Art famous quotes
04-24-2025
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The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.
-- A. A. Gill -
Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti -
Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.
-- A. E. Housman -
As my poor father used to say In 1963, Once people start on all this Art Goodbye, moralitee! And what my father used to say Is good enough for me.
-- A. P. Herbert -
Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.
-- A. R. Ammons -
While other creators make a big show of their art Mani Sir makes it look as though anyone can do what he does.
-- A. R. Rahman -
Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.
-- A. S. Byatt -
The obedient in art are always the forgotten . . . The country is glorious but its beauties are unknown, and but waiting for a real live artist to splash them onto canvas . . . Chop your own path. Get off the car track.
-- A. Y. Jackson -
To Lawren Harris art was almost a mission. He believed that a country which ignored the arts left no record of itself worth preserving.
-- A. Y. Jackson -
Design should do the same thing in everyday life that art does when encountered: amaze us, scare us or delight us, but certainly open us to new worlds within our daily existence.
-- Aaron Betsky -
I've always been a bit of a mix between art and technology. I used to paint a lot, but I'm not very good with my hands. It has always been a fusion between my computer gaming interests and being exposed to the rich data of society that we live in.
-- Aaron Koblin -
As a kid, I was always into art at the same time as computers, and eventually I realised I was making more interesting stuff with my keyboard than with my hands. I really enjoyed modifying computer games more than playing them, so that got me into programming.
-- Aaron Koblin -
Has it led you to the conclusion that photography is an art ? Or it is simply a means of recording ? "I'm glad you asked that. I've been wanting to say this for years. Is cooking an art ? Is talking an art ? Is even painting an art ? It is artfulness that makes art, not the medium itself. Of course photography is an art - when it is in the hands of artists."
-- Aaron Scharf -
How aware were photographers in the past of other visual arts? "No photographer of any distinction at all could approach his work without some awareness of what was going on in other visual media, and for that matter neither the painter nor the draughtsman could ignore photography."
-- Aaron Scharf -
The traditional difficulty of balancing the mechanical with the imaginative schools of photography still operates. In schools of photography meaningful art education is often lacking and on the strength of their technical ability alone students, deprived of a richer artistic training, are sent forth inculcated with the belief that they are creative photographers and artists. It is yet a fact that today, as in the past, the most inspiring and provocative works in photography come as much (and probably more) from those who are in the first place artists.
-- Aaron Scharf -
Only recently serious research into the relationship between photography and art has taken place. Why has it been so long in coming ? In some respects historical research is analogous with that of science. The bringing to light of factual material and the development of ideas is to a large extent cumulative. But when artists themselves were, from about 1910, beginning to tear down the bastions protecting Art in its ivory tower, questioning the idea of Art with a capital 'A', photography was inevitably to assume a new stature both in the eyes of artists and the public, too.
-- Aaron Scharf -
We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect... but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs.
-- Aaron Siskind -
To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn’t think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships.
-- Aaron Siskind -
In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration.
-- Aaron Siskind -
A work of art doesn't exist outside the perception of the audience.
-- Abbas Kiarostami -
[On art:] I believe that it not only enriches the spiritual life, but that it makes one more sane and sympathetic, more observant and understanding, regardless of whatever age it springs from, whatever subjects it represents.
-- Abby Aldrich Rockefeller -
When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes.
-- Abdul Kalam -
By and large, the making of serious, thoughtful and occasionally valuable art has become a lonely persuasion, while the marketing of art has become a boutique operation, manipulated by fashion, self-serving art scholars and the vagaries of the auction block.
-- Abe Ajay -
Every time some new huckster of angst-ridden metaphor is appointed by Art Forum, the congregation genuflects, stroking the catalog like a handful of Rosary beads, and starts spreading that old gospel according to Hyperbole. No questions asked... And thus the bill of goods is sold, all along the line. An art historical snake, swallowing its own tale.
-- Abe Ajay -
Somewhere in my head, a private conviction exists that 'Search is the Process' and 'Discovery the Art Form.
-- Abe Ajay -
The art world is now a fashion industry, led by its Whitney Biennial 'nose for the new look.' But nobody, it seems, has the guts or the brains to blow the necessary whistle and holler, 'Hold on guys! What the hell is this ugly bit of business?
-- Abe Ajay -
I don't like the word 'experiment' in the context of art in general. It implies something immature, unfinished, something entertaining for a moment before it becomes irrelevant.
-- Abel Korzeniowski -
Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth.
-- Aberjhani -
A world without poetry and art would be too much like one without birds or flowers: bearable but a lot less enjoyable.
-- Aberjhani -
Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit, Or what is worse, be left by it? Why dost thou load thyself when thou 'rt to fly, Oh, man! ordain'd to die? Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high, Thou who art under ground to lie? Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see, For death, alas! is reaping thee.
-- Abraham Cowley -
"We may talk what we please," he cries in his enthusiasm for the oldest of the arts, "of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles, in fields d'or or d'argent; but, if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms."
-- Abraham Cowley -
Curs'd be that wretch (Death's factor sure) who brought Dire swords into the peaceful world, and taught Smiths (who before could only make The spade, the plough-share, and the rake) Arts, in most cruel wise Man's left to epitomize!
-- Abraham Cowley -
Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power...Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
Whatever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand - in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science - he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God. He is employed in the service of his God. He has strictly to obey his God. And above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.
-- Abraham Kuyper -
The motive of art comes to us not from what exists, but from the notion that there is something higher, something nobler, something richer, and that what exists corresponds only partially to all of this.
-- Abraham Kuyper -
Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and of barren intellectualism would reduce the life of emotions to freezing point. And, unable to grasp the holier benefits of religion, the mysticism of the heart reacts in the art-intoxication. .... In this cold, irreligious and practical age the warmth of this devotion to art has kept alive many higher aspirations of our soul, which otherwise might readily have died, as they did in the middle of the last century.
-- Abraham Kuyper -
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Some reckon their age by years, Some measure their life by art; But some tell their days by the flow of their tears And their lives by the moans of their hearts.
-- Abram Joseph Ryan -
I remember my emotions the day we watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison Writing & literature in South Africa during the anti-apartheid years, became a 'cultural weapon.' You had to use it to fight apartheid & some of us resisted that in the end, you recognize that you are facing a government that has no scruples about using culture & art to oppress you.
-- Achmat Dangor -
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
-- Ad Reinhardt -
The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea... The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.
-- Ad Reinhardt -
The job at Brooklyn is interesting because Brooklyn reflects what happened to university art departments everywhere. It might be the worst department now, and yet at one point it was the best in the country.
-- Ad Reinhardt -
I taught a lot of art history, especially Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. But the painting classes came back. The nudes came back. Not so much the still lifes. So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.
-- Ad Reinhardt -
An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.
-- Ad Reinhardt -
The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more, making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive - non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective. the only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.
-- Ad Reinhardt -
I like the idea of the museum world and the university-academic situation where artists talk to each other or where artists or art students study with artists.
-- Ad Reinhardt -
Today, when so much seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most deprived and demeaning bottom line, it is more important than ever that we receive that extra dimension of dignity or delight and the elevated sense of self that the art of building can provide through the nature of the places where we live and work. What counts more than style is whether architecture improves our experience of the built world; whether it makes us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this way before.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization. The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
The perennial architectural debate has always been, and will continue to be, about art versus use, visions versus pragmatism, aesthetics versus social responsibility. In the end, these unavoidable conflicts provide architecture's essential and productive tensions; the tragedy is that so little of it rises above the level imposed by compromise, and that this is the only work most of us see and know.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
In New York, the impact of these concentrated superskyscrapers on street scale and sunlight, on the city's aniquated support systems, circulation, and infrastructure, on its already tenuous livability, overrides any aesthetic. ... Art becomes worthless in a city brutalized by overdevelopment.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
The art of decoration requires the most sophisticated and self-indulgent skills. Its aim has always been to sate the senses as gloriously as possible. ... ornament is not only a source of sensuous pleasure; it supplies a necessary kind of magic to people and places that lack it. More than just a dread of empty spaces has led to the urge to decorate; it is the fear of empty selves.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable -
What can a pencil do for all of us? Amazing things. It can write transcendent poetry, uplifting music, or life-changing equations; it can sketch the future, give life to untold beauty, and communicate the full-force of our love and aspirations.
-- Adam Braun -
I think comedy has evolved like every art form, and people probably do less standing around and telling jokes, and more things that have to do with reality.
-- Adam Carolla -
That's where the songs come from: that's what I'd most want people to understand. What sounds good or looks good, that's nothing. The only worthwhile thing in art is seeing someone else's heart.
-- Adam Duritz -
I was attracted to photography because it was technical, full of gadgets, and I was obsessed with science. But at some point around fifteen or sixteen, I had a sense that photography could provide a bridge from the world of science to the world of art, or image. Photography was a means of crossing into a new place I didn't know.
-- Adam Fuss -
For all the years I'd spent talking about pictures, the truth was that I had no idea how to draw or what it felt like to do it. I would mistrust a poetry critic who couldn't produce a rhyming couplet. Could one write about art without knowing how to draw?
-- Adam Gopnik -
Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.
-- Adam Gopnik -
Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.
-- Adam Gopnik -
Drawing need not be the bones of art, but skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment.
-- Adam Gopnik -
Art without accomplishment becomes a form of faith, sustained more by the intensity of its common practice than by the pleasure it gives to its adherents in private.
-- Adam Gopnik -
I love music videos, I really do. I think it's kind of sad that it's a dying art form.
-- Adam Levine -
The motion picture is the people's Art.
-- Adela Rogers St. Johns -
When I spoke, I was listened to; and I was at a loss to know how I had so easily acquired the art of commanding attention, and giving the tone to the conversation.
-- Adelbert von Chamisso -
That's what you want art to do, to open people up and start conversations.
-- Adepero Oduye -
The art of reading consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting non essentials.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.
-- Adolf Hitler -
The art of leadership . . . consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention. . . . The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belong to one category.
-- Adolf Hitler -
[Propaganda] must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect... The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses.
-- Adolf Hitler -
The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not.
-- Adolf Loos -
The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative.
-- Adolf Loos -
Man loves everything that satisfies his comfort. He hates everything that wants to draw him out of his acquired and secured position and that disturbs him. Thus he loves the house and hates art.
-- Adolf Loos -
If nothing were left of an extinct race but a single button, I would be able to infer, form the shape of that button, how these people dressed, built their houses, how they lived, what was their religion, their art, their mentality.
-- Adolf Loos -
All art is erotic. The first ornament to have been invented, the cross, was of erotic origin. It was the first work of art. A horizontal stroke: the woman lying down. A vertical stroke: the male who penetrates her.
-- Adolf Loos -
The work of art is brought into the world without there being a need for it. The house satisfies a requirement. The work of art is responsible to none; the house is responsible to everyone. The work of art wants to draw people out of their state of comfort.
-- Adolf Loos -
The work of art shows people new directions and thinks of the future. The house thinks of the present.
-- Adolf Loos -
Whether statistics be an art or a science... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.
-- Adolphe Quetelet -
Art makes the spirit soar. And when the spirit is lifted, life follows.
-- Adriana Trigiani -
Our faces will become works of art that our grandchildren will treasure.
-- Adriana Trigiani -
You didn't have to wash it as often and it hid the blood stains better!
-- Adriano Directo Emperado -
Abstract art: a construction site for high fashion, for advertising, for furniture.
-- Adrienne Monnier -
One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.
-- Adrienne Rich -
Art and literature have given so many people the relief of feeling connected - pulled us out of isolation. It has let us know that somebody else breathed and dreamed and had sex and loved and raged and knew loneliness the way we do.
-- Adrienne Rich -
One line typed twenty years ago can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint to glorify art as detachment or torture of those we did not love but also did not want to kill.
-- Adrienne Rich -
Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.
-- Adrienne Rich -
Behind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?
-- Adrienne Rich -
The belief that established science and scholarship--which have so relentlessly excluded women from their making--are "objective"and "value-free" and that feminist studies are "unscholarly," "biased," and "ideological" dies hard. Yet the fact is that all science, and all scholarship, and all art are ideological; there is no neutrality in culture!
-- Adrienne Rich -
Mom used to frame everything we made, and now I'm following her example. It makes children so proud to see their work on display instead of hidden away. I figure if I take my children's work seriously, maybe they will too. And it reinforces the idea that art is not something alien and esoteric. Anyone can make art.
-- Aerin Lauder -
The intellectual development of man, far from having get men away from war, has, rather, on the contrary, bring them to a refinment always more perfected in the art of killing. They even came to raise the methods of slaughter to the rank of "science"... We would not (On ne saurait", Fr.) imagine a more extraordinary moral blindness!
-- African Spir -
The divine element manifests itself (or show up) in man as well by his aptitude for science, than by his aptitude for virtue. True morality, true philosophy and true art are in their essence ("dans leur essence", Fr.) religious.
-- African Spir -
HIP-HOP HAS DIFFERENT ELEMENTS DEALING WITH MUSIC, RAP, GRAFFITI ART, B-BOYS (WHAT YOU CALL BREAK BOYS)... AND ALSO DEALING WITH CULTURE, AND A WHOLE MOVEMENT DEALING WITH WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING, AS WELL AS PEACE UNITY AND FUN.
-- Afrika Bambaataa
