Great Art Quotes - Page 20

• The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.

  Josh Billings

  Art, Writing, Knowing

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• In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist.

  Cecil Taylor

  Beautiful, Mean, Artist

  "John Coltrane". Book by Bill Cole, 1976.

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• Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don't take too much advice - keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.

  Noah Porter

  Inspirational, Leadership, Determination

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• In the last analysis, provincialism is your belief in yourself, in your neighborhood, in your reality. It is patriotism without belligerence. Convincing cases have been made to show that all great art is provincial in the sense of reflecting a place, a time, and a Zeitgeist.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Art, Reality, Analysis

  Richard M. Weaver (1987). “The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver”, Liberty Fund

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• All great art is by its very essence in conflict with the society with which it exists. It expresses the truth about the existence regardless of whether this truth serves or hinders the survival purpose of a given society. All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.

  Erich Fromm

  Art, Reality, Men

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• If you subtracted all of the great artists who never drank, who never went to excess, you wouldn't have any more art left. What kind of poem are you gonna get out of a glass of iced tea?

  David Lee Roth

  Art, Glasses, Tea

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• The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist.  The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all. . .  Fear is what blocks an artist.  The fear of not being good enough.  The fear of not finishing.  The fear of failure and of success.  The fear of beginning at all.

  Julia Cameron

  Art, Block, Finishing

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• For goodness sakes, beware of curls… It is a great art to do them so that the girls not only look modern - but do not suddenly look very vulgar.

  Diana Vreeland

  Girl, Art, Curls

  "Noted: Diana Vreeland, Alfre Woodard, and Nico Muhly" by Hilton Als, www.newyorker.com. November 1, 2013.

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• The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Art, Soul

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.31, Heron Dance Press

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• In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended.

  Robert Henri

  Art, Beginnings And Ends, All Time

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

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• An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist.

  Diego Rivera

  Fighting, Sacrifice, Artist

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• What makes for great art is the courage to speak and write and paint what you know and care about.

  Audrey Flack

  Inspirational, Art, Writing

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• Mother-love is not inevitable. The good mother is a great artist ever creating beauty out of chaos

  Alice Randall

  Mother, Artist, Love Is

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• Seventy-five percent of great art is hard work only about twenty-five percent is great talent.

  Lee Strasberg

  Art, Hard Work, Twenties

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• If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Spit, Ifs

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• Great art grabs you, against your will, and then suspends your will. You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction. And through that opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity; who can say otherwise, when time itself is supendend in the clearing that great art creates in your awareness?

  Ken Wilber

  Art, Self, Profound

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• All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis.

  Upton Sinclair

  Art, Optimistic, Creative

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• Great artists suffer for the people.

  Marvin Gaye

  Artist, People, Suffering

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• A great artist... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Artist, Suffering, Energy

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1949). “Truth and Fantasy from My Life”

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• The experiential test of whether this art is great or good, or minor or abysmal is the effect it has on your own sense of the world and of yourself. Great art changes you.

  Wendy Beckett

  Art, Greatness, World

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• The great artists do not seek their forms in the midst of the past, but take the deepest soundings they can of the genuine, profoundest of their age.

  Franz Marc

  Artist, Past, Age

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• All great art originates from the innocent child within us expressing itself through the wisdom, experience and skill of an adult.

  Richard Schmid

  Art, Children, Wisdom Experience

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• Time is the great art of man.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Art, Men

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• In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.

  Herman Melville

  Art, Lying, White

  Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (1988). “Moby Dick, Or The Whale: Volume 6, Scholarly Edition”, p.613, Northwestern University Press

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• Great art is always a balancing act. But all art has both - an emotional content and an intellectual content.

  George L. Carlson

  Art, Greatness, Emotional

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