The perfection of art is to conceal art.
—Quintilian (c.35–c.100 CE) Roman Rhetorician, Literary Critic
Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.
—Jacques Barzun (b.1907) French-born American Historian, Philosophers
An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that’s hard for a puritan to understand.
—Gunter Grass (1927–2015) German Novelist, Poet
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.
—Angela Davis (b.1944) American Political Activist, Academic
Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature’s monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) Italian-born French Poet, Playwright
There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn’t make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American Writer
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
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
In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.
—Louis Kronenberger (1904–80) American Drama, Literary Critic
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.
—George Edward Woodberry (1855–1930) American Literary Critic, Poet
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.
—Andy Warhol (1928–87) American Painter, Printmaker, Film Personality
Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.
—William Morris (1834–96) British Designer, Craftsman, Poet, Writer
Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846) English Painter, Writer
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?
—Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South African Novelist, Short-Story Writer
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
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 (1853–90) Dutch Painter
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
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
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
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
Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Art for art’s sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden… it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) Italian-born French Poet, Playwright
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
Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
—George Sand (1804–76) French Novelist, Dramatist
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet