Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
Art is the proper task of life.
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.
Art raises its head where creeds relax.
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.
Art is the daughter of freedom.
Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.
Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative.
Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.
Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny.
There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
A great artist is always before his time or behind it.
The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.
Insight is the first condition of Art.
Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people's mediocrities. That's precisely what 'trends' are - a search for something 'safe' - and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion.
All art is dependent on technology because it's a human endeavour, so even when you're using charcoal on a wall or designed the proscenium arch, that's technology.
The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.
Education is the art of making man ethical.
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
Art is a kind of illness.
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.
To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.
Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.
Every painting is a voyage into a sacred harbour.
I adore art... when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.
The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.
If you know somethin' well, you can always paint it but people would be better off buyin' chickens.
Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
Fine art is knowledge made visible.
I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota.
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.