Quotes on Art Is

People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist’s statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance.

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.

My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement.

Variety is more than a means of avoiding boredom, since art is more than an entertainment of the senses.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a will to renewal. This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of crises - of rupture, repudiation and resistance. When there is no crisis, there is stagnation, petrifaction and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author. There is no authoritative voice. There are only multiple readings.

I believe that all great art holds the power to dissolve things: time, distance, difference, injustice, alienation, despair. I believe that all great art holds the power to mend things: join, comfort, inspire hope in fellowship, reconcile us to our selves. Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place.

It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

Making art is complicated because the categories are always changing. You just have to make your own art, and whatever categories it falls into will come later.

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising.

All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it?

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.

Art is the expression of imagination, not the reproduction of reality.

I think all art is about control, the encounter between control and uncontrollable.

Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.

Art is long, and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.