Baroque Art Quotes

In the 16th century,parks and gardens were models of the cosmos and also tools for altering one's consciousness, possibly for changing one's destiny. ~ Linda Lappin

The statues carved here may be viewed as fragments of consciousness itself, or the residue of violent emotions ~ Linda Lappin

Entering a garden like Bomarzo was like succumbing to a dream. Every detail was intended to produce a specific effect on the mind and body, to excite and soothe the senses like a drug. To awaken the unconscious self. ~ Linda Lappin

There's no art where there's no fee. ~ Aristophanes

The soul of an artist cannot be muted indefinitely. It must either be expressed or it will consume the host. ~ Gerard De Marigny

Sex is an art; those who know better are the better artists. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

We are always interested in the opinions of critics, collectors, and certain dealers that we respect. Most criticism is not very interesting to us. Some of it is too academic for us, especially in art magazines. We listen but don't rely on the opinions of others for acquiring emerging art. Our own eyes, hearts, and minds are our guide. ~ Edward Winkleman

Sir Joshua Reynolds, said Jonathan, once alluded to 'common observation and a plain understanding' as the source of all art. ~ Charles Williams

I like the idea that you can paint something outdoors, and anyone can see it. It's open to anyone, and people have to deal with it. In the gallery, it's the same 150 people on the San Francisco art scene. There's a dynamic on the street that's definitely more interesting. ~ Barry McGee

It is a thought as sweet as heaven to know that in the minds of each of us the may by the fence still blooms in an eternal springtime; that the snowdrop has in our hearts a triple birth, and blooms in three separate minds, faultlessly ... So that if all the flowers and grasses and hollows and hills of the old house were razed and mutilated - as they are now, I suppose - we keep them intact in three minds, each depending on the other to supply it with the delicate minutiae of remembrance. ~ Eve Langley

In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is. ~ Douglas Sirk

Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor's yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story , you, upon hearing the words 'soccer' and 'neighbor' in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn't he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say, not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor's dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories. ~ Garth Stein

There is this presumption, in those who feel destined for art and above all literature: we act as if we had received an investiture, but in fact no one has invested us with anything, it is we who have authorized ourselves to be authors. ~ Elena Ferrante

A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it. ~ Michelangelo

Poetry is not mainstream, but then neither is serious fiction, really. But I don't think there's a lot to worry about in this particular 'problem'. Why does art have to be mainstream to be significant? ~ Jonathan Galassi

For the most part I felt nothing but scorn for an art form that required the pretense that it was natural for people to communicate with one another in rhymed song. ~ Joel Derfner

Calls for the simplification of abstract or allusive art have always come from governments suspicious of artists themselves. This is why totalitarian regimes have always legislated some form of realism. ~ Russell Smith

Anyone who doesn't know anything about art knows the name of at least one artist. ~ Dasha Zhukova

The Socratic demonstration of the ultimate unity of tragic and comic drama is forever lost. But the proof is in the art of Chekhov. ~ George Steiner

The arts can bring the heart to the aid of the head, the personal to the political. ~ Scilla Elworthy

O son, burst thy chains and be free! How long wilt thou be a bondsman to silver and gold?
If thou pour the sea into a pitcher, how much will it hold? One day's store.
The pitcher, the eye of the covetous, never becomes full: the oyster-shell is not filled with pearls until it is contented.
He (alone) whose garment is rent by a (mighty) love is purged of covetousness and all defect.
Hail, O Love that bringest us good gain - thou that art the physician of all our ills,
The remedy of our pride and vainglory, our Plato and our Galen! ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others' ideas to be realized. ~ Mel Chin

Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship. ~ Laura Riding

Obsession is beautiful. It's what makes art. ~ Joss Whedon

Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative ... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions. ~ Kiki Smith

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before? ~ Francis Ford Coppola

A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created. ~ Henry Theodore Tuckerman

The word "art" is something the West has never understood. Art is supposed to be a part of a community. Like, scholars are supposed to be a part of a community ... Art is to decorate people's houses, their skin, their clothes, to make them expand their minds, and it's supposed to be right in the community, where they can have it when they want it ... It's supposed to be as essential as a grocery store ... that's the only way art can function naturally. ~ Amiri Baraka

Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel: Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, & not pronounce heartily! That to Labour in Knowledge. is to Build up Jerusalem: and to Despise Knowledge, is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders. And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another; calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift. which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite, as Sins. but that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man. is not so in the sight of our kind God. ~ William Blake

Rule of art: let half-blind purpose lead you. ~ Mason Cooley

It is easy to love and sing one's love. That is something I am extremely good at doing. Indeed, that is my art. But to be loved, that is true greatness. Being loved, letting oneself be loved, entering the magic and dreadful circle of generosity, receiving gifts, finding the right thank-you's, that is love's real work. ~ Helene Cixous

I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls. ~ Anais Nin

The confused medley of meditations on art and literature in which he had indulged since his isolation, as a dam to bar the current of old memories, had been rudely swept away, and the onrushing, irresistible wave crashed into the present and future, submerging everything beneath the blanket of the past, filling his mind with an immensity of sorrow, on whose surface floated, like futile wreckage, absurd trifles and dull episodes of his life. ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

Punctuation is the art of dividing a written composition into sentences, or parts of sentences, by points or stops, for the purpose of marking the different pauses which the sense, and an accurate pronunciation require. ~ Lindley Murray

Just because something causes you to have a feeling of aesthetic beauty does not make it a work of art. ~ Fred Ross

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will. ~ Willem De Kooning

It has become progressively clearer that the plastic expression of true reality is attained through dynamic movement in equilibrium. Plastic art affirms that equilibrium can only be established through the balance of unequal but equivalent oppositions. ~ Piet Mondrian

They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that's how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface. Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed - all he's got to do is thump on the drum, and there's his response. And he's laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets. ~ Philip K. Dick

There is no greater sin against the spirit of true art, no more contemptible dilettanism than to use artistic license as a specious cover for ignorance of fact. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Literature, art, science, and religion degenerate when polemical struggle supplants the independent creation of ideas. ~ Semen Frank

Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does. ~ Walter Murch

I'm really happy with all the art that was inspired by religion, and I think I'd be tickled to little tiny pieces if art in the future was inspired by other things. ~ Penn Jillette

I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or sometimes an evil imp, said the lama, smiling slowly. ~ Rudyard Kipling