Quotes about Art
Whenever a great painter... does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very true.
- Michelangelo
Never judge a work of art by its defects.
- Washington Allston
I've never felt a desire (and I don't believe I ever shall) to bring the public to my work... a certain popularity seems to me the least desirable of things.
- Vincent Van Gogh
The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.
- CS Lewis
Every single work of art is the fulfillment of a prophecy; for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image.
- Oscar Wilde
Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What makes a good work of art is something that honors certain traditions and breaks with others.
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Artists should never think of themselves as an idol. Fame is a side effect of one's work.
- Marina Abramovic
Devotion is like the candle which Michael Angelo used to take in his pasteboard cap, so as not to throw his shadow upon the work in which he was engaged.
- Phillips Brooks
Perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.
- Erica Jong
Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.
- Martha Graham
...a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.
- Arthur Schopenhauer