Quotes on Art

Stories are there to be told, and each story changes with the telling. Time changes them. Logic changes them. Grammar changes them. History changes them. Each story is shifted side-ways by each day that unfolds. Nothing ends. The only thing that matters, as Faulkner once put it, is the human heart in conflict with itself. At the heart of all this is the possibility, or desire, to create a piece of art that talks to the human instinct for recovery and joy.

By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream

The Arts and Sciences, essential to the prosperity of the State and to the ornament of human life, have a primary claim to the encouragement of every lover of his country and mankind.

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.

I would like to paint the way a bird sings.

As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

Design and color are not distinct and separate. As one paints, one draws. The more the colors harmonize, the more the design takes form. When color is at it's richest, form is at its fullest.

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

The language of art is celestial in origin and can only be understood by the chosen.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality, I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say in paint.

No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope that you are alert - ready - to see. What joy it is for paint to become a thing - a being. Believe in this miracle - it is your only hope. To will this transformation is not possible. Only a slow maturation can prepare the hand and eye to become quicker than ever. Ideas about art don't matter. They collapse anyway in front of the painting.

I love having my hands in the dirt. It is never a science and always an art. There are no rules. And if it comes down to me versus that weed I'm trying to pull out of the ground that doesn't want to come out? I know I'll win.

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.

Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.

I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.

Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.

Do you drink?" "Of course,I just said I was a writer.