Quotes on Art

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

Art is the proper task of life.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

I just like art. I get pure pleasure from it. I have a lot of wonderful paintings, and every time I look at them I see something different.

The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.

And though the philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling.

But I, Caesar, have not sought to amass wealth by the practice of my art, having been rather contented with a small fortune and reputation, than desirous of abundance accompanied by a want of reputation.

Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.

The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete. It marks the triumph of the carnal.

Politics is the art of acquiring, holding, and wielding power.

Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.

When people say, 'I don't get art' ... that means art is working.

That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.

And so while dreams are the individual man's play with reality, the sculptor's art is (in a broader sense) the play with dreams.

Cubism is the art of depicting new wholes with formal elements borrowed not only from the reality of vision, but from that of conception.

In the last analysis, provincialism is your belief in yourself, in your neighborhood, in your reality. It is patriotism without belligerence. Convincing cases have been made to show that all great art is provincial in the sense of reflecting a place, a time, and a Zeitgeist.

Realism should only be the means of expression of religious genius... or, at the other extreme, the artistic expressions of monkeys which are quite satisfied with mere imitation. In fact, art is never realistic though sometimes it is tempted to be. To be really realistic a description would have to be endless.