Quotations about art

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-

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
– Ludwig van Beethoven-

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-

It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it – just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.
– Albert Camus-

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
– Albert Camus-

It is either easy or impossible.
– Salvador Dali-

A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man’s mind.
– Leonardo DaVinci-

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.
– William

Faulkner-

So wie die Verruecktheit in einem hoeheren Sinn, der Anfang aller Weisheit ist, so ist die Schizophrenie der Anfang aller Kunst, aller Phantasie. (As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.)
– Hermann Hesse-

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.
– James Joyce-

The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould,
The more the marble wastes
The more the statue grows.
– Michelangelo Buonarroti-

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-

I paint objects as I think them not as I see them.
– Pablo Picasso –

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.
– Pablo Picasso –

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
– Pablo Picasso –

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
– Pablo Picasso –

The object of art is to give life a shape. Midsummer Nights Dream
– William Shakespeare-

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
– Vincent Van Gogh-

Bad artists always admire each other’s work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice.