Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish - Aristotle Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record
o record the
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of
things, but their inward significance. Aristotle
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
Art is art. Everything else is everything else. - Ad Reinhardt
The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting. -
Alberti
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. – Ani Difranco (Out of habit),
In Music
Art is what you can get away with. - Andy Warhol
I am a deeply superficial person. - Andy Warhol
PAINTING, n: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the
weather and exposing them to the critic. - Ambrose Bierce,
"The Devil's Dictionary", 1906
If the work begins to look labored or inferior, drastic action is
taken. I destroy the offending painting with wild swathes of
paint. Most satisfying! What comes out of this spent energy
is often an excellent painting. - Ann Zielinski
The artist needs but a roof, a crust of bread, and his easel,
and all the rest God gives him in abundance. He must live to
paint and not paint to live. - Albert Pinkham Ryder
An artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to
please. - André Malraux
Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have
somebody click the shutter. - Ansel Adams
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only
good photographs. - Ansel Adams
There are always two people in every picture: the
photographer and the viewer. - Ansel Adams
I like to think that a good painting (or a good poem or a good
book, or any good thing) can be measured by how much,
after experiencing it for a while, you start to forget that it was
made about someone other than you. - Andrew Hershey
In feature films the directory is God; in documentary films
God is the director. - Alfred Hitchcock
[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the
unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. - Al Capp (1909 -
1979)
reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. - Amy
Lowell (1874 - 1925)
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the
less the artist does the better. - Andre Gide (1869 - 1951)
Let each man exercise the art he knows. - Aristophanes
(450 BC - 388 BC), Wasps, 422 B.C.
"The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a
reality of the same intensity." - Alberto Giacometti
It is important to express oneself...provided the feelings are
real and are taken from you own experience.  - Berthe
Morisot
The fine art of painting, which is the bastard of alchemy,
always has been always will be, a game. The rules of the
game are quite simple: in a given arena, on as many psychic
fronts as the talent allows, one must visually describe, the
centre of the meaning of existense - Brett Whiteley
Art is the thrilling spark that beats death - thats all - Brett
Whiteley
I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own
labels, most would choose none. - Ben Shahn (1898 -
1969)
So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient,
happy idling, dawdling and puttering. - Brenda Ueland
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
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
I build a painting by putting little marks together--some look
like hot dogs, some like doughnuts. - Chuck Close
It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing
incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise
that you have rendered something in its true character. -
Camille Pissarro
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write
for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
"What is real is not the external form, but the essence of
things . . . it is impossible for anyone to express anything
essentially real by imitating its exterior surface." -
Constantin Brancusi
Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is
pure joy that I offer you. Look at my sculptures until you see
them. Those closest to God have seen them. - Constantin
Brancusi
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does
something other than sit on its ass in a museum. - Claes
Oldenburg
Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on
canvas or write wonderful poetry.I like making deals,
preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks. - Donald
Trump
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some
blues. - Duke Ellington (1899 - 1974)
Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint
on it you can. - Danny Kaye
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a
computer. Art is everything else we do. - Donald Knuth, In
Technology/Computers
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
Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes
all the difference in art. - Dante Gabriel Rosetti
I've lost the will to paint literally. I don't see the point in
worrying away with a paintbrush trying to reproduce a literal
photographic texture like cloth or skin. Paint is best at being
paint. Paint can never be as perfect as nature when it is
trying to imitate nature. It's a lost cause. Paint can only be as
beautiful as nature when it is nature, when it is it's own
texture. Marks on paper have their own beauty, and it is this
slipping from the literal world into the world of abstract
qualities that I try to achieve in my work. If I need a shirt to
look like a shirt I'll scan it into my computer. If I want a shirt
to feel like the wind, or like a constricting skin, or angry, or
like a consoling embrace, then maybe it should be painted
or drawn... - Dave McKean
It's only words... unless they're true. - David Mamet
When you risk becoming an artist, you risk taking your talent
seriously. - Dee Ito
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live
more intensely for the reading of it. - Elizabeth Drew
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the
material universe to possess internal order, and that is why,
though I don't believe that only art matters, I do belive in Art
for Art's sake. - E. M. Forster (1879 - 1970)
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common
symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been
done before. - Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that
you live, if you do. - Elizabeth Bowen (1899 - 1973)
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who
cannot attain it in anything. - Eugene Delacroix (1798 -
1863)
What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their
work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that
what has already been said is still not enough. - Eugene
Delacroix
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.-
Edgar Degas
Painting is very easy when you don't know how, but very
difficult when you do. - Edgar Dega 
A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some
fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly
plain you end up boring people - Edgar Degas
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the
painter do good things. - Edgar Degas
If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. -
Edward Hopper
A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful
were not in us, how would we ever recognize it? - Ernst
Haas
Most artists are doing basically the same thing - staying off
the streets. - Edward Ruscha
Its hard to find the light when your born in the dark - Emile
Zola
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing
without work. - Emile Zola
No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women
knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and
suffer and love. - Edvard Munch
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
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should
call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in
Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation,
however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to
the sacred name of 'Artist.' - Edgar Allan Poe
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. -
Francis Bacon
Picasso is the reason why I paint. He is the father figure,
who gave me the wish to paint. - Francis Bacon
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
I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really
seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I
realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle. - Frederick
Franck, " The Zen of Seeing
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's
autobiography. - Federico Fellini
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. - Frank
Zappa (1940 - 1993)
For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night,
a strangled laugh. - Georges Rouault
"...I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their
pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But
oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of
a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to
work out why this happens." - Georg Baselitz
Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are
as many solutions as there are human beings. - George
Tooker
I hate flowers. I only paint them because they're cheaper
than models and they don't move. - Georgia O'Keefe
Every great work of art is offensive to someone, for a work
of art is a protest against things as they are and a
proclamation of things as they ought to be. - Gerald W.
Johnson
There are no rules, only tools. - Glenn Vilppu
There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing
which most people take less trouble about learning. An art
school is a place where about three people work with
feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I
should have conceived unattainable by human nature. -
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, "Autobiography"
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.-
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the
violinist. - Gilbert Keith Chesterton
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I
couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for. -
Georgia O'Keeffe
So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to
me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking
the time to look at it. I will make even busy New Yorkers
take time to see what I see of flowers. - Georgia O'Keeffe
Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one
valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain. -
Georges Braque
To explain away the mystery of a great painting-- if such a
feat were possible-- would be irreparable harm. . . . If there
is no mystery then there is no 'poetry'. - Georges Braque
They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my
methods, and that is all there is to it. - Georges Seurat
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
Art is long, life short; judgement difficult, opportunity
transient. - Goethe
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his
own nature into his pictures. Henry Ward Beecher (1813 -
1887), Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887
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"
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
Nature is a revelation of God; art a revelation of man. -
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in
the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising
real discretion. - Henry Steele Commager
The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a
palette. - Henry S. Haskins
To be an artist is to believe in life. - Henry Moore
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  Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart
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 Matisse
Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of
a tree so that it will grow better. - Henri Matisse
Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but
above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and
moods. - Henri Matisse
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity
devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter. - Henri
Matisse
Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the
advantage of permanence.  - Henri Matisse
. . I have always sought to be understood and, while I was
taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were
right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be
understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole
life without hatred and even without bitterness toward
criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the
clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred,
rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to
the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his
soul of everything which could make it more so. - Henri
Matisse
In our time there are many artists who do something
because it is new; they see their value and their justification
in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is
seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only;
making a subject better from its intrinsic nature. - Henri de
Toulouse Lautrec
From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of
things. When I was fifty I had published a universe of
designs. but all I have done before the the age of seventy is
not worth bothering with. At seventy five I'll have learned
something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of
trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am eighty you will see
real progress. At ninety I shall have cut my way deeply into
the mystery of life itself. At a hundred I shall be a marvelous
artist. At a hundred and ten everything I create; a dot, a line,
will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going
to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am
writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokosai, but
today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing.' -
Hokusai, The Drawings of Hokosai
Great art is an instant arrested in eternity. - Huneker
of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost. - Isak
Dineson, 'Babette's Feast'
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
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
I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the
minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my
painting a character of even greater bareness.  - Joan Miro
Painting or poetry is made as one makes love - a total
embrace, prudence thrown to the winds, nothing held back. -
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
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
The painting has a life of its own. - Jackson Pollock (1912 -
1956)
Every good painter paints what he is. - 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
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 painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.
- Jackson Pollock
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant
can discuss horticulture. - Jean Cocteau
We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it
is a form of truth. - John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), October
26, 1963
Pay no attention to what critics say. No statue has ever been
put up to a critic. - Jean Sibelius
Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue.
Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they
are or people might think we're stupid. - Jules Feiffer
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by
spectacular error. - John Kenneth Galbraith
Originality is something that is easily exaggerated,
especially by authors contemplating their own work. - John
Kenneth Galbraith
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough
suffering for anyone. - John Ciardi
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with
you. - Joubert
The writer must be willing, above everything else, to take
chances, to risk making a fool of himself - or even to risk
revealing the fact he is a fool. - Jessamyn West
In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence
is pretty fairly divided between the sexes. - Jane Austen
(1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
- Joseph Chilton Pearce
Everytime I paint a portrait I lose a friend. - John Singer
Sargent
Painting is a means of self-enlightenment. - John Olsen
How important are the visual arts in our society? I feel
strongly that the visual arts are of vast and incalculable
importance. Of course I could be prejudiced. I am a visual
art.  - Kermit the Frog
Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution. -
Karl Kraus
While I drew, and wept along with the terrified children I was
drawing, I really felt the burden I am bearing. I felt that I
have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an
advocate. It is my duty to voice the suffering of men, the
never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high. - Kathe
Kollwitz
My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw
as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as
I can. Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since
prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It
lives through magic. - Keith Haring
If you really want to upset your parents, and you are not
brave enough to be gay, go into the arts! - Kurt Vonnegut
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
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
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
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
Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative
mind. - Louise Nevelson
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
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it
becomes, and, ironically, the more real. - Lucian Freud
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was
giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's
what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm
only trying to do what I can't do. - Lucian Freud
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be
hung up next to the picture ... it is of no interest whether it is
an accurate copy of the model. Whether it will convince or
not, depends entirely on what it is in itself, what is there to
be seen. The model should only serve the very private
function for the painter of providing the starting point for his
excitement. The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks
worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities
which a painter took from the model for his picture were
really taken, no person could be painted twice. - Lucien
Freud
An artist has been defined as a neurotic who continually
cures himeself with his art - Lee Simonson
What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of
the pain we all have. - Lionel Trilling
Murder is a crime. Writing about it isn't. Sex is not a crime,
but writing about it is. Why? - Larry Flynt
What we play is life. - Louis Armstrong (1900 - 1971)
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 is like a shipwreck .. it's everyman for himself. - 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
I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products. -
Marcel Duchamp
I don't believe in art. I believe in artists. - Marcel Duchamp
Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only
be explored by those willing to take the risks. - Mark Rothko
(1903-1970)
Look, it's my misery that I have to paint this kind of painting,
it's your misery that you have to love it, and the price of the
misery is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. - Mark Rothko
It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not
matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is
the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good
painting about nothing. - 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
Drawing is deception. - Maurits Cornelius Escher
Lord, let me always desire more then I think I can do. -
Michelangelo
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
To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful
member of our society. - Man Ray, "Self Portrait"
Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the
plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time:
invention, discovery, revelation. - Max Ernst
I feel like giving up! - Max Liebermann
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by
themselves or by others. - Mark Twain
The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
- Mark Twain
If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself
one. - Mark Twain
Criticism is a queer thing. If I print, "She was stark naked"
and then proceed to describe her person in detail, what critic
would not howl? Who would venture to leave the book on a
parlor table? But the artist does this and all ages gather
around and look and talk and point. - Mark Twain
You can't depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of
focus. - Mark Twain
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. - Mark
Twain
My books are water; those of great geniuses are wine -
everybody drinks water. - Mark Twain
Don't ask me what I want to express with my pictures, ask
yourself, what they mean to you! - Michael Quack
The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in
seeing with new eyes. - Marcel Proust
All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our
life. - M. C. Richards
Do not fear mistakes - there are none. - Miles David
Creativity is...seeing something that doesn't exist already.
You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that
way be a playmate with God. - Michele Shea
Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow
without giving back. - Ned Rorem, In Art/The Artist
Every painting is a war. You have to struggle every day, and
to struggle every day with your inadequacies is a damn
nuisance. - Neil Welliver
Art is the highest task and proper metaphysical activity of
this life. - Nietzsche
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that
show the world its own shame. - Oscar Wilde
It is through… Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves
from the sordid perils of actual existence. - 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
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
I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist
has always to be out of step with his time. - Orson Welles
(1915 - 1985)
What distinguishes the artist from the dilettante? Only the
pain the artist feels. The dilettante looks only for pleasure in
art. - Odilon Redon
Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he
sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he
has seen. - Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)
Art is lies that tell the truth. - Pablo Picasso
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
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. - Pablo
Picasso
Painting is stronger than I am. It can make me do whatever
it wants. - Pablo Picasso
Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He
recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line.
He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the
best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the
time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the
first attempt. - Pablo Picasso
To draw, you must close your eyes and sing. - Pablo
Picasso
If my husband would ever meet a woman on the street who
looked like the women in his paintings, he would fall over in
a dead faint. - Mrs. Picasso
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. -
Pablo Picasso
There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but there are others who with the help of their art and their
intelligence transform a yellow spot into the sun. - Pablo
Picasso
My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a
general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the pope." 
Instead, I became a painter, and wound up Picasso. - Pablo
Picasso
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an
artist once he grows up. - Pablo Picasso
I don't say everything, but I paint everything. - Pablo
Picasso
I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. -
Pablo Picasso
The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed,
will set off a revolution. - Paul Cezanne
Don't be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation. - Paul
Cezanne
A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. - Paul
Cezanne
What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist
is always subordinate to nature? Art is in harmony parallel
with nature. - Paul Cezanne
Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art.
Otherwise, what would become of beauty? - Paul Gauguin
(1848 - 1903)
A critic in my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed,
he asks for my drawings. My drawings? Never! They are my
letters, my secrets. - Paul Gauguin
Art is either plagiarism or revolution. - Paul Gauguin
I shut my eyes in order to see. - Paul Gauguin
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. -
Paul Klee
The more horrifing the world becomes, the more art
becomes abstract. - Paul Klee
The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a
channel. - Piet Mondrian (1872 - 1944)
I am the primitive of the way I have discovered. - Paul
Cézanne
Drawing and color are not separate at all; in so far as you
paint, you draw. The more color harmonizes, the more exact
the drawing becomes. When the color achieves richness,
the form attains its fullness also - Paul Cézanne
An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons
it. - Paul Valer  When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally
Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I
could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I
could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be
kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined
the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is
sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision. - Penn
Jillette (1955 - ), Interview in WIRED magazine, 1993
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. -
Peter De Vries
White does not exist in nature. - Pierre Auguste Renoir
An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in
himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature - Pierre
Auguste Renoir
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
You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks
them all flat. - Pierre Auguste Renoir
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
When I feel a little confused the only thing to do is to turn
back to the study of nature before launching once again into
the subjects closest to heart. - Raoul Dufy
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
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"
Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms. - Roy Lichtenstein
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
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"
Life obliges me to do something, so I paint. - Rene Magritte
be thrilling… But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony… I
go to great pains to mask [the agony]. But the struggle is
there. It's the invisible enemy. - Richard Diebenkorn
No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and
have a pocket full of unexposed film. - Robert Adams
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for
writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was
too famous. - Robert Benchley
Every artist was first an amateur. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803 - 1882), Letters and Social Aims: Progress of Culture,
1876
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
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we
must carry it with us or we find it not. - Ralph Waldo
Emerson
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the
hear can imagine. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. -
Rembrandt
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
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
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is
knowing which ones to keep. - Scott Adams (1957 - ), 'The
Dilbert Principle'
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of
one's chosen form. - Stephen Nachmanovitch
Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented,
when they were supplied with food and women, to escape
the tediousness of life. - W. Somerset Maugham (1874 -
1965), 'Of Human Bondage', 1915
Life isn't long enough for love and art. - W. Somerset
Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works
with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works
with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. - St
Fancis of Assisi
What is written without effort is in general, read without
pleasure. - Samuel Johnson
[Art] is about as outrageous and murderous an act a person
can do short of really doing one physically. - Steven Wright,
In Humor
I went to the museum where they had all the heads and
arms from the statues that are in all the other museums. -
Steven Wright
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you
that you have one.  - Stella Adler
Great art can communicate before it is understood. - T. S.
Eliot
The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in
him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates;
the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the
passions which are its material. - T.S. Eliot, Tradition and
Individual Talent""
Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes. - Thomas
Wentworth Higginson
The big artist...keeps an eye on nature and steals her tools.
- Thomas Eakins
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
...dass in Wirklichkeit nichts Kunstlerischer ist als die
Menschen zu lieben - Vincent van Gogh, letter #538 from
Arles to Theo
The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without
knowing it. The strokes come like speech. - Vincent Van
Gogh
It is not the language of painters but the language of nature
which one should listen to, the feeling for the things
themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for
pictures. - Vincent Van Gogh
I've decided, I'm going to feed every little addiction and
silently go mad 'cause right now my writing sucks - Zaffel
Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the
painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself.
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
Garlic is to Food what Insanity is to Art - Anonymous, In
Senses/Taste

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard First I saw the mountains in the painting; then I saw the
public opinion. - Vincent van Gogh painting in the mountains. - Chinese Proverb

What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible
iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and
what one can do. - Vincent van Gogh, "The Letters of
Vincent van Gogh to His Brother"
The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting. - 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 Kandinsky
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing
without the work.
Imitation is the most serious form of flattery.
It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall
it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.
Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes
you a Nikon owner.
Art is work, to sell it is art.

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because
they destroyed; Art has remembered the people, because
they created. - William Morris
The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of
the future because he is the only person aware of the nature
of the present. - Wyndham Lewis
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  
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean that
you're an artist.
When I was a kid, a book I read advised young artist to be
themselves. That decided it for me. I was a corny kind of
guy, so I went in for corn. - Walt Disney
Mark Rothko's paintings are.... "like television sets for Zen
Buddhists" - Unknown
Vita brevis, ars longa, - Hippocrates
     

Art degraded, Imagination denied. - William Blake, In

Imagination

Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for

awhile, take a trip, do things--the next time I thought of this, I
found five years had gone by. - Willem De Kooning

In his lifetime van Gogh painted 486 paintings. Oddly

enough, 8975 of them are to be found in the United States. -
Werner Lansburgh

It's more fun writing bad books than reading good ones. -
Werner Lansburgh

Normal is in the eye of the beholder. - Whoopi Goldberg

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want

to achieve it through not dying. - Woody Allen