ART QUOTES V

quotations about art

Art quote

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Nature is a haunted house -- but Art -- a House that tries to be haunted.

EMILY DICKINSON
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letter to T. W. Higginson, 1876


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Tags: Emily Dickinson, Nature


It is hard to convey the night-waking, body-trembling experience of putting a creation of one's soul out into the world for acceptance and rejection.

DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS

guest post, The Dark Phantom, October 29, 2008


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Tags: Douglas Carlton Abrams


The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

MICHELLE OBAMA

remarks at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Metropolitan Museum of Art American Wing, May 18, 2009


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Tags: Michelle Obama, history


Our mistake has been to categorize things as art by considering certain phases of the process of creation. But logically this can make all man-made objects art. It is more useful to categorize art by what has become its social function. It functions as property.

JOHN BERGER

Selected Essays of John Berger


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Tags: John Berger


Art is not Nature, art is Nature digested. Art is a sublime excrement.

GEORGE MOORE

Confessions of a Young Man


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Tags: George Moore, nature


The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Death in the Afternoon


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Tags: Ernest Hemingway, artists


That is one of the things a great work of art does. It stays there waiting for you to come back to it, and it shows you who you are now, each time a little different.

DANA SPIOTTA

Innocents and Others


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Modernity is the transitory, fugitive, contingent, is but one half of art, of which the other half is the eternal and immutable.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

"La Modernite", La Peintre de la Vie Moderne


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Tags: Charles Baudelaire


Never judge a work of art by its defects.

WASHINGTON ALLSTON

attributed, A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern


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Tags: Washington Allston


An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

JEAN COCTEAU

Newsweek, May 16, 1955


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Tags: Jean Cocteau, artists


But art consists not so much in the knowledge of principles, as in the manner of applying them; to reveal them to ignorant people is to put a razor in the hand of a monkey.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology


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Tags: Honoré de Balzac


The idea of a new art based upon science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it were, a new creed in a new civilization, filled me with wonder, and I stood dumb before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the ambition.

GEORGE MOORE

Confessions of a Young Man


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Tags: George Moore, science


If they who understand the utmost refinement of any art will enjoy the perfection of it in a manner superior to other men, will they not amply pay for that advantage in feeling more than other men the imperfection of it, which in the natural course of things must so much oftener fall in their way?

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims, Characters, and Reflections


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Tags: Fulke Greville, perfection


Keep doing what you like to do. That's all [art] is.

CORY ARCANGEL

interview with Stina Puotinen, Mar. 21, 2009


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A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.

W. H. AUDEN

"A Poet of the Actual", Forewords and Afterwords


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Tags: W. H. Auden


Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

LEO TOLSTOY

What is Art?


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Tags: Leo Tolstoy


But art not only exploits the variety of appearances, it also affirms the validity of individual outlook and thereby admits a further dimension of variety. Since the shapes of art do not primarily bear witness to the objective nature of the things for which they stand, they can reflect individual interpretation and invention.

RUDOLF ARNHEIM

Visual Thinking


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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.

JAMES BALDWIN

Esquire, April 1960


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Tags: James Baldwin


An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

J. D. SALINGER

Zooey


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Tags: J. D. Salinger, perfection


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


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Tags: Edward Albee, reality