Viewing Art Quotes

Perfection does not take into account the viewer.' Pheidias had once said to me. 'It exists on it own, independent of and unconcerned with opinions or utility. ~ Karen Essex

It has become apparent that art can have a startling impact without really being or saying anything startling - or new. The character itself of being startling, spectacular, or upsetting has become conventionalized, part of safe good taste. ~ Clement Greenberg

I see videomaking as an art - it's not a process for me. ~ Michelle Phan

It is only by loving nature, and going to her for everything, that good work can be done; but then we must look to her for the materials for pictures, not for pictures themselves. It is nature filtered through the mind and fingers of the artist that produces art, and the quality of the pictures depends on the fineness of that filter. ~ Henry Peach Robinson

Some people think and say that we came here to suffer. Hmmmmmmm. I don't think so. ~ Art Hochberg

Tragedy is the highest form of art. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety. ~ Erich Fromm

These ways to make people buy were strange and new to us, and many bought for the sheer pleasure at first of holding in the hand and talking of something new. And once this was done, it was like opium, we could no longer do without this new bauble, and thus, though we hated the foreigners and though we knew they were ruining us, we bought their goods. Thus I learned the art of the foreigners, the art of creating in the human heart restlessness, disquiet, hunger for new things, and these new desires became their best helpers. ~ Han Suyin

We can learn the art of fierce compassion - redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking - while cultivating power and clarity in response to difficult situations. ~ Sharon Salzberg

If I'm creating a free-form piece of art, I can make it look like anything I want, and nobody will say it's wrong. ~ Nathan Sawaya

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

According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires-it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, from slavery to self. ~ Robert P. George

The art of seduction should be from within yourself, not from your outer appearance. If whoever you're doing this for doesn't realize that... then, honey, you're seducing the wrong person. ~ XxSkemoxx183

Whether it is photography, assemblage art or filmmaking, my work is to see beneath the surface. ~ Christophe Agou

I'm really visually stimulated more than anything. I don't really listen to music. I'm more into watching telly or watching movies and visual art. ~ Sia Furler

The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and discriminating comick characters, or of filling tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift of nature, which no instruction nor labour can supply; but the art of dramatick disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension, and the strategems of surprise, are to be learned by practice. ~ Samuel Johnson

The problem with trying to be relevant is it makes us copy what culture is already doing. To be relevant, you have to copy what is cool. So we put our mouths on the tailpipe of secular culture in hopes we can recycle some of it and use it for ourselves. The problem with this is that it automatically puts us ten to fifteen years behind culture because rather than setting the precedent, we are copying their systems. This is where we get a huge section of Christian apparel and coffee mugs that simply copy secular logos. My favorite is the shirt with the words "Holy Spirit" printed in the same font and logo as Sprite. Or the one with "A bread crumb and a fish" instead of Abercrombie and Fitch. We call it redeeming, but it's actually stealing. Making bad art is bad in and of itself, but if we are Christians, this takes on a whole other level of weight. Because we are called to mirror and reflect God, everything we do should give people a proper picture of who he is. ~ Jefferson Bethke

The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for "art" that leaves him unmoved
if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

The environment itself was culturally a vacuum, in that there was simply nothing that would inspire me in the arts. But my parents were always very supportive of anything that I explored or wanted to do. ~ Paul Smith

Poetry is an art of telling the poet's own truth my bending and twisting it with his or her own emotional bulldozer. ~ Debasish Mridha

Programming is a science dressed up as art, because most of us don't understand the physics of software and it's rarely, if ever, taught. The physics of software is not algorithms, data structures, languages, and abstractions. These are just tools we make, use, and throw away. The real physics of software is the physics of people. Specifically, it's about our limitations when it comes to complexity and our desire to work together to solve large problems in pieces. This is the science of programming: make building blocks that people can understand and use easily, and people will work together to solve the very largest problems. ~ Pieter Hintjens

When weary with the long day's care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost, and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again
O my true friend, I am not lone
While thou canst speak with such a tone!

So hopeless is the world without,
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world where guile and hate and doubt
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou and I and Liberty
Have undisputed sovereignty.

What matters it that all around
Danger and grief and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom's bound
We hold a bright unsullied sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?

Reason indeed may oft complain
For Nature's sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart how vain
Its cherished dreams must always be;
And Truth may rudely trample down
The flowers of Fancy newly blown.

But thou art ever there to bring
The hovering visions back and breathe
New glories o'er the blighted spring
And call a lovelier life from death,
And whisper with a voice divine
Of real worlds as bright as thine.

I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
Yet still in evening's quiet hour
With never-failing thankfulness I
welcome thee, benignant power,
Sure solacer of human cares
And brighter hope when hope despairs. ~ Emily Bronte

Fashion goes beyond fabric; it is the attempt to manifest art on a breathing canvas. I am very excited to collaborate with the artistic community as we celebrate this diversity of creative vision. ~ David Dixon

The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram. ~ Don Marquis

I do not think making art alone makes it any better than making it with a team of people. ~ Olafur Eliasson

Art is a little bit larger than life - it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness. ~ Laurence Olivier

We judge and punish based on facts, but facts are not truth. Facts are like a buried skeleton uncovered long after death. Truth is fluid. Truth is alive. To know the truth requires understanding, the most difficult human art. It requires seeing all things at once, forward and backward, the way God sees. ~ Greg Iles

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. ~ Paul Klee Foundation

The only way to teach focus is to present the eye with opportunities for steady perception - best supplied by the contemplation of art. Looking at art requires stillness and receptivity, which realign our senses and produce a magical tranquillity. ~ Camille Paglia

When a general, unable to estimate the enemy's strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result must be rout. ~ Sun Tzu

Art, it seems to me, doesn't need freedom so much as it needs courage and love - some would call it 'soul' or 'Eros.' ~ Michael Leunig

Practice the art of what, where, when. ~ Iman Refaat

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy! ~ John Keats

Truth exists; only lies are invented. ~ Georges Braque

When you're at dinner with somebody and they are on their phone. I think there's that lost art of conversation and so I just always try to keep my phone far away from me when I'm with people. ~ Austin Butler

In a painting I want to say something comforting. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Truly, you understand the reverse art of alchemy, the depreciating of the most valuable things! Try, just for once, another recipe, in order not to realise as hitherto the opposite of what you mean to attain: deny those good things, withdraw from them the applause of the populace and discourage the spread of them, make them once more the concealed chastities of solitary souls, and say: morality is something forbidden! Perhaps you will thus attract to your cause the sort of men who are only of any account, I mean the heroic. But then there must be something formidable in it, and not as hitherto something disgusting! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

That's what great art does - that's why these men and women counted. It shows us what makes life worth living. ~ Kate Lord Brown

Relationship is an art. The dream that two people create is more difficult to master than one. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz

What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence. ~ Claude Monet

In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. ~ Walt Disney

Some guidelines for a successful 'Grand Tour' of Europe: 1. Energy! Never be 'too tired' or 'not in the mood'. 2. Avoid conflict with Albie. Accept light-hearted joshing and do not retaliate with malice or bitter recriminations. Good humour at all times. 3. It is not necessary to be seen to be right about everything, even when that is the case. 4. Be open-minded and willing to try new things. For example, unusual foods from unhygienic kitchens, experimental art, unusual points of view, etc. 5. Be fun. Enjoy light-hearted banter with C and A. 6. Try to relax. Don't dwell on the future for ~ David Nicholls

It's not art, it's science. ~ Billy Sheehan

The essence of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance alters at every moment. ~ Claude Monet

Art in the twenty-first century may come to constitute a form of mediation between human and post-human consciousness, just as in past cultures it has been used to mediate between mankind and the gods. ~ Max More