If I didn’t start painting, I would have raised chickens.
—Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American Painter, Artist
Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
I can’t work without a model. I won’t say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.
—Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) Dutch Painter
To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian Novelist
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.
—Andre Breton (1896–1966) French Poet, Essayist, Critic
A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Good art however “immoral” is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Art is science made clear.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher
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 (1809–49) American Poet
In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
—Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
The great artist is a slave to his ideals.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
With an apple I will astonish Paris.
—Paul Cezanne (1839–1906) French Painter
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he’s really needed.
—David Hockney (b.1937) English Painter, Draughtsman
Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
—Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Composer, Musician
I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.
—William Morris (1834–96) British Designer, Craftsman, Poet, Writer
What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61) English Poet
Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.
—Edgard Varese (1883–1965) French-American Composer
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.
—Andy Warhol (1928–87) American Painter, Printmaker, Film Personality
Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.
—Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
—Quintilian (c.35–c.100 CE) Roman Rhetorician, Literary Critic
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
—John Ciardi (1916–86) American Poet, Teacher, Etymologist, Translator
Art hath an enemy called ignorance
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English Dramatist, Poet, Actor
The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.
—Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) French Philosopher, Writer, Feminist
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape… it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.
—Marilyn French (1929–2009) American Feminist Author
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
—Michelangelo (1475–1564) Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Poet, Engineer
I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.
—Angela Carter (1940–92) English Novelist
For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential—the imagination.
—Lawrence Durrell (1912–90) British Biographer, Poet, Playwright, Novelist
A picture is a poem without words.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
—Jean-luc Godard (b.1930) French-born Swiss Film Director, Film Critic
Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Caricature is rough truth.
—George Meredith (1828–1909) British Novelist, Poet, Critic
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 (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
All art is an imitation of nature.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic