Great Art Quotes

To make great art, you had to expose your soul, and some things should be left safely in the dark. ~ Patricia Briggs

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case. ~ Chuck Close

Get a raven's heart, split it open with a black-hafted knife; make three cuts and place a black bean in each cut. Then plant it, and when the beans sprout put one in your mouth and say -
"By virtue of Satan's heart,
And by strength of my great art,
I desire to be invisible."
And so it will be as long as the bean is kept in the mouth. ~ Francesca Speranza Wilde

I personally want to work with great directors and great actors. My thing is about being inspired. You want money to come, but money doesn't always come with great art. At the end of the day, it's about being satisfied with yourself as a human being. It's important to me to try to make that happen. ~ Scott Cohen

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer made my mate. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art. They seem to be the purpose of God for his whole creation. ~ Richard Holloway

But I also know he'll probably be a more complex characters because of some of the things I've just gone through. Isn't that what writers are supposed to do? Gather life experience so that they can channel them and create great art?" -Graham ~ Sarvenaz Tash

Great art is an escape from the agony of why. ~ Robert A. Kearse

What underlies great science is what underlies great art, whether it is visual or written, and that is the ability to distinguish patterns out of chaos. ~ Diana Gabaldon

If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you. ~ Ben Jonson

Like any great art, the culture of hip-hop has changed with the times. With the state of technology, music is more accessible and freely exchanged. For hip-hop to grow while keeping a sense of integrity, the essence of the culture has to be handed down and respected like any high form of art. ~ One9

I find that the great artists I've met are people who are so playfully invested in their process that, even if it doesn't come out the way they like, they still power through and even take energy from it. ~ George Saunders

Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea. ~ Neil Gaiman

One association with the arts that I vividly remember was a magazine called Normal Instructor, a teachers' magazine, that Miss George would hold up with illustrations of great artworks like [Vincent] van Gogh and Rembrandt [van Rijn]. ~ Paul Smith

Baseball is caring. Player and fan alike must care, or there is no game. If there's no game, there's no pennant race and no World Series. And for all any of us know there might soon be no nation at all. It is good to care - in any dimension. More Americans put their caring into baseball than into anything else I can think of - and most put at least a little of it there. Baseball can be trusted, as great art can, and bad art can't. ~ William, Saroyan

It is by studying little things, that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible. ~ Gretchen Rubin

I once heard some idiot on the radio saying that all great art has suffering as its dominant theme, and that the greatest artists are only able to create because they suffer immensely in their own lives. What a bunch of bullshit. Look at Van Gogh's paintings: there's as much joy in them as there is pain. Suffering is only a single color, and by itself it's boring. ~ Bart Yates

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter. ~ Paul Gauguin

Every great artist raises art to a science, and every great scientist raises science to an art, hence we have Michelangelo's David and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. ~ Robert Breault

All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis. ~ Upton Sinclair

I'm also inspired by great art and people who create and contribute rather than destroy. ~ Raul Castillo

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

I think that all great art never strives to answer any questions; it just asks the appropriate ones at the appropriate time. ~ Rhys Ifans

Cookery is a wholly unselfish art: as 'art for art's sake' it is unthinkable. A man may sing in his bath every morning without the least encouragement, but no cook can cook just for his or her own sake in a like manner. All good cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience worth cooking for. ~ Andre Simon

The rich flow of creativity, innovation, and almost musical complexity we are looking for in a fulfilled work life cannot be reached through trying or working harder. The medium for the soul, it seems, must be the message. The river down which we raft is made up of the same substance as the great sea of our destination. It is an ever-moving, firsthand creative engagement with life and with others that completes itself simply by being itself. This kind of approach must be seen as the "great art" of working in order to live, of remembering what is most important in the order of priorities and what place we occupy in a much greater story than the one our job description defines. Other "great arts," such as poetry, can remind and embolden us to this end. Whatever we choose to do, the stakes are very high. With a little more care, a little more courage, and, above all, a little more soul, our lives can be so easily discovered and celebrated in work, and not, as now, squandered and lost in its shadow. ~ David Whyte

Fear is a great motivator. Look at what 9-11 has accomplished - My god. It's slammed the economy, It's - I can't even begin to detail all it's actually done, other than bring down the buildings and hit the Pentagon. It's stunned the entire nation. ~ Art Bell

I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle ... In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect. ~ Henry Moore

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

No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great art as an outgrowth of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is "artistic" because it involves giving and finding shape and meaning, so the artist's conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

Any good business person applies financial discipline to everything they do. The movie business is and should be no different; I don't believe you have to sacrifice creativity to have business success. To the contrary, great art requires discipline. ~ Paula Wagner

Artists are the antennae of the race. ~ Ezra Pound

'Saw' has been a unique experience in that I've had the opportunity to work with some really great artists, and everyone has contributed in so many different ways, in all of the different departments of a film crew. ~ Tobin Bell

I believe that all great art holds the power to dissolve things: time, distance, difference, injustice, alienation, despair. I believe that all great art holds the power to mend things: join, comfort, inspire hope in fellowship, reconcile us to our selves. Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place. ~ Tilda Swinton

The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

…But Jessica changed all that. Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea.
"Here's your tea and your éclair," he told her. "It would have cost less to buy one of those Tintorettos."
"Don't exaggerate," said Jessica cheerfully. "Anyway, there aren't any Tintorettos at the Tate."
"I should have had that cherry cake," said Richard. "Then they would have been able to afford another Van Gogh. ~ Neil Gaiman

Good art is becoming hard to find these days. With political correctness, the internet, globalization, and multiculturalism, people are becoming pressured to be the same as everyone else, act the same, and express themselves in the same way. Great art will soon be as rare as gold or diamonds. ~ Robert Black

Not all artists have a responsibility to be socially or politically aware, but they do have a responsibility to make great art. They have to find some truth and put that in their music. ~ Michael Franti

You've really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you've just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things. ~ Damien Hirst

Books are where we go alone to complicate ourselves. Inside this solitude, we take on contours, textures, perspectives. Heightened language levitates the reader. Great art transfigures. And when we go back to it, it's full of even more surprises. We get older; it gets smarter. ~ John Leonard

All great art commences with a vision, and perhaps it may be that the vision is closer to God than that which is ultimately created by the artist's brush. There will always be human flaws in the execution. Only in the mind can the artist achieve true perfection. ~ John Connolly

The artist's business is to take sorrow when it comes. The depth and capacity of his reception is the measure of his art; and when he turns his back on his own suffering, he denies the very laws of his being and closes the door on everything that can ever make him great. ~ Freya Stark

The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn. ~ T. S. Eliot

Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar in that they both have a desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great art science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor. ~ Walter Isaacson

Most great art is created when the artist feels they are channeling something rather than trying to communicate something. ~ Donald Miller

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different. ~ Damien Hirst

In the last analysis, provincialism is your belief in yourself, in your neighborhood, in your reality. It is patriotism without belligerence. Convincing cases have been made to show that all great art is provincial in the sense of reflecting a place, a time, and a Zeitgeist. ~ Richard M. Weaver

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

The great artists represent you. The great products represent you. They don't tell you who you are. But with them, you require less verbiage. ~ Andrew Loog Oldham

In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Self-censorship, whether known or unknown, is an unwelcome brake on creativity; it stifles self-expression and hence prevents a work from reaching the heights of great art. ~ Semir Zeki

I love what Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh and Jesus all said - that love is really the driving principle of the creative act. In fact, they would say that great art is always inspired by love. ~ Erwin McManus

I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art. ~ Gay Talese

It is necessary that ... we should believe that we are as capable of producing great art as we believe we are capable of doing great deeds ... ~ Arthur Lismer

At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Great artists are a little too gifted to be bound by boxes and labels, and in saying that, the label 'artist' is to be used lightly. ~ Criss Jami

Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing. ~ Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within. ~ Edith Hamilton

I used to say that I wanted to make great art with people I love. Now I have an addendum to that goal: to get things on the air. ~ Amy Poehler

Great art ... is the result of the labours of thousands of faithful craftsmen who know that they are doomed to remain for ever outside the gates of the Paradise of Perfection, but who nevertheless will give the very best there is in them because the work they do means more to them than anything else in this world. ~ Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Supreme serenity still remains the Ideal of great Art. The shapes and transitory forms of life are but stages toward this Ideal, which Christ's religion illuminates with His divine light. ~ Franz Liszt

The great artist is the simplifier. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I have never really been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of universal brotherhood so much, that I have put everything I have into them, and I have been blessed. ~ Josephine Baker

This is what Great Art does. It becomes more real than the real, more true than the truth. ~ Cormac McCarthy

The great art of giving consists in this the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated. ~ Baltasar Gracian

One night the library started closing just as he reached the passage in Emma when it seems like Mr Knightley is going to marry Harriet, and he had to close the book and walk home in a state of strange emotional agitation. He's amused at himself, getting wrapped up in the drama of novels like that. It feels intellectually unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying one another. But there it is: literature moves him. One of his professors calls it 'the pleasure of being touched by great art'. In those words it almost sounds sexual. And in a way, the feeling provoked in Connell when Mr Knightley kisses Emma's hand is not completely asexual, though its relation to sexuality is indirect. It suggests to Connell that the same imagination he uses as a reader is necessary to understand real people also, and to be intimate with them. ~ Sally Rooney

A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently. ~ John Edgar Wideman

All great art comes from a sense of outrage. ~ Glenn Close

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos. ~ Charles Bukowski

Ok now
I don't read "all the time." Remember, that these ratings are over quite a while. I'll try to put in some comments over what I've been reading lately. I like Vince Flynn's spy/thrillers. Also, check out Umberto Eco's one "On Beauty"
not the precise title, but great art/comments. Also, Sophie's World if you like a pretty unusual story with philosophy mixed in. ~ Umberto Eco

It does not require great art, or magnificently trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I, however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God? ~ Voltaire

From personal adversity comes great art ~ Tan Redding

I guess it's like James Joyce when he was a kid, you know. He hung out with all the great writers of the day, and he was a little kid, like, with tennis shoes on, and they said 'Look at this lame!' They didn't use those words in those days. They said 'God, here comes this nut.' And he told them, 'I'm great!' And he sat with them, and he loved to be with them, and it ended up that he was great. ~ Art Pepper

Difficulty itself may be a path toward concentration - expended effort weaves us into a task, and successful engagement, however laborious, becomes also a labor of love. The work of writing brings replenishment even to the writer dealing with painful subjects or working out formal problems, and there are times when suffering's only open path is through an immersion in what is. The eighteenth-century Urdu poet Ghalib described the principle this way: 'For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river - / Unbearable pain becomes its own cure.'
"Difficulty then, whether of life or of craft, is not a hindrance to an artist. Sartre called genius 'not a gift, but the way a person invents in desperate circumstances.' Just as geological pressure transforms ocean sediment into limestone, the pressure of an artist's concentration goes into the making of any fully realized work. Much of beauty, both in art and in life, is a balancing of the lines of forward-flowing desire with those of resistance - a gnarled tree, the flow of a statue's draped cloth. Through such tensions, physical or mental, the world in which we exist becomes itself. Great art, we might say, is thought that has been concentrated in just this way: honed and shaped by a silky attention brought to bear on the recalcitrant matter of earth and of life. We seek in art the elusive intensity by which it knows. ~ Jane Hirshfield

Hatchery fish have the same colours, but they always seem muted like bad reproductions of great art. ~ Bill Barich

Like great art, something essential dies when great jokes are explained. So what's the key to telling a good joke/creating great art timing. ~ Travis Nichols

My day begins at dawn as I take my cup of strong black espresso outside to watch the sunrise. I learned this ritual from my mother, who worked in a bread shop. Bakers are the great philosophers of the world, mostly because they have to get up early. When the world is quiet, great art is created - or, at the very least, conceptualized. Now is the moment to sketch, make notes, and dream. ~ Adriana Trigiani

Guys don't understand great art. They don't care that sometimes the camera has power beyond the photographer to record emotion that only the heart can see. They're threatened when the camera jumps ahead of me. Todd Kovich was pissed when I brought my Nikon to the prom, but I'd missed too many transcendent shots over the years to ever take a chance of missing one again. A prom, I told him, had a boundless supply of photogenic bozos who could be counted on to do something base. ~ Joan Bauer

I think there's a danger with any great art, that if you begin to test your ideas on other people, and get their opinions before making decisions, or if you pay too much attention to what other people say about what you create, that it really pollutes your expression. I think that I'm much more about pure art and honesty and expressing exactly what I feel, and not caring so much what anyone says. However, I do respect, and I do pay attention to everyone's comments. And I do take them into consideration. But I don't base my decisions by it ~ Marilyn Manson

I was very much into buying contemporary art, but I've just decided I want to get rid of it all. Not that it's not great art, but all of a sudden my mood has changed, and I want to go back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters. ~ Sylvester Stallone

Great art must be a living thing, or it is not art at all. ~ Bill Reid

There are tons of people who have made great music, great art, great whatever, but you don't know about them until the people lift you to a certain height so that you could even be visible and get any kind of recognition. ~ Pharrell Williams

...the best thing an individual movie lover can do is have fun. No great movement can happen in popular art without pure pleasure being the motive.
(...)
There should be nothing dutiful about exploring these actresses, and no one needs to consider himself or herself virtuous for knowing their films. All they offer is the exhilaration of experiencing a grand movement and the satisfaction that great art grants to those who pay attention. If we enjoy their work and love their work and spend our money accordingly, all will turn out right in the end. ~ Mick LaSalle

To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life. ~ William Samuel Johnson

You know that bad people can make great art, don't you?'Said Annie.
'Yes, of course. Some of the people whose art I admire the most are assholes.'
'Dickens wasn't nice to his wife.'
'Dickens didn't make a memoir called I'm Nice to My Wife. ~ Nick Hornby

I felt sorry for the inhabitants and went into the forest to admonish the wolf in God's name not to eat any more sheep. I called him, he came - and do you know what his answer was? 'Francis, Francis,' he said, 'do not destroy God's prescribed order. The sheep feeds on grass, the wolf on sheep - that's the way God ordained it. Do not ask why; simply obey God's will and leave me free to enter the sheepfolds whenever I feel the pinch of hunger. I say my prayers just like Your Holiness. I say: "Our Father who reignest in the forests and hast commanded me to eat meat, Thy will be done. Give me this day my daily sheep so that my stomach may be filled, and I shall glorify Thy name. Great art Thou, Lord, who hast created mutton so delicious. And when the day cometh that I shall die, Grant, Lord, that I may be resurrected, and that with me may be resurrected all the sheep I have eaten - so that I may eat them again!"' That, Brother Leo, is what the wolf answered me. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation. ~ Susan Sontag

When once we have discovered how pain and suffering diminish the personality and how joy alone increases it, then the morbid attraction which is felt for evil, pain and abnormality will have lost its power. Why do we reward our men of genius, our suicides, our madmen and the generally maladjusted with the melancholy honours of a posthumous curiosity? Because we know that it is our society which has condemned these men to death and which is guilty because, out of its own ignorance and malformation, it has persecuted those who were potential saviours; smiters of the rock who might have touched the spring of healing and brought us back into harmony with ourselves. Somehow, then, and without going mad, we must learn from these madmen to reconcile fanaticism with serenity. Either one, taken alone, is disastrous, yet except through the integration of these two opposites there can be no great art and no profound happiness--and what else is worth having? For nothing can be accomplished without fanaticism and without serenity nothing can be enjoyed. ~ Cyril Connolly

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not. ~ Susan Sontag

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.

That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.

Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expect ~ Seth Godin

That a thing is hated is not proof that it's great art, but the lack of hatred is certainly proof that it is not. ~ Brandon Sanderson

I think impersonation is a great art. It's something that I enjoy doing, in a frivolous and lighthearted way. But I don't flatter myself to think I'm an impersonator. ~ Andrea Riseborough

Some authorities hold that the young ought not to lie at all. That, of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary; still, while I cannot go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice and experience shall give them that confidence, elegance and precision which alone can make the accomplishment graceful and profitable. ~ Mark Twain

It is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience - to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears - and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Great art picks up where nature ends. ~ Marc Chagall

For goodness sakes, beware of curls ... It is a great art to do them so that the girls not only look modern - but do not suddenly look very vulgar. ~ Diana Vreeland

I felt the unmistakable certainty that I had been in the presence of great art, and that my heart had opened in reply. ~ Andy Miller

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist. ~ Diego Rivera

Watching and listening are a great art - watching and listening without any reaction, without any sense of the listener or the see-er. By watching and listening we learn infinitely more than from any book. Books are necessary, but watching and listening sharpen your senses. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

All great art ... creates in the beholder not self-satisfacti on but wonder and awe. Its great liberation is to lift us out of ourselves. ~ Dorothy Thompson