Quotes about art
Welcome to our Art collection, an immersion into the realm of creativity, expression, and the intricate language that transcends words. In this curated compilation of quotes, we venture into the enchanting world of art, celebrating its diversity, the emotions it evokes, and the profound impact it has on our perceptions.
Art is more than mere visuals; it's a portal to emotions, a bridge between cultures, and a canvas for shared human experiences. Our Art quotes honor the vision of artists, the stories that unfold in brushstrokes and melodies, and the way art intertwines with life itself.
Whether you're an admirer of paintings that speak to the soul, captivated by the power of music to move hearts, or simply intrigued by the intersections of creativity and the human spirit, these quotes offer insights into the transformative nature and the myriad forms of art.
Embark on a journey that explores the colors of emotion, the symphony of imagination, and the dialogues that emerge from artistic endeavors. Discover the narratives of artists, the universal language of visual and performing arts, and the boundless interpretations that arise when creativity encounters the canvas of the world.
Will Ferrell
— American actor, comedian, producer, and writerI don't even consider myself an impressionist, really.
Joseph Kosuth
— American conceptual artistForget your ideas about art. Make a shopping list of everything you like about what you've done. Include qualities that you've seen in your life, in the world, and possibly in art that you like. Take this list and make a work that satisfies all of the things on your list without caring if it looks like art.
David Hume
— Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayistThe great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.
Napoleon Bonaparte
— French military and political leaderThe art of the police is not to see what it is useless that it should see.
Oprah Winfrey
— American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropistI see all art as a complement to telling people's stories. I'm in the storytelling business. I believe that the humanity that all of us share is the stories of our lives, and everybody has a story. Your story is as important as the next person's story.
Laurel Nakadate
— American feminist video artist, filmmaker, and photographerI present the thing we're going to do as a simple starting point. They all know it's an art piece and that it's all going to be recorded. And I have never had an experience where one of these men tried to take advantage of the situation. If they were guilty of anything it was of being lonely. It was never that they were violent or dangerous.
Julie Andrews
— English actress, singer, and authorFeed the body food and drink, it will survive today. Feed the soul art and music, it will live forever.
Max De Pree
— American businessman and writerThe key elements in the art of working together are how to deal with change, how to deal with conflict, and how to reach our potential...the needs of the team are best met when we meet the needs of individual persons.
Ludwig von Mises
— Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and sociologistHow pale is the art of sorcerers, witches, and conjurors when compared with that of the government's Treasury Department!
Michael Gungor
— American singer-songwriter, producer, music editor, author, and podcast hostThe danger of art created to rise above the noise is that it may end up being noise itself.
Jon Foreman
— American musician, the lead singer, guitarist, main songwriter and co-founderI've always been fascinated with the strong emotional ties that music can have. A song can bring you back to a place or a season of life like no other art form can.
Herman Melville
— American novelist, short story writerTo know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
Joseph Trapanese
— American composer, arranger, and producerOne important thing, just being a film composer in general, is to have a great respect for the art that you're working on - a great respect for the film and a great respect for the filmmakers.
Jason Reitman
— Canadian-American actor and filmmakerUnlike with any other art form, filmmakers have this unique web of festivals. There are hundreds. It is a democratic system in which you submit films, and if they are good enough, they play. The only barrier to entry is the submission fee.
John Adams
— American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding FatherWhenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.
Benjamin Rush
— Politician, physician, philosopher, educator, one of the founding fathers of the United States in the broadest sense of the termUnless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of Men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a Special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom.
Erykah Badu
— American singer-songwriter, record producer and actressI love watching Rihanna in fashion. I like to see her take chances and risks. I like seeing Naomi Campbell in the forefront. They're both women who stand out and use their bodies as canvases to introduce this functional art to the world. They carry it in a way that is very inspiring.
Ann Landers
— ColumnistAll married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal partnership.
Clive Bell
— English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury GroupA rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.
El Greco
— Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish RenaissanceThe language of art is celestial in origin and can only be understood by the chosen.
Ben Okri
— Nigerian poet and novelistYes, the highest things are beyond words. That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions.
Alexander Pope
— English poet, translator, and satirist of the Augustan periodPersons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature.
Allen Ginsberg
— American poet and writerFortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
Yves Saint Laurent
— French fashion designerI tried to show that fashion is an art. For that, I followed the counsel of my master Christian Dior and the imperishable lesson of Mademoiselle Chanel. I created for my era and I tried to foresee what tomorrow would be.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorArt originates in play - in improvisation, experiment, and fantasy; it remains forever, in its deepest instincts, playful and spontaneous, an exercise of the imagination analogous to the exercising of the physical body to no purpose other than ecstatic release.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterThe gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; “tout aboutit en un livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different.
Patricia Piccinini
— ArtistPerhaps because of this, many have looked at my practice in terms of science and technology, however, for me it is just as informed by Surrealism and mythology.
Jacques-Louis David
— Neoclassical Master & Political ArtistThe artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled sculptor, Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] the good musician, and the immortal Poussin, tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason.
D.T. Suzuki
— Pioneer of Zen Buddhism in the WestThe right art is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.
Will Ferrell
— American actor, comedian, producer, and writerYou want every movie to be a hit. But every painting isn’t a masterpiece.
David Hume
— Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayistAmong the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.
Napoleon Bonaparte
— French military and political leaderThe art of land warfare is an art of genius, of inspiration. On the sea nothing is genius or inspiration; everything is positive or empiric.
Laurel Nakadate
— American feminist video artist, filmmaker, and photographerI think it's a really good idea to be bumping into all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. So you make art with strangers. You give a reading. You move somewhere new and try to build a life. You grapple with humanity.
Michael Gungor
— American singer-songwriter, producer, music editor, author, and podcast hostThe noise around us determines how we speak. And how we listen. Just as a conversation suffers in a war zone, art suffers in a culture built on noise. So does our enjoyment of it.
Herman Melville
— American novelist, short story writerStrange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the art of smoking.
Jason Reitman
— Canadian-American actor and filmmakerFilmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments.
Erykah Badu
— American singer-songwriter, record producer and actressMy fourth mother, my godmother, she passed away a couple years ago - her name was Gwen. She was the theater director over at the gym where I grew up and learned about all those awesome things I told you about already. She was the one who taught me terms like "upstage" and "downstage," all those technical things about the art of what I do - how to breathe what I see, how to move. They were all her tactics, not anything learned or given to me through a theory, but rather by her natural abilities.
Ann Landers
— ColumnistAll married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love.
Clive Bell
— English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury GroupWe have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.
Ben Okri
— Nigerian poet and novelistThere ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.
Alexander Pope
— English poet, translator, and satirist of the Augustan periodSo modern 'pothecaries, taught the art By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part, Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Max De Pree
— American businessman and writerIn addition to all of the ratios and goals and parameters and bottom lines, it is fundamental that leaders endorse a concept of persons. This begins with an understanding of the diversity of people's gifts and talents and skills. Recognizing diversity gives us the chance to provide meaning, fulfillment and purpose, which are not to be relegated solely to private life any more than such things as love, beauty and joy. The art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling those gifts.
El Greco
— Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish RenaissancePainting, because of its universality, becomes speculation.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorArt does the same things dreams do. We have a hunger for dreams and art fulfills that hunger. So much of real life is a disappointment. That's why we have art.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterA writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
Patricia Piccinini
— ArtistI certainly don't see the humour in my work as something that detracts from its seriousness. It's just a way of making difficult messages more palatable.
Jacques-Louis David
— Neoclassical Master & Political ArtistI will never, for the future, paint the portrait of a tyrant until his head lies before me on the scaffold.
D.T. Suzuki
— Pioneer of Zen Buddhism in the WestArt always has something of the unconscious about it.
Joseph Kosuth
— American conceptual artistWhen objects are presented within the context of art (and until recently objects always have been used) they are as eligible for aesthetic consideration as are any objects in the world, and an aesthetic consideration of an object existing in the realm of art means that the object's existence or functioning in an art context is irrelevant to the aesthetic judgment.
David Hume
— Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayistBut in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind.
Napoleon Bonaparte
— French military and political leaderWar is not at all such a difficult art as people think. . . . In reality it would seem that he is vanquished who is afraid of his adversary and the the whole secret lies in that.
Laurel Nakadate
— American feminist video artist, filmmaker, and photographerThe act of recording requires you to look at and handle and touch things, so yes - art is more than just looking and recording. It's messy and time consuming and people might fall in love and get hurt.
Michael Gungor
— American singer-songwriter, producer, music editor, author, and podcast hostArt matters. It is not simply a leisure activity for the privileged or a hobby for the eccentric. It is a practical good for the world. The work of the artist is an expression of hope - it is homage to the value of human life, and it is vital to society. Art is a sacred expression of human creativity that shares the same ontological ground as all human work. Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator.
Eli Siegel
— Poet, critic, and educatorIs there in every work of art something which shows reality as one and also something which shows reality as many and diverse? - must every work of art have a simultaneous presence of oneness and manyness, unity and variety?
Erykah Badu
— American singer-songwriter, record producer and actressI don't want to think too much about how I'm carving and what I'm carving - you are just carving away the excess clay and there's a piece underneath there. And it's kind of like getting out of the way. Maybe that's what the commonality is: It's getting out of the way so that the art can speak.
Clive Bell
— English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury GroupThe representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful, but it is always irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of art, we must bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emotions.
Alexander Pope
— English poet, translator, and satirist of the Augustan periodStill follow sense, of ev'ry art the soul, Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorWriting is the most solitary of arts.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterA man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Patricia Piccinini
— ArtistIn one hundred years time people will look back and think 'these people were really worried about the environment, they were looking at things to do with global warming, and this is why they were making work about these issues'.
D.T. Suzuki
— Pioneer of Zen Buddhism in the WestZen Makes use, to a great extent, of poetical expressions; Zen is wedded to poetry.
Joseph Kosuth
— American conceptual artistThat celebrated marriage of science and art, photography, seemed at the time to join together how we look at the world, art, with how we were coming to know it, science.
Napoleon Bonaparte
— French military and political leaderA legislator must know how to take advantage of even the defects of those he wants to govern. The art consists in making others work rather than in wearing oneself out.
David Hume
— Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayistIf nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.
Erykah Badu
— American singer-songwriter, record producer and actressIn music, it makes for a good platform to take time and really mold a piece the way I need to mold it. When it comes to fashion, I create a functional art that moves.
Clive Bell
— English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury GroupIt is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.
Alexander Pope
— English poet, translator, and satirist of the Augustan periodA work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
Joyce Carol Oates
— AuthorArt is a means of memorialization of the past, a record of a rapidly vanishing world; a means of exorcising, at least temporarily, the ravages of homesickness. To speak of 'what is past, or passing or to come'-in the most meticulous language thereby to assure its permanence; to honor those we've loved and learned from and must outlive.
Jorge Luis Borges
— WriterIt is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.