Quotes on Art

True values entail suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we?…Longing is true. It may be that there’s no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It’s part of our reality.

That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture

Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things. . .fail because we lack concentration--the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?

All who contribute to the overthrow of religion, or to the ruin of kingdoms and commonwealths, all who are foes to letters and to the arts which confer honour and benefit on the human race (among whom I reckon the impious, the cruel, the ignorant, the indolent, the base and the worthless), are held in infamy and detestation.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive. The more prolonged the halt in some unrelieved system of order, the greater the crash of the dead society.

Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal.

Botvinnik's right! When he says such things, then he's right. Usually, I prefer not to study chess but to play it. For me chess is more an art than a science. It's been said that Alekhine and I played similar chess, except that he studied more. Yes, perhaps, but I have to say that he played, too.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

Art should not have to be a certain way.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work

Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.

When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.

Also, since art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced. Anyone who understands the work of art owns it. We all own the Mona Lisa.

My art is not abstract, it lives and breathes

If today's arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times.

Or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living.

Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.

To awaken human emotion is the highest level of art.