Quotes about Art

Art can only be truly Art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.

Art lives where absolute freedom is, because where it is not, there can be no creativity.

The writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper.

Make friendship a fine art.

He paints for the blind, and we are the blind, and he lets us see for sure what we saw long ago but weren't sure we saw. He paints for the dead, to remind us that - great good God, think of it - we're alive ...

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

If you are not passionate in life, you can't be passionate in art.

My first paintings were of my dreams. They were more real to me than the reality I was living in--I didn't like my reality. I remember waking up, and the memory of my dreams was so strong that I would write them down, and then I would paint them, in just two very particular colors, a deep green and a night blue. Never anything else.

I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long. She edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph where I'm naked.

In the beginning, I was a painter, but the moment I stood in front of the public and expressed my ideas using my body as the object and subject of the work, immediately it was clear that this is my best medium. I struggled with acceptance; my early career was hell. But it took me all these years to create a foundation so that performance would become accepted in the same way as photography and video. You have to believe that you're right, even if everybody believes you are wrong.

It was a big base of my performance art ... the idea of here and now ... not something that's happening in the past or the future. It's always happening. It's always now.... Only what matters is the present.

Today is the first day and last day of your life...try to make every day a masterpiece.