Quotes about Art

Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything. Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at a loss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of a man and a horse, not only recognisable as such, but even aggressively in drawing.

In nature, as in work of art, the isolation of an object tends to invest it with absoluteness, to endow it with that more-than-symbolic meaning which is identical with being.

It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.

I've always felt that a lot of modern art is a con, and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists.

The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance off.

A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

The secret of contentment is the realization that life is a gift, not a right. Next to faith this is the highest art - to be content with the calling in which God has placed you.

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure.

This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.

Between the marketplace and government there exists all of that which makes life worth living-family life, spiritual life, the art and culture that make our spirits soar.