ART QUOTES VI
quotations about art
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
LEO TOLSTOY
What is Art?
One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Reifications"
Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out. The cause of production of real art is the artist's inner need to express a feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the cause of sexual conception is love. The cause of counterfeit art, as of prostitution, is gain. The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into the intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife's love is the birth of a new man into life. The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man, pleasure which never satisfies, and the weakening of man's spiritual strength.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is Art?
The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
NORMAN MAILER
Western Review, winter 1959
The transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.
JOHN BERGER
The Sense of Sight
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
PABLO PICASSO
Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views
Art is always aimed (like a rifle, if you wish) at the middle class. The working class has its own culture and will have no truck with fanciness of any kind. The upper class owns the world and thus needs know no more about the world than is necessary for its orderly exploitation. The notion that art cuts across class boundaries to stir the hearts of hoe hand and Morgan alike is, at best, a fiction useful to the artist, his Hail Mary. It is the poor puzzled bourgeoisie that is sufficiently uncertain, sufficiently hopeful, to pay attention to art. It follows (as the night the day) that the bourgeoisie should get it in the neck.
DONALD BARTHELME
"On the Level of Desire"
Art is one of man's few serious activities.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.
LOUISE NEVELSON
"Dawns and Dusks", Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings
Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.
ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
Letters to a Young Artist
There are many brave artists who dare to reveal what's most precious to them. Who dare to step into the world without protective layer. Open. Vulnerable. Exposed.
ESTHER DE CHARON DE SAINT GERMAIN
"Why Art Is Important for Highly Sensitive Persons", Huffington Post, March 15, 2016
Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.
HOWARD ZINN
"Artists of Resistance", The Historic Unfulfilled Promise
Art ... is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
interview, July 5, 2005
Art, true art, is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.
AMY LOWELL
Tendencies in Modern Poetry
Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
letter, Feb. 17, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet
The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.
EDWARD ALBEE
Stretching My Mind
Art begins with resistance -- at the point where resistance is overcome.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
Realism and art cannot live together.
JENNETTE LEE
The Ibsen Secret
A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.
REBECCA WEST
The Strange Necessity