Art Quotes - Page 29

• It's true that things are beautiful when they work. Art is function.

  Giannina Braschi

  Beautiful, Function, Art Is

  "Empire of Dreams". Book by Giannina Braschi, 1994.

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• In art the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians. The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Children, Justice, People

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.1154, Delphi Classics

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• In the study of the fine arts, they mutually assist each other.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Study, Fine, Fine Arts

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.1094, Delphi Classics

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• Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Fashion, Serious, Purpose

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• We speak of profane arts; but there are none properly such; every art is holy in itself; it is the son of Eternal Light.

  Esaias Tegner

  Son, Light, Speak

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• The drawings don't start with 'a beautiful mark'. It has to be a mark of something out there in the world. It doesn't have to be an accurate drawing, but it has to stand for an observation, not something that is abstract, like an emotion.

  William Kentridge

  Beautiful, Drawing, World

  Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, William Kentridge (1998). “William Kentridge”, Societe Des Expositions Des Beaux

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• I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people joyful; they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.

  Martin Luther

  Inspirational, Music, God

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• The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation.

  Hilton Kramer

  Kramer, Explanation, Maximum

  "Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations". 1989.

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• Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mothers face.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Mom, Mother, Children

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.965, Delphi Classics

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• The world is filled to suffocating. Man has placed his token on every stone. Every word, every image, is leased and mortgaged. We know that a picture is but a space in which a variety of images, none of them original, blend and clash.

  Sherrie Levine

  Photography, Men, Space

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• The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of 'life.

  Keith Haring

  Lying, Creativity, Kind

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• Personality is everything in art and poetry.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Artist, Personality

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1921). “Goethe's Literary Essays”

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• I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.

  Lucian Freud

  Giving, Trying, Fascination

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• Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

  Woody Allen

  Funny, Life, Business

  2000 In The Guardian, 31Dec.

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• Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

  Frank Zappa

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

  "W. C. Privy's Original Bathroom Companion". Book by Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo (p. 134), 2003.

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• Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: 'binding back', 'binding' to the unknowable, transcending reason, transcendent being). But the church is no longer adequate as a means of affording experience of the transcendental, and of making religion real - and so art has been transformed from a means into the sole provider of religion: which means religion itself.

  Gerhard Richter

  Real, Mean, Church

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• Art's whatever you choose to frame.

  Fleur Adcock

  You Choose

  Fleur Adcock (2000). “Poems 1960-2000”, Bloodaxe Books Limited

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• The first essential to success in the art you practice is respect for the art itself.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Practice, Essentials, Firsts

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• All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.

  Iris Murdoch

  Simple, Speak, Absurd

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.24, Penguin

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• Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

  David Cronenberg

  Past, Royalty, Mass

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• It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.

  Camille Pissarro

  Character, Drawing, Sketching

  Camille Pissarro, John Rewald (1963). “Camille Pissarro”, Harry N Abrams Inc

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• My hand is the extension of the thinking process - the creative process.

  Tadao Ando

  Creativity, Thinking, Hands

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• Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.

  Henri Matisse

  Soul, Newspapers, Impressionism

  "Matisse". Book by Pierre Schneider, 1984.

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• Art is not so much talent as character… it's what you are, the qualities of the person.

  John Olsen

  Character, Quality, Talent

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• An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

  George Santayana

  Dream, Design, World

  Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 3

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