I rarely draw what I see. I draw what I feel in my body.
I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me.
History develops, art stands still.
My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings.
I’m the type of person who far prefers a vacation filled with trips to museums and art galleries, shopping and exploring vintage flea markets, people-watching at cafes, and discovering delicious restaurants as opposed to lounging on a beach for days on end.
An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.
Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence.
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.
What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn’t be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.
Art is too serious to be taken seriously.
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
I don’t need the money, dear. I work for art.
Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.
Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
Be true to yourself. Make each day a masterpiece. Help others. Drink deeply from good books. Make friendship a fine art. Build a shelter against a rainy day.
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.
You don’t have to compose a masterpiece every time, but I think the challenge of art is always searching for something different, searching for a new sensitivity, a new perspective, a new vision.
A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.
Art is my life and my life is art.
Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life.
Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture.
It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.
What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap.
The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
If commercialization is putting my art on a shirt so that a kid who can’t afford a $30,000 painting can buy one, then I’m all for it.
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.
It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art.
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.
All art is political in the sense that it serves someone’s politics.
Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.
My wife Victoria Harwood was art director on ‘Far North,’ and she had designed my student film, ‘The Sheep Thief.’
The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.
Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.
I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.
The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself.
Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.
I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can’t be done in one picture.
Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.
Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.
But I am a lover of all kinds of art. And I just can’t stick to one thing. I guess I could if I made myself, but I’d always be looking the other way, for other things.
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it… try to fake three laughs in an hour – ha ha ha ha ha – they’ll take you away, man. You can’t.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God’s grandchild.
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.
It’s clever, but is it Art?
When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard.
Our Father which art in heaven – Stay there – And we will stay on earth – Which is sometimes so pretty.
We have spent billions to go to the moon – we go to this lesser satellite called the moon and say we are in space, but we are in space right now; we just don’t feel ourselves to be in space. Some forms of art and some forms of spirituality do give us that sense.
There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.
All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.
All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.
To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.
The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself.
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it – thou art a fool.
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother’s face, her aspect and her attitude.
The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.
Art is all in the details.
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.
Art is a critical component in a well-rounded education. Art is the level playing field – no matter how rich or poor, tall or short, pretty or ugly to the bone, if you can draw, you can find personal fulfillment and build self-confidence. Art is the highest achievement of mankind.
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.
The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds.
Music has the power to bring people together like no other art form.
There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music.
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Art is eternal, but life is short.
Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.
