Chinese Art Quotes

Some prescient American collectors, including Vicki and Kent Logan and Mera and Donald Rubell, began collecting Chinese art before 2000 with a genuine passion, but as the auction prices exploded everyone was beating a path to the galleries and artist studios in China. It became the 'China thing.' ~ Arne Glimcher

So our problem is to explain where symmetry comes from. Why is nature so nearly symmetrical? No one has any idea why. The only thing we might suggest is something like this: There is a gate in
Japan, a gate in Neiko, which is sometimes called by the Japanese
the most beautiful gate in all Japan; it was built in a time when
there was great influence from Chinese art. This gate is very elaborate,
with lots of gables and beautiful carving and lots of columns
and dragon heads and princes carved into the pillars, and so on.
But when one looks closely he sees that in the elaborate and complex
design along one of the pillars, one of the small design elements
is carved upside down; otherwise the thing is completely
symmetrical. If one asks why this is, the story is that it was carved
upside down so that the gods will not be jealous of the perfection
of man. So they purposely put an error in there, so that the gods
would not be jealous and get angry with human beings.
We might like to turn the idea around and think that the true
explanation of the near symmetry of nature is this: that God made
the laws only nearly symmetrical so that we should not be jealous
of His perfection! ~ Richard P. Feynman

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I'm getting more and more into Chinese art and Japanese, some of those scroll paintings are amazing. You follow the change of the seasons. It's really something. These guys were great masters and of course the use of space. ~ Robert Barry

I don't think it's worth discussing new directions in the context of Chinese art - there were no old directions, either. Chinese art has never had any clear orientation. ~ Ai Weiwei

People who share the same language, French or Chinese or whatever, have the same vocal cords and emit sounds which are basically the same, as they come from the same throats and lungs. ~ Pierre Schaeffer

Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream. And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream. ~ George Linley

Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness. ~ Criss Jami

Fame, what you like is in the Limo. Fame, what you get is no tomorrow. ~ David Bowie

Women developed it as an art. They've had to, in order to survive. The problem is that it limits you. You are in a controlling situation in duality. ~ Frederick Lenz

There are no endings, only beginnings that have been reborn. ~ D.B. Patterson

Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. (1804) ~ Benjamin Constant

The art of surrender is the art of getting out of the way of your own growth. ~ Bryant McGill

Maybe this is what happened when two broken people came together. Her jagged edges called to his, like a magnet, trying to make a whole.

The possibility both tantalized and terrified him. ~ Heather R. Blair

It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story. ~ Amy Chua

All artists are mothers. To be an artist is to be a creator, whether of a symphony or a supper or a painting or a person. Motherhood is the primary art, the art of creating (procreating) people. ~ Peter Kreeft

Everything combines for the works of Merzbow. I don't see them as being different and separate ... Music and art is not separate. I mix rock sounds and art together . ~ Richard Pinhas

The art, the art of living, involves the act of creation. The work of art is nothing. It is only the tangible, visible evidence of a way of life, which, if it is not crazy is certainly different from the accepted way of life. The difference lies in the act, in the assertion of a will, and individuality. For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal. An artist should be able not only to spit on his predecessor's art, or on all works of art, but on his own too. He should be able to be an artist all the time, and finally not be an artist at all, but a piece of art. ~ Henry Miller

I do believe architecture, and all art, should be content-driven. It should have something to say beyond the sensational. ~ Charles Jencks

One thing that took a while to really adjust to was, you do it for the the art, for the money, for being together and having a good time, but you do it for all those people out there who really care about the show. We are now talking about a show we did over 20 years ago. ~ Steve Kanaly

Charred, blackened, and cooked, the morsel was brought to the mouth and chewed, contemplated, and swallowed with relish. There was no sauce or seasoning and no consideration for aesthetics or art. Yet the combination of meat and fire yielded something revolutionary. Cooked meat made man happy. ~ Tony Federico

The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff. ~ Robertson Davies

One of the staples of discussion about basic aesthetic principles is that art has to exist for its own self and cannot be prostituted to advance any particular cause or point of view. Perfect nonsense, of course, but that doesn't keep it from being repeated ad nauseam. ~ Douglas Wilson

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Music is energy, emotion, expression, escapism, enlightenment. Music is so much more than just entertainment. ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum. ~ Edmond De Goncourt

The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

For me, Christianity is not a genre. It's faith. The Gospel is not a genre either. It's faith. I definitely understand the semantics of naming things to give them some kind of distinction but I think my faith is pretty distinct. If you want to call it hip hop, essentially it is. That's the art form. ~ LeCrae

A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The aim of all art is simply to make life more joyous. ~ Oscar Wilde

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art. ~ David Foster Wallace

All the rest of the world uses the word electricity. They've borrowed the word from English. But we Chinese have our own word for it! ~ Mao Zedong

China is an old nation with a colourful history. Its booming economy has triggered an appetite and a curiosity around the world for its art and culture, one that continues to grow. I can, however, tell people that it is a show with no actor. ~ Ai Weiwei

I never called my work an 'art'. It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment. ~ Walt Disney

It is comforting that travel should have an architecture, and that it is possible to contribute a few stones to it, although the traveller is less like one who constructs landscapes
for that is a sedentary task
than like one who destroys them ... But even destruction is a form of architecture, a deconstruction that follows certain rules and calculations, an art of disassembling and reassembling, or of creating another and different order. ~ Claudio Magris