05.19.07
Art Quotes
Life is not a support system for art. It is the other way around.
- Stephen King
Great art can communicate before it is understood.
- T. S. Eliot
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
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
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 Kaninsky
Art degraded, Imagination denied.
- William Blake, In Imagination
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
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
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
- Donald Knuth, In Technology/Computers
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
Garlic is to Food what Insanity is to Art
- Anonymous, In Senses/Taste
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/Douglas Adams
[Art] is about as outrageous and murderous an act a person can do short of really doing one physically.
- Stephen Wright, In Humor/Steven Wright
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/Ani Difranco
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 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
