Art Quotes
More Art Quotes
The private ownership of great art, its seclusion from the general view of men and women, let alone from that of interested amateurs and scholars, is a curious business. The literal disappearance of a Turner or a Van Gogh into some Middle Eastern or Latin-American bank vault to be kept as investment and collateral, the sardonic decision of a Greek shipping tycoon to put an incomparable El Greco on his yacht, where it hangs at persistent risk — these are phenomena that verge on vandalism.
George Steiner— "The Cleric of Treason"
Cicero is hardly to be reckoned ...for he delighted so much more in the practice, than in the theory, of his art, that he is perpetually drawn off from the rigid philosophical analysis of its principles, into discursive declamations, always eloquent indeed, and often highly interesting, but adverse to regularity of system, and frequently as unsatisfactory to the practical student as to the Philosopher.
Richard Whately— Elements of Rhetoric, Introduction (1828, p. 19)
It's sad that the art form is not appreciated in its place of origin, Lucknow, despite being popular across the globe.
Birju Maharaj— “Kathak faces fusion challenge”
Biological determinism, to paraphrase the great literary critic Roberto Schwarz, is a socially necessary illusion well-grounded in appearance. Much like art and literature, science "is historically shaped and? ... ?registers the social process to which it owes its existence." Scientists inherit the prejudices of the societies in which they live and work. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the modern incarnation of biological determinism with its decidedly neoliberal assumptions about humans and societies.
— Pankaj Mehta, There's a gene for that, Jacobin, February 2014
The single greatest influence on my work as a filmmaker has been the celebrated Interviews with Francis Bacon (1980) by David Sylvester. Sylvester is a master of the art of complicity: he knows how to manipulate and exploit it. Complicity requires being cautiously intellectual yet profoundly human in the sense that the interviewer must act as the concerned midwife, allowing the interviewee to express himself while at the same time guiding his thoughts to a satisfactory conclusion through sensitive provocation.
damian pettigrew— On Fellini’s favorite directors
His imperial fancy has laid all Nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation and every walk of art.
robert hall— On Burke; Apology for the Freedom of the Press, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Far from affording artists continuous inspiration, mass-media sources for art have become a dead end. They have combined with the abstractness of institutional art teaching to produce a fine-arts culture given over to information and not experience. This faithfully echoes the drain of concreteness from modern existence— the reign of mere unassimilated data instead of events that gain meaning by being absorbed into the fabric of imaginative life.
robert hughes— "Introduction: The Decline of the City of Mahagonny"
Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.
— w:Neil Marcus, Storm Reading, 1993, quoted in p 23 Making an entrance: theory and practice for disabled and non-disabled dancers By Adam Benjamin
A writer and, I believe, generally all persons must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
jorge luis borges— Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty Conversations with Borges, Including a Selection of Poems : Interviews by Roberto Alifano, 1981–1983 (1984)
Remember to be submissive, thou art analien, a fugitive, and in need.
Aeschylus— Supplices, l.202 (translated by H Weir Smyth).
Out of the debris of a statue thoroughly shattered a new art work is born: a naked foot unforgettably resting on a stone; a candid hand; a bent knee which contains all the speed of the foot race; a torso which has no face to prevent us from loving it.
Crayencour— Quoted in the NewYorkTimes,10 May1992.
Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
jesus christ— The Gospel of Matthew 16:23 (KJV), said to Peter.
It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.
wolfgang amadeus mozart— Spoken in Prague, 1787, to conductor Kucharz, who led the rehearsals for Don Giovanni, from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)
In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.
Susan Sontag— "Against Interpretation" (1964), p. 14
Karanth made Yakshagana more popular through the ballet adaptation of the art.
— Prof B A Vivek Rai in . Deccan herald. 11 October 2013. Retrieved on 19 January 2014.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
don marquis— Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel (1927), "certain maxims of archy"
Not every painter has a gift for painting, in fact, many painters are disappointed when they meet with difficulties in art. Painting done under pressure by artists without the necessary talent can only give rise to formlessness, as painting is a profession that requires peace of mind. The painter must always seek the essence of things, always represent the essential characteristics and emotions of the person he is painting...
titian— As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 71
— Variant: They who are compelled to paint by force, without being in the necessary mood, can produce only ungainly works, because this profession requires an unruffled temper.As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 72
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers— Forget-me-not,—the blue bell,—and, that queen Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!
john keats— Answer to a Sonnet by J. H. Reynolds.
Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory. This explains why Shaw must either be taken whole or left alone. He must be disassembled and put together again with nothing left out, under pain of incomprehension; for his politics, his art, and his religion to say nothing of the shape of his sentences are unique expressions of this enormously enlarged and yet concentrated consciousness.
jacques barzun— II (Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943))
To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism this is the art of living.
jean de la fontaine— As quoted in From Grandmother with Love (2005) by Becky Kelly and Patrick Regan, p. 53.
The syllogism that says "Comics are sequential art, Trajan's column is sequential art, therefore Trajan's column is comics" is such a glaring fallacy that I'm surprised it's gotten this far.
Eddie Campbell— The Graphic Novel Review, interview by Milo George (2004)
It [Kathak] is a different art form, where there is more of abhinaya.
— In Quotes. Narthaki.com. Retrieved on 17 January 2014.
Bad art is more tragically beautiful than good art, because it documents human failure.
— Henry Letham, Stay
art is History's nostalgia, it prefers a thatched roof to a concrete factory, and the huge church above a bleached village.
derek walcott— Omeros, book 6, chapter 45, section 2 (1990)
