Quotes on Art

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt; perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been a very negative thing. I know that I have wanted very much to write books that are accessible to the widest audience possible.

Yesterday I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things.

I feel that my environment reflects my belief in the grace and art and elegance of living simply.

Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.

Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.

It is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.

Although the photographer and the art thief were close friends, neither had ever taken the other's picture.

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.

And its object is Art not power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation.

Ah, art! Ah, life! The pendulum swinging back and forth, from complex to simple, again to complex. From romantic to realistic, back to romantic.

Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

Art isn't meaningless... It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.

I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.