Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to imagine. -- Magdalena Abakanowicz

Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind. -- Magdalena Abakanowicz

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. -- John Adams

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. -- Scott Adams

The art of politics consists in knowing precisely when it is necessary to hit an opponent slightly below the belt. -- Konrad Adenauer

A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure. -- Theodore Adorno

Let each man exercise the art he knows. -- Aristophanes

What we play is life. -- Louis Armstrong

There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. -- Richard Avedon

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up. -- James Baldwin

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity. -- Daniel Barenboim

Each painting has its own way of evolving ... When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself. -- William Baziotes

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. -- Henry Ward Beecher

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. -- Henry Ward Beecher

I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.... -- John Berger

The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it's something that theatre can do, but it's rare; it's very rare. -- John Berger

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. -- Ambrose Bierce

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do. -- Elizabeth Bowen

By art he gladly found what he did seek, A full requital of his striving pain. Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure: A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. -- Anne Dudley Bradstreet

“Less is more” is said to have been one of the favorite maxims of architect Mies Van der Rohe. -- Robert Browning

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. -- Michelangelo Buonarroti

The stone unhewn and cold Becomes a living mould, The more the marble wastes The more the statue grows. -- Michelangelo Buonarroti

Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite -- getting something down. -- Julia Cameron

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. -- Albert Camus

[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. -- Al Capp

I say that good painters imitated nature; but that bad ones vomited it. -- Miguel de Cervantes

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art. -- Marc Chagall

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. -- G. K. Chesterton

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature. -- Cicero

Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. [1804] -- Benjamin Constant

When one buys some of my artwork I hope it is because they will wish to learn from it and not because they think it will match their drapes! -- Christian Cardell Corbet

It doesn't matter if people are interested. It's about you taking your stuff and shouting out into the void. -- Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests. -- David Cronenberg

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution. -- David Cronenberg

Perspective is the rein and rudder of painting. -- Leonardo DaVinci

Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else. -- Leonardo DaVinci

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. -- Eugene Delacroix

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost. -- Isak Dineson

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. -- Duke Ellington

Every artist was first an amateur. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it. -- Federico Fellini

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake. -- E. M. Forster

Art is either plagiarism or revolution. -- Paul Gauguin

I shut my eyes in order to see. -- Paul Gauguin

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters. -- Paul Gauguin

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed. -- Kahlil Gibran

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. -- Andre Gide

Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality. -- Goethe

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. -- Vincent van Gogh

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world. -- Edmond de Goncourt

Repetition is the death of art. -- Robin Green

The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention. -- Adolf Hitler

While I know that the beautiful, the spiritual and the sublime are suspect today, I have begun to stop resisting the constant urge to deny that beauty has a valid right to exist in contemporary art. -- Ian Hornak

“We work in the dark, We do what we can, We give what we have, Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task, The rest is the madness of art.” -- Henry James

I know just how frustrating it can be when you're tired and exhausted, but you still want to draw something. -- Ward Jenkins

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision. -- Penn Jillette

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end. -- James Joyce

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being. -- Carl Jung

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration. -- Frida Kahlo

The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it. -- Louis I Kahn

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. -- John F. Kennedy

I find working with glass meditative, almost therapeutic. I can leave the world behind, and focus... The simplicity of form, the drama of rich, intense colour, the joy of challenge, and the challenge of endurance... The piece, when it is over, is not what is made, but how it is made. -- Andrew Kuntz

No sketches first, no studies, that’s long past: I do what many dream of all their lives, Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such -- On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive - you don’t know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, - Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter) - so much less!

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. -- Oscar Levant

Sadistic excess attempts to reach roughly and by harshness what art reaches by fineness. -- Percy Wynham Lewis

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress. -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. -- Amy Lowell

What I dream of is an art of balance. -- Henri Matisse

Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is. -- Henri Matisse

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life. -- W. Somerset Maugham

Life isn't long enough for love and art. -- W. Somerset Maugham

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem. -- Rollo May

It's not your painting anymore. It stopped being your painting the moment that you finished it. -- Jeff Melvoin

Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own. -- Piero Milani

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. -- Piet Mondrian

The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul. -- Thomas Moore

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual. -- Nickolas Muray

Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas. -- Elizabeth Murray

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form. -- Stephen Nachmanovitch

Un croquis vaut mieux qu’un long discours.Fr., "A sketch is better than a long speech." -- Napoleon

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. -- Joseph Chilton Pearce

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. -- Pablo Picasso

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. -- Pablo Picasso

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun. -- Pablo Picasso

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. -- Pablo Picasso

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. -- Pablo Picasso

My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. -- Pablo Picasso

Give me a museum, and I'll fill it. -- Pablo Picasso

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. -- Pablo Picasso

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. -- Jackson Pollock

If contemporary art touches me it is due to this tense and fascinating search for the new and unknown. -- Georges Pompidou

Contemporary art, art which is in essence contradictory : as strict as mathematics or violently lyric, sincere to the point of shamelessness or insolent in deception, an explosion of colour or joy or a negation of everything, including oneself, it is always on the lookout for tomorrow. Isn't this the image of our world ? -- Georges Pompidou

Good art can not be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise. -- Ezra Pound

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible. -- Colin Powell

Art is the only thing you cannot punch a button for. You must do it the old-fashioned way. Stay up and really burn the midnight oil. There are no compromises. -- Leonytne Price

All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life. -- M. C. Richards

With nothing can one approach a work of art so little as with critical words: they always come down to more or less happy misunderstandings. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

I can't criticize what I don't understand. If you want to call this art, you've got the benefit of all my doubts. -- Charles Rosin

Every garden-maker should be an artist along his own lines. That is the only possible way to create a garden, irespective of size or wealth. -- Vita Sackville-West

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend. -- John Singer Sargent

If you were in a burning house and there was a cat and a Rembrandt, what would you save? The cat ... you would save the cat, because the cat is alive. The art is dead. It's just paint on a canvas, ink on a page. To live for art is to deny life. It's just to destroy life. -- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

Nothing is more the child of art than a garden. -- Sir Walter Scott

All art is an imitation of nature. -- Seneca

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none. -- Ben Shahn

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. -- William Shakespeare

Creativity is ... seeing something that doesn't exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God. -- Michele Shea

Beauty was darkness till she came. Then paint her eyes, whose active light Shall make the former shadows bright, And with their every beam supply New day, to draw her picture by. -- James Shirley

Art is the signature of civilizations. -- Beverly Sills

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech. -- Simonides

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion. -- Ralph Sockman

Art has never been made while thinking of art. -- Niko Stumpo

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings. -- George Tooker

So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. -- Brenda Ueland

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. -- Orson Welles

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before. -- Edith Wharton

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors? -- Edith Wharton

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. -- Alfred North Whitehead

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. -- Walt Whitman

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life. -- Oscar Wilde

Women, poets, and especially artists, like cats; delicate natures only can realize their sensitive nervous systems. -- Helen M. Winslow

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found. -- George E. Woodberry

Laying out grounds may be considered a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting. -- William Wordsworth

All art is but imitation of nature. -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger)

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important. -- Lin Yutang

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. -- Frank Zappa

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