Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.
—Andy Warhol (1928–87) American Painter, Printmaker, Film Personality
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
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Caricature is rough truth.
—George Meredith (1828–1909) British Novelist, Poet, Critic
Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
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
Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
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
Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
All art is an imitation of nature.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
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 is either plagiarism or revolution.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Art hath an enemy called ignorance
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English Dramatist, Poet, Actor
A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
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 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
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
—Quintilian (c.35–c.100 CE) Roman Rhetorician, Literary Critic
If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Russian Marxist Revolutionary
Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
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
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
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
—William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter
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