continued to oppress her daughters during Kahlo's lifetime.

I paint myself because I am so often alone', Kahlo said.24 This statement is usually interpreted as the artist's explanation for using her own face as the model for her paintings. The statement, however, may be read in a different way, implying that, for Kahlo, painting was a way of coping with being alone. That is, she painted herself as a second self, or 'imaginary companion', because she was so often emotionally alone.

Kahlo's own words convinced even a most critical scholar that, in the case of Kahlo, the boundary between art and life was either fluid or non-existent:

The public persona that Kahlo presented in interviews and in her meticulously staged photographic portraits is substantially different from 'the many Fridas' we encounter when reading her private letters, carefully studying her diary or analysing the profound and complex art she created. Contradictions abound.

Magic predates Art. In fact, Art may have been invented as a tool to express Magic, to give Magic a practical means of execution—to make it work . So that if you go back far enough, artist and sorcerer are indistinguishable, on and the same—a claim that can still be made with a good deal of validity to this very day.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

It was the winter of war, in 1939. It felt completely pointless to try to create pictures... I suddenly felt an urge to write down something that was to begin with 'Once upon a time.'

I write probably 80 percent of my stuff over the winter.

I did 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' two years in a row in the winter in Seattle, and that was an amazing experience both times.