My Favourite Art Quotes

Edmond and Jules De Goncourt
A painting in a museum probably hears more foolish remarks than anything else in the world.

James McNeill Whistler
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

Jean-Luc Godard
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Jean Arp
Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Lindsay Anderson
Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem.

Louise Nevelson
Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.

George Sand
Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Suzanne K. Langer
Art is the objectification of feeling.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Pablo Picasso
Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Havelock Ellis
Every artist writes his own autobiography.

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

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

Marc Chagall
Great art picks up where nature ends.

Emile Zola
I am an artist... I am here to live out loud.

Pablo Picasso
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

Emile Zola
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

Max Eastman
The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

Francis Bacon
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Michelangelo
The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.

Vincent Van Gogh
The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly; the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line.

Michelangelo
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

Wassily Kandinsky
There is no must in art because art is free.

Henri Matisse
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

Bob Rodale
To be the agent whose touch changes nature from a wild force to a work of art is inspiration of the highest order.

Henry David Thoreau
To enhance the quality of the day... that is the highest of the arts.

Thomas Berger
What is art but a way of seeing?

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

Edward Hopper
If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.


Danny Kaye
Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.

William Inge
Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.

John Lithgow in Third Rock From the Sun: Quotes
Out of suffering comes creativity. You cannot spell painting without pain.

Vincent van Gogh
Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle - more like music and less like sculpture - and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise.