ART QUOTES VI
quotations about art
When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears.
HENRY MILLER
Tropic of Cancer
Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out. The cause of production of real art is the artist's inner need to express a feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the cause of sexual conception is love. The cause of counterfeit art, as of prostitution, is gain. The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into the intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife's love is the birth of a new man into life. The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man, pleasure which never satisfies, and the weakening of man's spiritual strength.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is Art?
Realism and art cannot live together.
JENNETTE LEE
The Ibsen Secret
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
Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.
TONI MORRISON
Sula
Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.
JOHN BARTH
attributed, Writers Dreaming
The perfection of art is to conceal the sources.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth.
ANAIS NIN
The Journals of Anais Nin
True art, like nature, ever bears
Suggestions of some higher thing;
As more than form or tint of bird
We prize the song he stops to sing.
EDITH WILLIS LINN FORBES
"A Landscape in Oils"
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
Art, true art, is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.
AMY LOWELL
Tendencies in Modern Poetry
I have never found anywhere, in the domain of art, that you don't have to walk to. (There is quite an array of jets, buses and hacks which you can ride to Success; but that is a different destination.) It is a pretty wild country. There are, of course, roads. Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction -- you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Language of the Night
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
Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.
LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON
Speak
Nature is a haunted house -- but Art -- a House that tries to be haunted.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to T. W. Higginson, 1876
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
JEAN COCTEAU
Newsweek, May 16, 1955
Art is awkward until technique has become an unconscious habit.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
LEO TOLSTOY
What is Art?
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