Quotes on Good Art

Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it

Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.

To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honorable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artis en life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbor.

Something in me knows where I’m going, and - well, painting is a state of being. ... Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

Much good art got made while money ruled; I like a lot of it, and hardship and poverty aren't virtues. The good news is that, since almost no one will be selling art, artists - especially emerging ones - won't have to think about turning out a consistent style or creating a brand. They'll be able to experiment as much as they want.

When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician -- make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor -- make good art. IRS on your trail -- make good art. Cat exploded -- make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil or it's all been done before -- make good art.

In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.

The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist’s subject be religious to be Christian? I don’t think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

There’s no “correct path” to becoming a real artist. You might think you’ll gain legitimacy by going to university, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it’s all bullshit, and it’s all in your head. You’re an artist when you say you are. And you’re a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected.

Art, well good art at least, takes you to a place you go during the experience of it, and then after you experience it you are different.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is.

The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense.

There must be understanding between the artist and the people. In the best ages of art that has always been the case. Genius can probably run on ahead and seek out new ways. But the good artists who follow after genius — and I count myself among these — have to restore the lost connection once more.