Molding Art Quotes

An artist is merely a tool with which art molds itself. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Art has political consequences, which is to say, it reorganizes society and creates constituencies of people around it. ~ Dave Hickey

When I was in my early twenties I was doing tenant organizing - rent strikes, specifically - in my building. I think that was how I started doing poster art. It was something very concrete. ~ Eric Drooker

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art. ~ Gore Vidal

STAY AN ORIGINAL WORK OF ART

In this short lifetime,
Why not be --
True to your own voice,
Your own story,
Your own truths,
Your own style,
Beat and drum --
Instead of reflect the words,
Songs and march of another?
Why not use your soul's own
Unique language,
Instead of constantly try to toot something
Not true, suitable or intended
For your own instrument,
Painting,
Song,
Or story?

Why create an image you cannot produce?
And if you can create a brilliant mask,
How long will you really be able to hide your true soul
Behind it
Until its colors and plastic
Begin to fade and melt with
Time?

Do not speak about truth when there is no truth in you.
Do not speak about being yourself when you are trying hard to be someone else.
Do not keep crying about your pain when you you have no shame creating pain in others.
Do not step on truth, or someone else's truth, or someone who fights for truth --
And think there will be no repercussions;
For there is more danger in silence,
And for every action there will always be a reaction
Of opposite or equal measure.

Treasure integrity,
Treasure your own story and truths.
How will people remember you when you want to be an imitation?
How will people remember your voice when you want to sound like another?
Be so different that everybody will re ~ Suzy Kassem

He has heard, and causes those with ears to hear, even today, what we shall not see until the end of time - the whole context of Providence. As though in the light of this end, he heard the harmony of creation to which the shadow belongs but in which the shadow is not darkness, deficiency is not defeat, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy and infinite melancholy is ultimately forced to claim undisputed sway ... Mozart causes us to hear that even on the latter side, and therefore in its totality creation praises its master and is therefore perfect. ~ Karl Barth

The paradox of being a professional artist. How we spend our lives trying to express ourselves well, but we have nothing to tell. We want creativity to be a system of cause and effect. Results. Marketable product. We want dedication and discipline to equal recognition and reward. We get on our art school treadmill, our graduate program for a master's in fine arts, and practice, practice, practice. With all our excellent skills, we have nothing special to document. .... Nothing pisses us off more than when some strung-out drug addict, a lazy bum, or a slobbering pervert creates a masterpiece. As if by accident. Some idiot who's not afraid to say what they really love. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record. ~ Andre Maurois

A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. [ ... ] I don't want to just be a photo essayist; I'm more interested in single images ... ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own. ~ Mary Ellen Mark

In my opinion, if you want to pursue an art, especially acting, you have to be really perceptive of what people go through. There is so much bad in the world, and I think that acting it out and exploring it almost helps you deal with it. ~ Rita Volk

Mathematics and art are quite different. We could not publish so many papers that used, repeatedly, the same idea and still command the respect of our colleagues. ~ Antoni Zygmund

For kind of sophisticated art I'm interested in, the larger structural rebuke has to be so subtle that it has to be distributed at an almost sub-atomic level. Otherwise, you fall into the kind of preachy, moralistic fable that I don't think makes for good literature. ~ Junot Diaz

The nature of making music and making art, what motivates me is that it's interesting. It's interesting to listen, to really listen to other people's point-of-view. Take in their work. Listen to the way they sing. Listen to the way they write lyrics. What they are trying to express. ~ Emily Haines

All of the generations go to what is chic for them, and theater seems to be an older generation's art form. ~ Estelle Parsons

I know how art has come in and really changed my life, so to give these children that opportunity just to come into contact with art - that's wonderful. ~ Jeff Koons

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces.
There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.
The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.
The point of being an artist is that you may live.
You won't arrive. It is an endless search. ~ Sherwood Anderson

Insomnia

I wonder
If those talks matter
Few done in the clarity of day
Or the many
Done at 3 a.m. in the morning ~ Irum Zahra

I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

God put a secret art into the forces of Nature so as to enable it to fashion itself out of chaos into a perfect world system. ~ Immanuel Kant

Art was the jewel in the crown of civilization and by promoting art its natural ideals, truth and beauty, would spread into any corner of society like ripples in the water. "Protect art. It's the antidote to the innate barbarium of the human race". ~ Peter Adolphsen

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can using only their hands and feet make some of the worst movies in the history of the world. ~ Dave Barry

There's a huge cloud of shame around art and business being seen as bedfellows. ~ Amanda Palmer

As generations come and go, Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow; Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away, And feeble, of themselves, decay. ~ William Wordsworth

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time. ~ Edward Albee

In medicine, as in art, the value of any piece of information is often related to its rarity. ~ Tim Benson

Being and having in our society teaches us how to take possession of things, when it should rather initiate us in the art of letting go. For there is neither freedom nor real life without an apprenticeship in letting go. ~ Gabriel Marcel

Language, after all, is only the use of symbols, and Art also can only affect us through symbols. ~ George Henry Lewes

The Americans ... are almost ignorant of the art of music, one of the most elevating, innocent and refining of human tastes, whose influence on the habits and morals of a people is of the most beneficial tendency. ~ James F. Cooper

In the 1970s when I started in the art world, no self-respecting artist would have stood in line to try to get on a television show. It never would have happened. ~ Jeffrey Deitch

Then I began to give place to the word which with power, did over and over make this joyful sound within my soul, 'Thou art my Love, thou art My Love, and nothing shall separate thee from My Love. And with that my heart was filled full of comfort and hope, and now I could believe that my sins should be forgiven me; ~ John Bunyan

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. ~ Samuel Johnson

Reality is an aspect of property. It must be seized. And investigative journalism is the noble art of seizing reality back from the powerful. ~ Julian Assange

Dance is about movement and can be an art, but it's also about communication - with yourself, as much as with other people. ~ Jan Murray

I often wonder how different the world would be if Hitler had not been turned down when he applied to art school. ~ George Carlin

Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. For in invention nature is never last, education never first; rather the beginnings of things arise from natural talent, and ends are reached by discipline. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

I think much sociopolitical art delivers truisms that are quite flat. ~ Harland Miller

The difference between architecture and building is that the former expresses an idea, while the latter is merely a structure built on economical principles. The value of matter depends solely on its capacities of expressing ideas. ~ Swami Vivekananda

I like living, breathing better than working ... my art is that of living. Each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral, it's a sort of constant euphoria. ~ Marcel Duchamp

This is the whole secret of non-attachment: live in the world, but don't be of the world. Love people, but don't create attachments. Reflect people, reflect the beauties of the world - and there are so many. But don't cling. The clinging mind loses its mirrorhood. And mirrorhood is Buddhahood. To keep that quality of mirroring continuously fresh is to remain young, is to remain pure, is to remain innocent. Know, but don't create knowledge. Love, but don't create desire. Live, live beautifully, live utterly, abandon yourself in the moment. But don't look back. This is the art of non-attachment. ~ Rajneesh

But I believe that music can change a life, because it changed mine. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

The thing is you cannot imagine what is going to happen next. If you're imagining it - it's from your imagination. ~ Art Hochberg