ART

Related Subjects: Architecture, Beauty, Criticism, Critics, Culture, Genius, Imitation, Literature, Music, Painting, Poets and Poetry, Sculpture, Singing, Skill, Temperament

1. Every art is social. It is the result of a relation between the artist and his time.—JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS, Our Business Civilization
   

2. Art is man's nature; nature is God's art.—PHILIP J. BAILEY, Festus
   

3. Art is choice.—BEZARD
   

4. The joy of successful creation is shot through with ardor that consumes even while it intoxicates.—GAMALIEL BRADFORD, American Portraits
   

5. One may do whate'er one likes
   In Art: the only thing is, to make sure
   That one does like it.—BROWNING, Pippa Passes
   

6. The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.—CARLYLE, Latter Day Pamphlets
   

7. The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.—G. K. CHESTERTON, Preface to Pickwick Papers
   

8. Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.—JEAN COCTEAU, A Call to Order
   

9. When a work of art appears to be in advance of its period, it is really the period that has lagged behind the work of art.—JEAN COCTEAU, A Call to Order
   

10. A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.—JOSEPH CONRAD, Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus
    

11. Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond—a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art—which is art.—JOSEPH CONRAD, The Mirror of the Sea
    

12. All passes. Art alone
    Enduring stays to us;
    The Bust outlasts the throne,—
    The Coin, Tiberius.—AUSTIN DOBSON, Ars Victrix
    

13. A nation's art-products and its scientific activities are not mere national property; they are international possessions, for the joy and service of the whole world. The nations hold them in trust for humanity.—HAVELOCK ELLIS, The Task of Social Hygiene

14. In the vaunted works of Art
    The master-stroke is Nature's part.—EMERSON, Art
    

15. Art is the surest and safest civilizer.—CHARLES B. FAIRBANKS, My Unknown Chum
    

16. The value of a work of art . . . must . . . depend upon some reference to external reality. In other words, its objectives must be evaluated in accordance with some hierarchy of general values.—JOHN GASSNER, A Note on Criticism
    

17. Nothing so resembles a daub as a masterpiece.—PAUL GAUGUIN, Intimate Journals
    

18. Art for Art's sake               
    Why not?
    Art for Life's sake              
    Why not?
    Art for Pleasure's sake       
    Why not?
    What does it matter, as long as it is art?—PAUL GAUGUIN, Intimate Journals
    

19. The public, in whose good graces lie the sculptor's or the painter's prospects of success, is infinitely smaller than the public to which literary men make their appeal.—HAWTHORNE, The Marble Faun
    

20. Art is the only clean thing on earth, except holiness.—J. K. HUYSMANS, Les Foules de Lourdes
    

21. There aren't twelve hundred people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend and don't care.—KIPLING, The Light That Failed
    

22. 'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes of the succeeding generation.—ANDREW LANG, Letters to Dead Authors
    

23. We must have no fear. Reason and truth may suffer apparent eclipse. But in us, in our hearts, they are eternally free. And looking down from the bright regions of art, the spirit may laugh at the triumphant folly of the hour. Not forsaken and alone, but secure in the bond uniting it with all that is best on earth.—THOMAS MANN, This Peace
    

24. The mania for immortality. A masterpiece must disappear with its author. Immortality in Art is a disgrace. The ancestors of our Italian Art, by their constructive power and their ideal of immortality, have built for us a prison of timidity, of imitation and of plagiarism. They sit there on grandfather chairs and forever dominate our creative agonies with their marble frowns; "Take care, children. Mind the motors. Don't go too quick. Wrap yourselves up well. Mind the draughts. Be careful of the lightning." Forward! Hurrah for motors! Hurrah for speed! Hurrah for draughts! Hurrah for lightning!—MARINETTI, Futurist Manifesto
    

25. The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.—MICHELANGELO
    

26. If you accept art it must be part of your daily lives.—WILLIAM MORRIS
    

27. I wish to be thoroughly disassociated from every "new" or "advanced" movement; every form of "ist," "ism," "post," "neo," "academic," or "inacademic." Also I refuse to use the same technical method to express such contradictory forms as a rock or a woman.—C. R. W. NEVINSON
    

28. I wish thoroughly to dissociate myself from all geometric mumbo-jumbo mathematical metaphysics, the pretentious Bloomsbury Belles, and affreux Intelligentsia, the New Sky, the Biblical Commentators, and all the Illustrators of Art Theorists and Literary Critics, who write endlessly on painting and esthetics, and the pure, pure art of the cocoa pinks and the chocolate browns.—C. R. W. NEVINSON
    

29. There are three arts which are concerned with all things; one which uses, another which makes, a third which imitates them.—PLATO, The Republic
    

30. Art helps nature, and experience art.—Proverb
    

31. The perfection of art is to conceal art.—QUINTILIAN
    

32. All loved Art in a seemly way
    With an earnest soul and a capital A.—J. J. ROCHE, The V-A-S-E
    

33. You desire a popular art? Begin by having a 'people' whose minds are liberated, a people not crushed by misery and ceaseless toil, not brutalised by every superstition and every fanaticism, a people master of itself, and victor in the fight that is being waged today.—ROMAIN ROLLAND, I Will Not Rest
    

34. When love and skill work together expect a masterpiece.RUSKIN
    

35. What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.—HOMER SAINT-GAUDENS
    

36. There is no such thing as experiment. There is only good and bad art. When a good thing appears to be very new, it is more likely that it is only something that has been forgotten, and is now suddenly remembered. A classic is simply a first work, the beginning of a tradition, and an entry into a fresh realm of human experience, understanding, and expression.—WILLIAM SAROYAN, Preface to My Heart's In the Highlands
    

37. All art is but imitation of nature.—SENECA
    

38. More matter, with less art.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
    

39. Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilized life.—HERBERT SPENCER, Essays on Education
    

40. All Arts are one, howe'er distributed they stand;
    Verse, tone, shape, color, form, are fingers on one hand.—WILLIAM W. STORY, Couplets
    

41. A Picture is not wrought
    By hands alone, good Padre, but by thought.
    In the interior life it first must start,
    And grow to form and colour in the soul;
    There once conceived and rounded to a whole,
    The rest is but the handicraft of art.—WILLIAM W. STORY, Padre Bandelli Proses
    

42. Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.—TOLSTOY, What is Art?

43. To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.—WHISTLER, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
    

44. Industry in Art is a necessity—not a virtue—and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.—WHISTLER, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
    

45. Art should be independent of all clap-trap—should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye and ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it.—WHISTLER, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
    

46. It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realize our perfection; through Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.—OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist
    

47. In art I pull no high-brow stuff,
    I know what I like, and that's enough.—WILLIAM W. WOOLLCOTT
    

48. Art is life seen through a temperament.—EMILE ZOLA