Language Of Art Quotes

The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art. ~ Henri Matisse

The language of art is celestial in origin and can only be understood by the chosen. ~ El Greco

Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. Art ... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar ... We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother-tongue. ~ Jeanette Winterson

What kinds of problems, and what kinds of meanings, happen in the paint? Or as one historian puts it, 'What is thinking in painting, as opposed to thinking about painting?' These are important questions, and they are very hard to answer using the language of art history. ~ James Elkins

Spirit in its human manifestation is man's response to his You. Man speaks in many tongues - tongues of language, of art, of action - but the spirit is one; it is response to the You that appears from the mystery and addresses us from the mystery. Spirit is word. And even as verbal speech may first become word in the brain of man and then become sound in his throat, although both are merely refractions of the true event because in truth language does not reside in man but man stands in language and speaks out of it - so it is with all words, all spirit. Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You. He is able to do that when he enters into this relation with his whole being. It is solely by virtue of his power to relate that man is able to live in the spirit. ~ Martin Buber

Any society contains propaganda, but it is important to distinguish this from art and to preserve the purity and independence of the practice of art. A good society contains many different artists doing many different things. A bad society coerces artists because it knows that they can reveal all kinds of truths. ~ Iris Murdoch

You sick piece of shit," Adam says to him, his voice low, measured.
"Such unfortunate language." Warner shakes his head. "Only those who cannot express themselves intelligently would resort to such crude substitutions in vocabulary. ~ Tahereh Mafi

It [ballet] projects a fragile kind of strength and a certain inflexible precision. ~ Ayn Rand

When I first started making photo pieces it wasn't with the idea of a commitment to the medium. I didn't think I would have to become a photographer to make my photographs. I recall that anything could be used as material for art in that era. Photography was just one more thing. ~ William Wegman

Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language. ~ Walter Savage Landor

If the picture is not an artistic picture, it's show, like television. Television series are very funny, but it's a collective production. An industrial art. A car is not made by a person, it's made by a group of creators, only to go to the market to buy your cigarettes. That is a car - they are not a big art, they are a little art. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living. ~ Elizabeth Lesser

Most cowgirls are natural storytellers, their art honed by years of practice ... It serves as entertainment; it also preserves the humor and value of a unique way of life. ~ Teresa Jordan

Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser. ~ Adam Gopnik

We ate, we slept, we formed our kaleidoscopic relationships and marched ever forward. We licked chocolate from our fingers. We arranged flowers in vases. We inspected our backsides when we tried on new clothes. We gave ourselves over to art. We elected officials and complained. We stood up for home runs. We marked life passages in ceremonies we attended with impatience and pride. We reached out for new love when what we had died, confessing our unworthiness, confessing our great need. We felt at times that perhaps we really were visitors from another planet. We occasionally wondered if it was true that each of us was making everything up. But this was a wobbly saucer; this was thinking we could not endure; we went back to our elegant denial of unbreachable isolation, to refusing the lesson of being born alone and dying that way, too. We went back to loving, to eating, to sleeping, to marching and marching and marching along. ~ Elizabeth Berg

But we must be aware that art cannot be used to show the validity of Christianity; it should rather be the reverse. Christianity is true; things and actions and human endeavor only get their meaning from their relationship to God. ~ H.R. Rookmaaker

For the most part, our jobs require us to use our skills, engage our minds, and pursue our goals - all things that have been shown to contribute to happiness. Of course, leisure activities can do this too, but because they're not required of us - because there is no "leisure boss" leaning over our shoulder on Sunday mornings telling us we'd better be at the art museum by 9 A.M. sharp ~ Shawn Achor

Art is the child of imagination and gives life. ~ Mirka Mora

Mathematics is the summit of human thinking. It has all the creativity and imagination that you can find in all kinds of art, but unlike art-charlatans and all kinds of quacks will not succeed there. ~ Meir Shalev

When men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

I think a craft becomes an art form when the space of possible solutions becomes so huge that engineering can't carry you through. ~ Bill Budge

I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure then as I am now that by looking at contemporary Iranian fiction I could gain access to a real understanding of political and social events. (p289) ~ Azar Nafisi

We may appreciate the efforts, and even the greatness of the men who have tried to find the universal, the general 'behind' appearances; yet at the same time their quest was doomed to fail, for all universals break down as soon as the Creator, He who made man in His image, is denied or left out of account. ~ Hans Rookmaaker

In 1993, I retired from the Art Ensemble of Chicago to devote myself full time to Buddhist studies and to the practice of Aikido. ~ Joseph Jarman

Name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. ~ Laila Lalami

I sat there and my love to him poured out more and more, and, lo, he flew down to a stump, and then to my knee. I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the important thing is the love that goes out from oneself. ~ Agnes Grinstead Anderson

I see artists bored by light-without-heat, irked at gigantic galleries' pushing out art-as-product, leaving behind the over determined for the undetermined, guided by interior voices and bringing us out of a long tunnel to new blueness. ~ Jerry Saltz

We survive. We're Irish. We have the souls of poets. We love our misery, we delight in the beauty of strange places and dark places in our hearts. ~ Eilis Flynn

A language is the joint historical creation of millions of speakers. Although all speakers have some effect on the trajectory of a language, the process is not particularly egalitarian. Linguists, grammarians, and educators, some of them backed by the power of the state, weigh in heavily. But the process is not particularly amenable to a dictatorship, either. Despite the efforts toward "central planning," language (especially its everyday spoken form) stubbornly tends to go on its own rich, multivalent, colorful way. ~ James C. Scott

The art form has to do with the mystery and the hidden invitation that's in the room. And that's when the magic happens, that's when the deep silence emerges to the surprise of all the attentively listening ears. In a way, you're following that silence. You go where the silence is deepest. ~ David Whyte

...but nature scants that lights in all it makes, working in much the manner of a painter who knows the true art, but those whose brush hand shakes. ~ Dante Alighieri

God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I do not resent criticism, even when for the sake of emphasis; it parts for the time with reality. ~ Winston Churchill

Music is truly love itself, the purest, most ethereal language of the emotions, embodying all their changing colors in every variety of shading and nuance. ~ Carl Maria Von Weber

It's a common mistake for vacationing Americans to assume that everyone around them is French and therefore speaks no English whatsoever. [ ... ] An experienced traveler could have told by looking at my shoes that I wasn't French. And even if I were French, it's not as if English is some mysterious tribal dialect spoken only by anthropologists and a small population of cannibals. ~ David Sedaris

There is no sense of worshipping a Guru - or anyone for that matter. ~ Art Hochberg

I make my films because I'm affected by a situation, by something that makes me want to reflect on it, that lends itself to an artistic reflection. I always aim to look directly at what I'm dealing with. I think it's a task of dramatic art to confront us with things that in the entertainment industry are usually swept under the rug. ~ Michael Haneke

Be wary of any man who is quick to put down another man's faith. His love for Truth is not deep enough for him to want to explore additional truths outside his borders. The language of light can only be decoded by the heart. Thus, a man with a closed heart is already blind to understand the words of his own faith. ~ Suzy Kassem

Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child. ~ Jane Goodall

I used to hate England because they ruled my country but I am happy they gave us the game of cricket, which they can't play very well, and the English language, which I can't speak very well, ~ Kapil Dev

The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows from the self-forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it. ~ Hans-Georg Gadamer

I am full of madness, i can't hide my fire
I burn for the things i love, my soul will never retire. ~ Nikki Rowe

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself. ~ Bertrand Russell

When one studies the structure of the universe, it becomes clear that the sciences are as aesthetic as the arts, and the arts are as practical as the sciences. Thus, they are different - but the same. ~ Edward J. Fraughton