quotations about art
Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds.
PETER ABRAHAMS
End of Story
Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Computers creating art is an upsetting concept mostly because of what it means about humans.
JASON LEE MILLER
"Automated Content Will Unmake Existence"
Art is the signature of man.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Everlasting Man
The art of art, the glory of expression, and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
WALT WHITMAN
preface, Leaves of Grass
I'd always thought of art as something that was expressed through certain tools: painting, sculpture, photography, writing, film, music, architecture. And yes, performance. But this performance went beyond performance. This was life.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Walk Through Walls: A Memoir
Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Pleasures of Life
In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
TOM ROBBINS
Skinny Legs and All
Art is man added to Nature.
FRANCIS BACON
Descriptio Globi Intellectus
Thus, then ... are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation: the medium, the objects, and the manner.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Art arises in those strange complexities of action that are called human beings. It is a kind of human behavior. As such it is not magic, except as human beings are magical. Nor is it concerned in absolutes, eternities, "forms," beyond those that may reside in the context of the human being and be subject to his vicissitudes. Art is not an inner state of consciousness, whatever that may mean. Neither is it essentially a supreme form of communication. Art is human behavior, and its values are contained in human behavior.
BAKER BROWNELL
Art Is Action
Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mystery and Manners
The work of art is a revelation of the innate goodness of matter. Matter narcissistically mirrors itself in art, with the artist's hidden hand that holds the mirror up, the impersonal mechanism by means of which matter makes its perfection manifest.
DONALD BURTON KUSPIT
Redeeming Art: Critical Reveries
I don't think there's any more dispiriting sight than a great work of art reduced to a slogan on a mug.
CRAIG BROWN
Daily Telegraph, November 22, 2010