Quotes About Art

You'll find that great artists don't love, live, fuck or even die like ordinary people. Because they always have their art. It nourishes them more than any connection to people. Whatever human tragedy befalls them, they're never too gutted, because they need only to pour the tragedy into their vat, stir in the other lurid ingredients, blast it over a fire. What emerges will be even more magnificent than if the tragedy had never occurred.

I was aware of how shoddily stitched together the words were—suddenly I was a kid in the hall standing outside my locker about to head to Math. But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. That's when all the real things were said.

The notes weren't played, he went on, They were poured from a Grecian urn .

Marisha Pessl

On the original tour, Pink Floyd had only 35mm cine-projectors with which to beam an image a maximum of 80ft wide in the middle of the wall. Waters now had twenty-three projectors beaming images across the full width of the 240ft wall, and on to a circular screen behind the stage. It was a visual feast, with Gerald Scarfe's ghoulish animations now brought to life in eye-watering

And something else, of course; there's always more, deep in art's pockets, far down in the chiaroscuro on which these foodstuffs rest: everything here has been transformed into feeling, as if by looking very hard at an object it suddenly comes that much closer to some realm where it isn't a thing at all but something just on the edge of dissolving. Into what? Tears, gladness—you've felt like this before, haven't you? Taken far inside.

in the face of all dangers, in what may seem a godless region, we move forward through the agencies of love and art.

Wie ist das jetzt mit der Religion bei dir? Es war nicht Neid. Eher eine Art zoologische Faszination.

She can feel it all, centuries of habitation, paint over paint over plaster over stone.

Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.

He felt as if he were paying for the privilege of music with portions of his life and body. But it was well worth it.

We launch our souls from the cannons of art and discipline, and on any one night, hovering over the chimney tops of Europe, halfway to the stars, there are armies of brightly spinning spirits that have risen like fireworks, tethered to the souls of those men and women who, by reflection, mortification, and devotion, effortlessly outdazzle kings.

For example, they recently had a piece on a character--I think his name was Ambrosio D'Urbervilles--whose design statement was to stuff an entire apartment from floor to ceiling with dark purple cottonballs. He called it Portrait of a Dead Camel Dancing on the Roof of a Steambath.

But the long tunnels of art through which I walked in Rome that day had no ragged edges, cowardly colors, or shades of pastel that didn't know what to do with themselves. The wisdom, perfection, and beauty of the colors and forms I passed were more than enough, in their collectivity, to hint at the principles which govern the hereafter, whatever that may be. Indeed, even a detail of one painting can offer solid direction in this regard if one knows how to look

The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, then naturally you would be a liberal.

Humanity requires for its understanding and governance not science but art

I'm a critic. I write essays about works of art. It's like being a eunuch in the seraglio, but unrequited love is the sweetest, and I have the proper distance. I can compress the qualities of beauty I've been trained to see, store them up, and bring them out at will, rapid-fire, in the combinations I want.

Connoisseurs of paintings were curiously indifferent about color itself, and were seldom possessed by it. Rather, they possessed it. And they seemed to be easily seated. They were like the gourmets, who had to build castles of their food before they could eat it. They confused beauty and knowledge, passion and expertise.

Magnetyzm barw zmuszaÅ' go do kradzenia obrazów.

Writing beautifully—calligraphy—was China's first graphic art form. Although elsewhere in the world people drew first and learned to write later, in China, the reverse was true. First you learned to write beautifully, and then you painted. After mastering those twin skills, you could move on to writing poetry, but many chose to remain just calligraphers, a highly appreciated art form in China. Another

His 1831 wood-block series, "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji," is the world's most famous work of ukiyo-e, and one of these prints in particular, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, is one of the most famous works of Japanese art.

The urge to draw is unique to humans

If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation.

Why do you think I'm obsessed with this idea of giving the world an alphabet-soup enema?' (This was our code language for wanting to be a writer.) After a very long, Viennese pause, he said, 'Why do you think you are?' And I said, 'I don't know...Prolonged exposure to radiation from violent events in deep space?