- Oscar Wilde

Art is lies that tell the truth.

- - Piccaso

Art is art. Everything else is everything else.

- Ad Reinhardt

Fantasie ist wichtiger als Wissen.

- Albert Einstein

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

- Albert Einstein

The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting.

- Alberti

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

- Alberto Giacometti

All art is solitary and the studio is a torture area.

- Alexander Liberman

Art is what you can get away with.

- Andy Warhol

People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.

- Andy Warhol

Creative minds have been known to survive any sort of bad training.

- Anna Freud

No matter how sophisticated you may be, a huge granite mountain cannot be denied--it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

- Ansel Adams

An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.

- Charles Bukowski, "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" ( $ )

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.

- Charles Horton Cooley

There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.

- Charlie Chaplin

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!

- Claude Monet, flinging away a pair of glasses for which he had been fitted to correct a severe astig

Kunst ist Scheisse

- Dadaist Motto

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all thedifference in art.

- Dante Gabriel Rosetti

Little kids draw pictures of the ground, the sky, and space in between. If you ask them what the in-between space is, they say 'that's where we are.'

- Ed McCullough

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

- Francis Bacon

Kandinsky was right to appreciate Cézanne. The emergence of triangularity in the ‘Large Bathers’ was an unconscious step in the right direction, a step about to break through the crust of the future’s pictorial surface. However, agile and muscular as it may have been, Cézanne’s triangle could not shake the pyramid anchoring Raphael’s composition. The dogged perseverance of this pyramid illuminates the mystical dead weight which Kandinsky and all abstract painting following him have always had difficulty accounting for, and which in the end we, if not they, cannot live without.

- Frank Stella

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

- Frank Stella

Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

- G eorges Braque

They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it.

- Georges Seurat

Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life. Psychologically speaking, to discover something mysterious in objects is a symptom of cerebral abnormality related to certain kinds of insanity. I believe, however, that such abnormal moments can be found in everyone, and it is all the more fortunate when they occur in individuals with creative talent or with clairvoyant powers. Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.

- Giorgio de Chirico

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.

- Goethe

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

- Hans Hofmann

The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl.

- Heinrich Heine

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

- Henri Matisse

It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision -- a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.

- Henri Matisse

Precision is not reality

- Henri Mattisse

Art among a religious race produces relics; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.

- Henry Fuseli

All art is an individual's expression of a culture. Cultures differ, so art looks different.

- Henry Glassie

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance . . . and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

- Henry James

I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions. Beside the perfection of Turgenev I put the perfection of Dostoevski (is there anything more perfect than "The Ethernal Husband"?). Here, then, in one and the same medium, we have two kinds of perfection. But in van Gogh's letters there is a perfection beyond either of these. It is the triumph of individual over art.

- Henry Miller, "The Tropic of Cancer" ( $ )

Vita brevis, ars longa,

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?"

- Howard Ikemoto

When this girl at the museum asked me who I liked better, "Monet" or "Manet", I said, "I like mayonnaise." She just stared at me, so I said it again, louder. then she left. I guess she went to try to find some mayonnaise for me.

- Jack Handey

Art is coming face to face with yourself. That's what's wrong with Benton. He came face to face with Michelangelo-- and he lost

- Jackson Pollock

The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state and an attempt to point out the direction of the future - without arriving there completely.

- Jackson Pollock

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.

- James Baldwin

If you want to have a million dollars and be an artist, start with two.

- James Bauerle

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

- James McNeill Whistler

As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

- James Mcneill Whistler

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.

- Joan Miro

That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.

- John A. Locke

There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.

- John Constable, "Lecture"

Nobody ever called Pablo Picasso an asshole

- Jonathan Richman

The function of the artist is the mythologization of the culture and the world. In the visual arts there were two men whose work handled mythological themes in a marvelous way: Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso

- Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth"

Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.

- Julian Barnes

It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.

- Kojiro Tomita

If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.

- Kurt Vonnegut

If you really want to upset your parents, and you are not brave enough to be gay, go into the arts!

- Kurt Vonnegut

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man-we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling. The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means-by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspection, etc.-should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside. And it is only art that can accomplish this.

- Leo N. Tolstoy

Art renders accessible to men of the latest generations all the feelings experienced by their predecessors and also those felt by their best and foremost contemporaries . . . [Art] is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling . . . Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by those feelings and also experience them . . . A real work of art destroys in the consciousness of the recipient the separation between himself and the artist, and . . . also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.

- Leo Tolstoy, "What is Art?"

Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.

- Leonardo da Vinci

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

- Leonardo da Vinci

I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working.

- Louise Nevelson

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

- Lucian Freud

I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

- Lucien Freud

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.

- Lucien Freud

I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.

- Marcel Duchamp

Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him.

- Marcel Duchamp

Art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it. Art has absolutely no existence as varacity, as truth. People speak of it with great, religious reverence, but I don't see why it is to be so much revered. I'm afraid I'm an agnostic when it comes to art. I don't believe in it with all the mystical trimmings. As a drug it's probably very useful for many people, very sedative, but as a religion it's not even as good as God.

- Marcel Duchamp

Art is like a shipwreck .. it's everyman for himself.

- Marcel Duchamp

Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only be explored by those willing to take the risks.

- Mark Rothko

The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. He is an outsider.

- Mark Rothko

Great designers innovate, good designers emulate.

- Mark Stosberg

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that the others are behind the time.

- Martha Graham

Talent and all that are really for the most part just baloney. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude can perhaps draw better than I; but what he lacks in most cases is that tenacious desire to make it reality, that obstinate gnashing of teeth and saying, "Although I know it can't be done, I want to do it anyway

- Maurits Cornelius Escher

Lord, let me always desire more then I think I can do.

- Michelangelo

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

- Mikhail Baryshnikov

Art is the highest task and proper metaphysical activity of this life.

- Nietzsche

It is through… Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

- Oscar Wilde

The proper school to learn art is not life but art

- Oscar Wilde

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

- Oscar Wilde

Art is the most intense mode of invidualism that the world has known.

- Oscar Wilde

The past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

- Oscar Wilde

Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?

- Pablo Picasso

I do not seek. I find.

- Pablo Picasso.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

- Paul Cezanne

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

- Paul Gauguin

The more horrifing the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

- Paul Klee

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.

- Paul Klee

An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.

- Paul Valéry

Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be the indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.

- Pierre Auguste Renoir

The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel.

- Piet Mondrian

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art is a way of saying what it means to be alive, and the most salient feature of existence is the unthinkable odds against it. For every way that there is of being here, there are an infinity of ways of not being here. Historical accident snuffs out whole universes with every clock tick. Statistics declare us ridiculous. Thermodynamics prohibits us. Life, by any reasonable measure, is impossible, and my life—this, here, now—infinitely more so. Art is a way of saying, in the face of all that impossibility, just how worth celebrating it is to be able to say anything at all.

- Richard Powers

One might truthfully say that abstract art is stripped bare of other things in order to intensify it, its rhythms, spatial intervals, and color structure. Abstraction is a process of emphasis . . . Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come into existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience -- intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.

- Robert Motherwell

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.

- Rollo May, "The Courage to Create"

There must be something about art... almost all cultures have done art. Its a refining of the senses, which are there to keep us alive. As far as we know, no other animals do that.

- Roy Lichtenstein

Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms.

- Roy Lichtenstein

Since mechanically obtained randomness contains all kinds of possible permutations, including the most regular ones, it cannot be relied upon always to exhibit a pervasive irregularity.

- Rudolf Arnheim, "Entropy & Art"

Art is a half-effaced recollection of a higher state from which we have fallen since the time of Eden.

- Saint Hildegarde

The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad

- Salvador Dali

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

- Salvador Dali

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

- Scott Adams

The difference between mediocrity and excellence is attention to detail.

- Sebastian J. Barbarito

He who knows how to appreciate color relationships, the influence of one color on another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinitely diverse imagery.

- Sonia Delaunay

Life is not a support system for art. It is the other way around.

- Stephen King

Great art can communicate before it is understood.

- T. S. Eliot

You can never do too much drawing.

- Tintoretto

In the staircase of life, Art is the only stair that doesn't creak.

- Tom Robbins

My dear Tristan, to be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war.

- Tom Stoppard

Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in destructive action: Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners: Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memroy: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity: Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere; trajectory of a word tossed like a screeching phonograph record; to respect all individuals in their folly of the moment: whether it be serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, determinded, enthusiastic; to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them - with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least - with the same intensity in the thicket of one's soul - pure of insects for blood well-born, and gilded with bodies of archangles. Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colours, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE

- Tristan Tzara, "Dada Manifesto" - 1918

An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance. Almost dull, in fact. In reality, however, [it's] crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and [is] full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged ... It can contain anything but cannot sustain everything ... An empty canvas is a living wonder -- far lovelier than certain pictures.

- Vasili Kandinsky, (1866-1944)

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.

- Vincent van Gogh

I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.

- Vincent van Gogh

There is no must in art because art is free.

- Wassily Kandinsky

The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.

- Wassily Kaninsky

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

- William Faulkner

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remembered the people, because they created.

- William Morris

I've decided, I'm going to feed every little addiction and silently go mad 'cause right now my writing sucks

- Zaffel

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

- Ned Rorem, In Art/The Artist

Art degraded, Imagination denied.

- William Blake, In Imagination

Hear Peter Halley at the College Art Association conference, scolding academics for the jargon-laden obscurantism of critical prose, although his own writings on behalf of Baudrillard and the simulacrum thickened the stew more than a little.

- Marcia E. Vetrocq, Art in America, In Art/Criticism

People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.

- William Faulkner, In Frustration

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

- Donald Knuth, In Technology/Computers

I'm not really foreign, you know. I just do it to appear more sophisticated! I mean, nobody'd buy Evian water if it was called Blackburn water, would they? Nobody'd wear Kicker boots if they were made in Scunthorpe! Abba? Abba, Swedish? I knew then when they were a Lancashire clog-dancing trio! Arthur, Betty, Boris and Angela! Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn--a former pipe-fitter welder from Harrogate!

- Balowski, In TV Shows/The Young Ones

Garlic is to Food what Insanity is to Art

- Anonymous, In Senses/Taste

Arthur Dent hoped and prayed there wasn't an afterlife. Then, realizing the contradiction, he merely hoped there wasn't an afterlife.

- Douglas Adams, In Literature/Douglas Adams

[Art] is about as outrageous and murderous an act a person can do short of really doing one physically.

- Stephen Wright, In Humor/Steven Wright

Art is why i get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know i don't think its fair that I'm living for something i can't even define.

AniDifranco

Technique! The very word is like a shriek of outraged Art. It is the idiot name given to effort by those who are too weak, too weary, or too dull to play the game. The mighty have no theory of technique.

- Leonard Bacon, In Art/Technique

Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish

- Aristotle, In Art/Nature

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.

- Auguste Rodin, In Art/Nature