Art That Quotes

Love was a museum where we took down the art that was there before us and played masterpiece with all the empty space. ~ Trista Mateer

The films I grew up loving, and the art that I love, is not generally the kind of postmodern ironic winking stuff. What lasts is the stuff in which the artists are totally in league with the subject. ~ James Gray

Good art however "immoral" is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can not be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise. ~ Ezra Pound

If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers - not all of whom are modern ... I mean, if you are willing to make allowances for the way English has changed, you can go way, way back with this - becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It's like eating candy for the soul. So probably the smart thing to say is that lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn't mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you're just never the same. ~ David Foster Wallace

Where Picasso paints cause, Repin paints effect. Repin predigests art for the spectator and provides a short cut to the pleasure of art that is necessarily difficult in genuine art. Repin, or kitsch, is synthetic art. ~ Clement Greenberg

The things I'm grateful for are: I had the one thing that I feel really lucky about, which is that I made something, I made art, that truly - in a weird way - truly comforted me and comforted a lot of people. And I'm really grateful that I got to have that experience. ~ David Rees

When I was growing up, all the art that touched me was lens-generated, like Gerhard Richter, or Polke, Rauschenberg, Warhol. ~ Wolfgang Tillmans

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow. ~ Anselm Kiefer

The definition of inspire is 'to fill with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.' There you have it: Jeffrey Bilhuber inspires me. I watch him make his magic, and I want to do the same. Those are always my favorite people, the ones who are so alive in the practice of their art that I want to jump in and join the fun. ~ Mariska Hargitay

I realise the power of art that does not hang on the walls of galleries. ~ Marina Abramovic

In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. ~ D.T. Max

I very much enjoyed Leo Tolstoy's What is Art? I can't quote it, it's been a while, but at the end of the day, the idea is that "art that does good in the world is art, and what doesn't is not. It's propaganda or something else. It's bad." ~ Scott Avett

No one presumes to teach an art that he has not first mastered through study. How foolish therefore for the inexperienced to assume pastoral authority when the care of souls is the art of arts. ~ St. Gregory Dialogos

I love art because I feel that it's evidence of the great shared universal power. I like art that feels real, that cuts the bullshit. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Dumbing down takes many forms: art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after all, is really about you. ~ Denis Dutton

Your life is a work of art that you will work on the rest of your life. ~ Richard Blanco

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt makingcreatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels - peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality'. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I like art with a sense of humor. I don't have a huge art education to understand everything. I don't think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I don't think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesn't take itself too seriously. ~ Kathleen Hanna

Art that samples other art, quotes that quote other quotes--your writer knows this phenomenon, in jargon 'he's aware', he was raised in a culture of (not more ironic jargon, select only the most appropriate gustatory analogy): regurgitation, a culture of glutting to vomit and glutting again on the vomit until reemesis--chunky cheese mimesis--then licking that puddle again. ~ Joshua Cohen

We'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Real good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. ~ David Foster Wallace

The conventional notions of art have changed, and a lot of things done today are considered works of art that would have been rejected in the past. ~ David Rockefeller

Whoever uses the spirit that is
in him creatively is an artist. To
make living itself an art, that is
the goal. ~ Henry Miller

Part of my agenda has been to support art that engages life with people. ~ Jeffrey Deitch

The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

If the main reason we listen to music in the first place is to hear passion expressed- as i've believed all my life-then what good is this music going to prove to be? what does that say about us? what are we confirming in ourselves by doting on art that is emotionally neutral? and, simultaneously, what in ourselves might we be destroying or at least keeping down? ~ Lester Bangs

No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses. ~ Willa Cather

I hope we can keep doing it this way - making music and art that are pure products of our influences while not really having to let the whole celebrity side of it get in the way. Then maybe more virtual bands will come out and do the same thing. ~ Damon Albarn

Professor Severus Snape: There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don't expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few ...
[stares at Draco Malfoy]
Professor Severus Snape: Who possess, the predisposition ... I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.
[notices Harry scribbling on his paper]
Professor Severus Snape: Then again, maybe some of you have come to Hogwarts in possession of abilities so formidable that you feel confident enough to not pay attention!
[steps over to Harry]
Professor Severus Snape: Mister Potter. Our new celebrity. ~ J.K. Rowling

[The photographs] were there simply to indicate a radical art that had already vanished. The photograph was necessary only as a residue for communication. ~ Dennis Oppenheim

Fashion is one of the most beautiful forms of art we have. It's a form of art that every person gets to possess and create for themselves. ~ Jim James

It would be difficult, in this day and age, to fund art that made racial slurs. ~ Jane Alexander

Imagination should be integrated with life, not turned into a separate activity, art, that monopolizes one's whole existence. ~ Louis Dudek

What do you think of the Wilcoxes? Are they our sort? Are they likely people? Could they appreciate Helen, who is to my mind a very special sort of person? Do they care about Literature and Art? That is most important when you come to think of it. Literature and Art. Most important. How ~ E. M. Forster

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

My argument would be that I don't think there is much that's genuinely political art that is good art. ~ Thom Yorke

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something more than sit on its ass in a museum. ~ Claes Oldenburg

The art that is in the machine-made article, appeals only to the eye; the art in Khadi appeals first to the heart and then to the eye. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I was so used to doing art that my fingers were like albino spiders. So it was just natural for me to go to a typewriter and write poetry. ~ Patti Smith

To live your life in trust, in love, in compassion is an art that makes you truly happy. If you live your life in this manner you will have nothing to regret when you die. ~ Banani Ray

New York is not the centre for American culture and art that it once was because of the forces of conservatism. Giuliani, capitalism - and then there was 9/11. I really believe that if I leave, it will suffer! Maybe that's why I love it here, because I feel wanted. ~ Rufus Wainwright

All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence. ~ William Butler Yeats

I wonder if more students would do better in elementary and high school if teachers taught more about individual exploration of subjects and less about sliding smoothly along observational ruts. Exploration is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun. ~ John R. Stilgoe

One important thing, just being a film composer in general, is to have a great respect for the art that you're working on - a great respect for the film and a great respect for the filmmakers. ~ Joseph Trapanese

Acceptance is an art that must be mastered if we want to keep our friends for the span of life that remains to us, and presently step off the stage with our self-respect intact. ~ Ethel Smyth

He felt himself at last beginning to be a teacher, which is simply a man to whom his book is true, to whom is given a dignity of art that has little to do with his foolishness or weakness or inadequacy as a man. ~ John Williams

It was Public Art, defined as art that is purchased by experts who are not spending their own personal money. ~ Dave Barry

We can't suddenly quit a job and then race to find a form of art that will pay off before the next mortgage payment is due. Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it ... Art isn't about the rush of victory that comes from being picked. Nor does it involve compliance. Art in the post-industrial age is a lifelong habit, a stepwise process that incrementally allows us to create more art. ~ Seth

A murder victim hung like art? That threw him back and flooded his gut with something akin to nausea, though the feeling faded quickly once he started to examine the crime scene. The man was suspended from a six foot marble statue right of the Troubadours auctioneer's podium, facing a large room with fifty chairs, twenty-five on each side. ~ Jerri Drennen

In all I wish, how happy should I be,
Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee?
So weak thou art that fools thy power despise;
And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise. ~ Jonathan Swift

To organize our life in such a way that it becomes a mystery to others, that those who are closest to us will only be closer to not knowing us. That is how I've shaped my life, almost without thinking about it, but I did it with so much instinctive art that even to myself I've become a not entirely clear and definite individual. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Is it that the joy that comes from other people always risks sadness, because even when love doesn't fail, mortality enters in; is it that there is a place where sadness and joy are not distinct, where all emotion lies together, a sort of ocean into which the tributary streams of distinct emotions go, a faraway deep inside; is it that such sadness is only the side effect of art that describes the depths of our lives, and to see that described in all its potential for loneliness and pain is beautiful? ~ Rebecca Solnit

All art is advertising. It stands for a particular point of view. Art that exploits badness is advertising badness. ~ Jack Beal

(There is) art that states the problems of society and wakes people up to make changes in their lives or in their communities, ... art that offers an alternative, that demonstrates human behavior that can become a model for creativity, cooperation, freedom and playfulness, and ... art that in itself provides glimpses of a larger consciousness or reflects upon the inexplicable. ~ Meredith Monk

Music is an art that expresses the inexpressible. It rises far above what words can mean or the intelligence define. Its domain is the imponderable and impalpable land of the unconscious. ~ Charles Munch

Perfume is the art that makes memory speak ~ Francis Kurkdjian

[ ... ] a familiar art historical narrative [ ... ] celebrates the triumph of the expressive individual over the collective, of innovation over tradition, and autonomy over interdependence. [ ... ] In fact, a common trope within the modernist tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries involved the attempt to reconstruct or recover the lost ideal of an art that is integrated with, rather than alienated from, the social. By and large, however, the dominant model of avant-garde art during the modern period assumes that shared or collective values and systems of meaning are necessarily repressive and incapable of generating new insight or grounding creative praxis. ~ Grant H. Kester

Receiving both the Coretta Scott King - Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award suggests I have succeeded, at least in terms of my own goals, in my intent to make art that moves children. ~ Jerry Pinkney

Israel is a wonderful place to be an artist - a place where imagination flourishes. Israeli culture is refreshingly avant garde - making films, music, performance art and visual art that continues to push the envelope, inspire and empower. ~ Ryan Kavanaugh

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there. ~ Anthony Trollope

Let every man practice the art that he knows best. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

His knowledge was not far behind
The knight's, but of another kind,
And he another way came by't ;
Some call it Gifts, and some New Light.
A lib'ral art, that costs no pains
Of study, industry, or brains. ~ Samuel Butler

Creative expression is not just a means of getting attention, although some have approached art that way. Think of art as a way of connecting, of sharing your insights with others. ~ Nita Leland

Science seeks to understand complex processes by reducing them to their essential actions and studying the interplay of those actions--and this reductionist approach extends to art as well. Indeed, my focus on one school of art, consisting of only three major representatives, is an example of this. Some people are concerned that a reductionist analysis will diminish our fascination with art, that it will trivialize art and deprive it of its special force, thereby reducing the beholder's share to an ordinary brain function. I argue to the contrary, that be encouraging a focus on one mental process at a time, reductionism can expand our vision and give us new insights into the nature and creation of art. These new insights will enable us to perceive unexpected aspects of art that derive from the relationships between the biological and psychological phenomena. ~ Eric R. Kandel

Jazz is an art that takes decades to appreciate and understand. ~ Jake Shimabukuro

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind. I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart. And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

The world is a work of art that gives birth to itself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Art has no obligation to evolve but it has a powerful incentive to do so. Art that is static, that captures a dead moment, is nothing. It is, at best, nostalgia; at worst, it can be a blight on our sense of who we are, a shame we pack away. Artists who refuse to listen, participate, and change along with the world around them are not being silenced or punished by censorious college sophomores, they are letting obsolescence devour them voluntarily. Political correctness is just the inexorable turn of the gear. Falling behind is preventable. ~ Lindy West

Our story was a complex piece of art that we worked on every day. It wasn't always beautiful in the traditional sense, but it was captivating, and worthy and endless. ~ Rachel Higginson

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I do think that there's art that is tortured, but I prefer art that has the joy in it. ~ Josh Ritter

I taught myself how to draw, and I soon found out it was what I really wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to create any great masterpieces like Rembrandt or Gauguin. I thought comics was a common form of art, and strictly American in my estimation, because America was the home of the common man - and show me the common man that can't do a comic. So comics is an American form of art that anyone can do with a pencil and paper. ~ Jack Kirby

Do they care about Literature and Art? That is the most important when you come to think of it. Literature and Art. Most important. ~ E. M. Forster

When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations. ~ Sol LeWitt

Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator. ~ Lawrence Lessig

I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary. I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself. ~ Claes Oldenburg

Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespected hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jeremy Bentham startled the world many years ago by stating in effect that if the amount of pleasure obtained from each be equal there is nothing to choose between poetry and push-pin. Since few people now know what push-pin is, I may explain that it is a child's game in which one player tries to push his pin across that of another player, and if he succeeds and then is able by pressing down on the two pins with the ball of his thumb to lift them off the table he wins possession of his opponent's pin. [...] The indignant retort to Bentham's statement was that spiritual pleasures are obviously higher than physical pleasures. But who say so? Those who prefer spiritual pleasures. They are in a miserable minority, as they acknowledge when they declare that the gift of aesthetic appreciation is a very rare one. The vast majority of men are, as we know, both by necessity and choice preoccupied with material considerations. Their pleasures are material. They look askance at those who spent their lives in the pursuit of art. That is why they have attached a depreciatory sense to the word aesthete, which means merely one who has a special appreciation of beauty. How are we going to show that they are wrong? How are we going to show that there is something to choose between poetry and push-pin? I surmise that Bentham chose push-pin for its pleasant alliteration with poetry. Let us speak of lawn tennis. It is a popular game which many of us can play with pleasure. It needs skill and jud ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Looking at the works of art that are considered worthy of preservation in our Museums, and that were once the common objects of the market place, I could not but realise that a society can only be considered truly civilised when it is possible for every man to earn his living by the very work he would rather be doing than anything else in the world, a condition that has only been attained in social orders integrated on the basis of vocation, "svadharma".

At the same time I should like to emphasis that I have never built up a philosophy of my own or wished to establish a new school of thought. Perhaps the greatest thing I have learnt is never to think for myself; I fully agree with Andre Gide that "Toutes choses sont dites deja", and what I have sought is to understand what has been said, while taking no account of the "inferior philosophers". Holding with Heraclitus that the Word is common to all, and that Wisdom is to know the Will whereby all things are steered, I am convinced with Jeremias that the human cultures in all their apparent diversity are but the dialects of one and the same language of the spirit, that there is a "common universe of discourse" transcending the differences of tongues". ~ Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

It is not the act of making art that is painful. It is the desire to make something and not acting on it that causes pain ... A day when I don't write is less happy. This is not discipline. It is affection, enthusiasm, adventure-any number of other words besides discipline. ~ Julia Cameron

The misfortune in the state is, that nobody can enjoy life in peace, but that everybody must govern; and in art, that nobody will enjoy what has been produced, but that every one wants to reproduce on his own account. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Lettering creates readable art that comes to life, displaying a quirky, whimsical nature. ~ Peggy Dean

I'm in favor of an art that does something other than just sit on its ass in a museum. ~ Claes Oldenburg

I was filming a movie in London, and I drove through Ireland. It was quite beautiful, and the countryside was really remarkable. The contrast between the countryside and Ireland, and the murals there, with Northern Ireland still being a part of the United Kingdom, there's just a stark contrast in those two things. And I found that the art that came out of the conflict was really spectacular because it was about remembering either events or points of view for local neighborhoods, or the rallying cries of one side against the other. ~ Vince Vaughn

Tully starts in again. 'See, the hidden value can go way deeper than sentimental attachment. Sometimes you feel it down to your soul. Like maybe you're the one person who appreciates a work of art that everybody else hates. [...] This thing you treasure, this thing nobody else wants, could also be what you'd call organic. It could be alive. [...] That's what falling in love is, isn't it? Discovering the hidden value in someone. ~ Jane Lotter

I like that feeling when you're making art, that you're taking the energy out of your body and putting it into a physical object. I like things that are labor-intensive : you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility. ~ Kiki Smith

Art is no crime. It's every artist's responsibility to make art that is meaningful ~ Shirin Neshat

An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars. ~ Wendell Berry

Like most geniuses, the Countess was a very limited person. Sigmund Freud was so ignorant of the art that Surrealist painters had to explain then- use of Freudian symbols over and over again, and he still didn't get it. Einstein never could remember to take the biscuits out of oven. Those same forces that drive a genius to create things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces (Should you invite Van Gogh to your home he might stand on your sofa in his muddy boots and pee where he pleased), and the very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance, and certainly that sputter less little candle. Same of the mediocre mind known as "common sense" has never produced anything worth celebrating. ~ Tom Robbins

To call a work of art Kitsch is to condemn it for being bad art. But there is a great deal of bad art that we do not condemn as Kitsch. To condemn something as Kitsch is to condemn it on moral grounds. ~ Karsten Harries

Every human is an artist. And this is the main art that we have: the creation of our story. ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

I'm seeking to have an art that is engaged as a way for saying, 'Hurray for unity.' ~ Anthony Braxton

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief. ~ Lionel Trilling

It's art. And it makes people happy. And that's a very good thing. We have this problem in our culture. We take art that appeals to women - film, books, music - and we undervalue it. We assume it can't be high art. Especially if it's not dark and tortured and wailing. And it follows that much of that art is created by other women, and so we undervalue them as well. We wrap it up in a pretty pink package and resist calling it art. ~ Robinne Lee

Tiger Woods is like a piece of fine art that belongs in the Louvre, and so, too, is Scott Medlock's painting of Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia ... a true masterpiece! ~ Al Michaels

All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Our faces will become works of art that our grandchildren will treasure. ~ Adriana Trigiani

I'm glad I made a piece of art that can be interpreted so widely. Art is always interpreted subjectively. ~ Paula Cole

I'd have to say that the things that mean the most to me are the examples of original comic art that I'm able to look at every day, most of them either by notable friends and/or for projects that I've worked on. ~ Chip Kidd

Are you a Genesis 1 Christian or a Genesis 3 Christian? Do you start your story with shalom or with sin? Shalom is the Hebrew word for "peace." For rhythm. For everything lining up exactly how it was meant to line up. Shalom is happening in those moments when you are at the dinner table for hours with good friends, good food, and good wine. Shalom is when you hear or see something and can't quite explain it, but you know it's calling and stirring something deep inside of you. Shalom is a sunset, that sense of exhaustion yet satisfaction from a hard day's work, creating art that is bigger than itself. Shalom is enemies being reconciled by love. ~ Jefferson Bethke