Art Forum Quotes

...one of the main questions for me is in the genre of dealing with real life: how to deal with it formally. There is a standard set of formal expressions that are used in traditional journalism. And some of them are really necessary, like fact-checking. But my conviction is that, now more than ever, real life is much stranger than any fiction one could imagine. So somehow the forms of reporting have to become crazier and stranger, too. Otherwise they are not going to be "documentary" enough, they are not going to live up to what's happening. ~ Hito Steyerl

Treasure what it means to do a day's work. It's our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it's certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day's work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you'll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to. ~ Seth Godin

The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art cannot express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life ~ Oscar Wilde

The incomparable Michael Jackson has made a bigger impact on music than any other artist in the history of music. He was magic. He was what we all strive to be. He will always be the King of Pop! Life is not about how many breaths you take, but about how many moments in life that take your breath away. For anyone who has ever seen, felt or heard his art, we are all honored to have been alive in this generation to experience the magic of Michael Jackson. I love you, Michael. ~ Beyonce Knowles

I believe the visionaries and true reflections of society will be rewarded after their lives. Those being rewarded now are giving the public what it needs now, usually applauding its current state and clearing consciences. ~ Hollace M. Metzger

Put yourself in Hamlet's shoes. Suppose you were a prince, and you came back from college to discover that your uncle had murdered your father and married your mother, and you fell in love with a beautiful girl and mistakenly murdered her father, and then she went crazy and drowned herself. What would you do? Go back for a masters? ~ Art Buchwald

The ultimate message of this book, though, is not that should strive for publication, but that you should become devoted to the craft of writing, for its own sake. Ask yourself what you would do if you knew you would never be published. Would you still write? If you are truly writing for the art of it, the answer will be yes. And then, every word is a victory. ~ Noah Lukeman

the indifference of the natural world to the constructions of art ~ Lawrence Durrell

A Gift for You
I send you ...
The gift of a letter from your wise self. This is the part of you that sees you with benevolent, loving eyes. You find this letter in a thick envelope with your name on it, and the word YES written boldly above your name.
My Dear,
I am writing this to remind you of your 'essence beauty.' This is the part of you that has nothing to do with age, occupation, weight, history, or pain. This is the soft, untouched, indelible you. You can love yourself in this moment, no matter what you have, or haven't done or been.
See past any masks, devices, or inventions that obscure your essence.
Remember your true purpose, WHICH is only Love.
If you cannot see or feel love, lie down now and cry; it will cleanse your vision and free your heart.
I love you; I am you. ~ SARK

I love the gallery, the arena of representation. It's a commercial world, and morality is based generally around economics, and that's taking place in the art gallery. ~ Jeff Koons

It seems to me that the thing that makes the theater worthwhile is the fact that it attracts so many people with ideas who are constantly trying to share them with the public. Real art is illumination. It gives a man an idea he never had before or lights up ideas that were formless or only lurking in the shadows of his mind. It adds stature to life. ~ Brooks Atkinson

As a director, the biggest job is to discern the imperfections in emotional tone and then view it in the global picture of what you're trying to do, if that makes sense. It's a rhythm, like music is a rhythm or composition and art is a rhythm. Dialogue is a rhythm as well. ~ Robert Stromberg

I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation. ~ Tony Kushner

Among the many values that art can offer, the subtlest one - and, perhaps, the most inspiring - is the sight of talent, talent as such, the spectacle of human ability actualizing its best potential. In the presence of a great achievement, you feel as if you were seeing two art works: one is the object before you, the other is the artist who made himself capable of creating it. ~ Ayn Rand

Real artists take the misery and sadness of life and translate it into art. ~ Josh Peck

Progress in science is governed by the laws of repulsion, every step forward is made by refutation of prevalent errors and false theories. Forward steps in art are governed by the law of attraction, are the result of imitation of and admiration for beloved predecessors. ~ Boris Pasternak

I was the nerd. Because I was reading. I wasn't into sports. I was really into art. Very geekish about comics. Assumed gay. ~ Marlon James

The work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists ourselves ... The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes. ~ Harold Bloom

To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring them to the transformative power of our heart. ~ Jack Kornfield

All good art is abstract. ~ John Newman

A midst deceit I found the truth;
there in the rough I found a diamond.
And from the moment we met,
I think of no one else
Today I choose to be, to live and breathe;
to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse.
And you, the object of my delight:
a like-minded opposite I am myself with,
a mind-fuck times six, seven, eight thousand and three.
I know that you love me with every inch of your deep. ~ Donato DiCristino

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation. ~ Paul Gauguin

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas. ~ Georges Braque

There's a therapeutic aspect to all making, but the nature of working is to compress, condense, and shape stuff, not to just expunge it. It's not just an exorcism. ~ Art Spiegelman

O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to'it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o'er us to'advance. ~ John Donne

Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are. ~ Carolyn V. Hamilton

Great is the art of beginning. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I see filmmaking as a business and pity anyone who regards it as an art form. ~ Herschell Gordon Lewis

Either there is a God, and that God the perfect heart of truth and loveliness, or all poetry and art is but an unsown, unplanted, rootless flower, crowning a somewhat symmetrical heap of stones. ~ George MacDonald

Sometimes it seems like "pain" is too obvious a place to turn for inspiration. Pain isn't always deep, anyway. Sometimes it's awful and that's it. Or boring. Surely other things can be as profound as pain. ~ Ellen Forney

In every well-written play the battle rages between the primary powers of Good and Evil, and it is this battle which constitutes the life impulse of the play, its driving force, and is basic to all plot structures ... In any true piece of art ... the beginning and the end are, or should be, polar in principle. All the main qualities of the first section should transform themselves into their opposites in the last section. ~ Michael Chekhov

Thou art very Trinculo indeed! How cam'st thou to be seize of this moon calf? Can he vent Trinculos? ~ William Shakespeare

Ruskin's much-derided moral theory of art was part of an attempt to show that this human activity, which we value so highly, engaged the whole of human personality. His insistence on the sanctity of nature was part of an attempt to develop Goethe's intuition that form cannot be put together in the mind by an additive process, but is to be deduced from the laws of growth in living organisms, and their resistance to the elements. ~ Kenneth Clark

But what does interest me is the notion that if you do a lot of work it means there's a potential for other people to understand that a lot of things are possible with a sustained effort and that the broadening of experiences is possible and I think that's all art can be. ~ Richard Serra

One concept the non-old have trouble getting their minds around is the difference between taste and judgment. It's fine not to like almost anything, except maybe Al Green. That's taste, yours to do with as you please, critical deployment included. By comparison, judgment requires serious psychological calisthenics. But the fact that objectivity only comes naturally in math doesn't mean it can't be approximated in art.
~ Robert Christgau

The complete and definitive work of art is created beyond one's individuality ... The universal transcends such a level. Mere spontaneity has never created a work of art which possesses a lasting cultural value. The method leading to universal form is based upon calculations of measure and number. ~ Theo Van Doesburg

I made art out of all the phone numbers on napkins I've had over the years. So it was just one napkin, and I wiped my mouth with it after I was done. ~ Jarod Kintz