Quotes About Art

Our time and attention is scarce. Art is not that important to us, no matter what we might like to believe... Our love of art is often quite temporary, dependent upon our moods, and our love of art is subservient to our demand for a positive self image. How we look at art should account for those imperfections and work around them. Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader. Maybe we think we are supposed to like tough books, but are we? Who says? Many writers (and art museums) produce for quite a small subsample of the... public.

We need to make sure that there's art in the school. Why? Why should art be in the school? Because if art isn't in a school, then a guy like Steve Jobs doesn't get a chance to really express himself because in order for art to meet technology, you need art.

art is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can only become art, when it is part of the past. In this normative sense, a 'contemporary' work of art would be a contradiction - except so far as we can, in the present, assimilate the present to the past.

I had always drawn, every day as long as I had held a pencil, and just assumed everyone else had too…Art had saved me and helped me fit in…Art was always my saving grace…Comedy didn’t come until much later for me. I’ve always tried to combine the two things, art and comedy, and couldn’t make a choice between the two. It was always my ambition to make comedy with an art-school slant, and art that could be funny instead of po-faced.

What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.

Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound.

Art is not for the personal satisfaction of one or the other, but art wants to return all what's in life... Art wants to give back everything what's in our lives. The more comprehensive the artist stands in life the more powerful his work will speak, and therefore a work of art is a measure of the mental size of his creator.

The art and architecture of the past that we know is that which remains. The best is that which remains where it was painted, placed or built. Most of the art of the past that could be moved was taken by conquerors. Almost all recent art is conquered as soon as it's made, since it's first shown for sale and once sold is exhibited as foreign in the alien museums. The public has no idea of art other than that it is something portable that can be bought. There is no constructive effort; there is no cooperative effort. This situation is primitive in relation to a few earlier and better times.

There's so much art and it's gotten so flashy. In the global marketplace, having art that's shiny and has neon lights is almost what you need for anyone to notice it in an art fair situation - and art fairs seem to be more and more the only thing there is.

There's no such thing as sculpture or art or anything, it's just a bit of - it's just words, you know, and actually saying everything is art. We're all art, art is just a tag, like a journalists' tag, but artists believe it.

O supreme and unapproachable light! O whole and blessed truth, how far art thou from me, who am so near to thee! How far removed art thou from my vision, though I am so near to thine! Everywhere thou art wholly present, and I see thee not. In thee I move, and in thee I have my being; and I cannot come to thee. Thou art within me, and about me, and I feel thee not.

In art school we're always taught that art is an end in itself - art for art's sake, expressing yourself, and that that's enough.

Art has become more than painting, sculpture or music: art is more than Van Gogh painting a landscape or Wagner composing an opera. The whole of reality itself has become the object of art.

A prince must not have any objective nor any thought, nor take up any art, other than the art of war and its ordering and discipline; because it is the only art that pertains to him who commands. And it is of such virtue that not only does it maintain those who were born princes, but many times makes men rise to that rank from private station.

I didn't like anti-Vietnam War art. I didn't like feminist art. I thought it was heavy-handed and stupid - as art.

Art keeps its newness because it's at once unforgettable and impossible to remember entirely. Art is too volatile, multiple and evaporative to hold on to. It's more chemical reaction, one you have to re-create each time, than a substance. Art's discoveries are also, almost always, counter to ordinary truths.

That's what I like about the idea of the aesthetic experience, the idea of both enjoying looking at works of art and how they kind of talk to you, and also the process of making art, getting back to that idea of the aesthetic experience of making art is very important, It's another way of thinking. Instead of just using your brain, you're using your hands to think with. They're different connections, the brain that comes through the fingertips as opposed that comes through the eyes and ears.

"Contemporary art" for me is a kind of historical term that describes the 40 years between the Berlin Wall going up and then coming down. I'm not sure who will come up with a better term to describe art, but I think contemporary art is actually done for.

When we look at a painting, or hear a symphony, or read a book, and feel more Named, then, for us, that work is a work of Christian art. But to look at a work of art and then to make a judgment as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous. It is something we cannot know in any conclusive way. We can know only if it speaks within our own hearts, and leads us to living more deeply with Christ in God.

If by day art is in the service of business, the evenings are devoted to the businessman's enjoyment of it. That is asking a lot of art, but art and the businessman make it work.

I do preach the idea of individualism as in not adapting any kind of style or model other than that one of your own. I always found it strange in art history when studying about the different guilds and movements. It sounded too contrived and having to follow devised parameters to create art. I personally am not a team player in that manner. The art should be labeled by the artist's name only.

By the late '50s, something was happening in England, and it got to be quite exciting. The music world then started to explode with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It was an incredible time with this mixture of independence in art, fashion, and the explosion of the pop sensibility. London was certainly at the center of it all for a few years. And as far as art is concerned, I think that sensibility of what was later called Pop art started in England even before America. And so I was lucky to be there.

Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.

Contemporary art and manga - what is the same about them? Nothing, right? The manga industry has a lot of talented people, but contemporary art works on more of a solitary model. No one embarks on collaboration in contemporary art in order to make money. But in the manga world, everyone is invested in collaboration. The most important point is that the manga industry constantly encourages new creations and creators.

Although not considered a martial art, boxing is really a martial art. It's a very limited martial art as long as you agree to just box... but in an actual physical fight against someone who's just a wrestler, you're going to get killed.

Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that's all.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. ...Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. ...Art is Individualism.

All art is fundamentally subversive, because it upsets people's perceptions, their notions about society. Therefore, art is dangerous, but good art is always making us reassess our thoughts and feelings about how we relate to other people. There are always people who fear that and want to suppress that.

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.

The well-educated young woman of 1950 will blend art and sciences in a way we do not dream of; the science will steady the art andthe art will give charm to the science. This young woman will marry--yes, indeed, but she will take her pick of men, who will by that time have begun to realize what sort of men it behooves them to be.

Art in relation to life is nothing more than a glove turned inside out. It seems to have the same shapes and contours, but it can never be used for the same purpose. Art teaches nothing about life, just as life teaches us nothing about art.

We all agree now - by 'we' I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.

I mean, art for art's sake is ridiculous. Art is for the sake of one's needs.

When it comes to the street-art world, there are a lot of people who realize if they go out and put up a few pieces of street art and photograph them really well, even if their locations weren't actually that high-profile or dangerous, with the level of exposure they get from the Internet, with a large audience, they can maintain that rebel cache by having it be theoretically documented street art.

There are many more important things in life than fashion. But fashion, to me, is part of pop culture. And I'm an art collector. I'm obsessed with art and pop culture. And I say that there is fame, fashion, art, music and entertainment, including celebrity, that really moves the needle in society.

I realized that the only possible response was to go to my wonderful local café, Maison Bertaux, check everyone was well, eat a little cake and then make art. To me, making art, and in particular public art, is always an assertion of our humanity and our strength.

For photography to be an art involves reformulating notions of art, rejecting both material and formal purism and also the separation of art from commerce as distinct semiotic practices that never interlock.

I never went into aesthetics. Aesthetics is what philosophers have to say about art, and a lot of them take an analytics position and raise the question, "What is an art object?" As soon as you fall into that trap, an artist is going to come along and say, "That isn't art - it's something else." That's a hopeless gig.

I really enjoyed Eddie Bracken. He told me a great story. He did The Odd Couple on Broadway, replacing Art Carney, and he said, "Art Carney did it for six months and I did it for three years, and I don't think anyone I've ever spoken to saw me. They all saw Art Carney."

While appropriation art is critical to art, it's an ambiguous art form in the world of the Supreme Court.

If I hear dance music, my body starts to move. Whatever the dance music is, I can't help it. With all that, I still felt, well, rock is a little higher art, but it wasn't. Right now, because I have so much experience with dance charts, I started to realize that it's incredible art. This is going to be known one day as high art.

The recognition of the art that informs all pure science need not mean the abandonment for it of all present art, rather it will mean the completion of the transformation of art that has already begun.

Mine is the art of inspiring people to turn themselves inside out, transform their suffering into art, their art into awareness and their awareness into action

Thou art in the end what thou art. Put on wigs with millions of curls, set thy foot upon ell-high rocks. Thou abidest ever--what thou art.

I went into Hollywood and met Mike Aarons and went to Grantray-Lawrence Animation to work on the, by today's standards, extremely cheap and crude Marvel superheroes cartoons which basically consisted of taking stacks of the comic book art, taking parts of the art, pasting it down, extending it down into drawings and occasionally a new piece of art to bridge the comic book panels and limited animation and lip movement.

No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.

Fashion is more art than art is

Well, I never studied design and I went to art school to study art, you know, sculpture and things like that, and ended up making things like sculpture and started making chairs and jewelry together and that's how I started.