Quotes About Art

Art seems to me to be a state of soul more than anything else.

I have always painted pictures where human love floods my colors.

Vielleicht ist meine Kunst die Kunst eines Wahnsinnigen, ein funkelndes Quecksilber, eine blaue Seele, die über meine Bilder hereinbricht.

Every time the economy goes south, art grows. If you were an actuary or an accountant you'd consider those years horrid, but if you were an artist, you'd consider them magic.

the theory that if New York punk was about art, and London punk about politics, L.A. punk was about pop culture, TV, and absurdity.

Über Bertolt Brecht) aber letztlich war er doch kein Lehrer und kein Volkserzieher. Er war ein leidenschaftlicher Verführer. Möglichst alle wollte er verführen: Frauen und Männer, Junge und Alte, Künstler und Politiker. Und nirgends schienen ihm die Menschen so verführbar wie im Zuschauerraum des Theaters.

vom Geschlecht jener, die glauben, ohne Literatur und Musik, ohne Kunst und das Theater habe das Leben keinen Sinn

Underneath my grief that day a resolution was hardening into cement: I would never, ever again create something thinking that I would be able to preserve it.

The burden shouldn't be on the artist to make things the public understands, nor should it be on the museum to show only things that are understandable.

A me piace chi conosce il suo mestiere e lavora per far durare le cose di tutti un poco di più. L'arte nobile della manutenzione, di non buttare via quello che ancora può funzionare, che si può aggiustare. Anche questo per me significa una repubblica fondata sul lavoro, e sul restauro.

Love the art, poor as it may be, that thou hast learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest of life like one who has intrusted to the gods with his whole soul all that he has, making thyself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man.

Let no act be done without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art.

Never act without purpose; make sure that all your actions conform to the philosophical principles that constitute the art of living.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Fieri autem potest ut recte quis sentiat et id, quod sentit, polite eloqui non possit; sed mandare quemquam litteris cogitationes suas, qui eas nec disponere nec illustrare possit nec delectatione aliqua adlicere lectorem, hominis est intemperanter abutentis et otio et litteris.

When any civilization is dust and ashes, he said, art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.

I did not know how to paint or even what to paint, but I knew I had to begin.

While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

Art is long and life is brief and mortality looms.

So that's what art is, for the artist," said Crake. "An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.

oil paints...the look of licked lips.

My hands are out of practice, my eyes disused. Most of what I do is drawing, because the preparation of the surface, the laborious underpainting and detailed concentration... are too much for me. I have lost confidence: perhaps all I will ever be is what I am now.

Real painters grunt like Marlon Brando

I don't give a glance to what's still on the walls, I hate those neo-expressionist dirty greens and putrid oranges, post this, post that. Everything is post these days, as if we're all just a footnote to something earlier that was real enough to have a name of its own.