Art Quotes - Page 3

Will you dance for me? Let your breasts roam for a moment -- I need to see how they dance.''Okay.' She danced, and as she danced, she tried to think of the most delicious salads she could imagine -- with artichokes and sundried tomato and blue cheese dressing, and beets, lots of beets.

I’m doing the absolute opposite of giving myself away. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be completely visible. If the painting sells, I’ll be in Paris, hanging on a wall. If anything, I’m being selfish. It’s perfect; all the freedom of creation, with none of the fuss.

What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless 'Why?' and 'What next?'("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

While art should never become exclusionary and elitist, any culture which fails to support its artists is only contributing to its own impoverishment. (Beyond Religion, p. 122)

Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams - their visions, really - we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We are engaged in a sacred transaction of which we know only a little: the shadow, not the shape.

I want to understand the strings that are tied between me and certain other people and if they really can stretch through infinite time and space without ever breaking. Are soul mates real, and is my life ever going to make sense?

Painting calmed the chaos that shook my soul.

This mind is continuous and ever taxing, Sleep is an endeavoring luxury for the carnivorous mind

In my early work, I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotions. This was partly due to my feelings about myself and party due to my feelings about painting at the time. I sort of stuck to my guns for a while but eventually it seemed like a losing battle. Finally one must simply drop the reserve.

Revolutionary art need not be overtly political in content; what is more important is that it demand a new means of perception on the part of its spectators. The subject in process/on trial can thus be fundamentally transformed. Change here, at the level of individual consciousness, is a necessary element of social change. Seen in this way, the arts are not merely reflective of social relations but are productive of social relations.

Real faith looks beneath the surface. Real faith knows that faith works sometimes in dark places. Real faith knows that sometimes in order to see a change, you will have to steer through your situation to really see it.

Dance resides within us all. Some find it when joy conquers sorrow, others express it through celebration of movements; and then there are those... whose existence is dance,

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

Art invites us to become explorers and excavators of our vast internal landscapes, discovering new terrain and digging deep into the past to unearth forgotten experiences and emotion.

I barely registered moving into the long gallery, one hand absentmindedly wrapping around my throat as I looked up at the paintings.So many, so different, yet all arranged to flow together seamlessly... Such different views and snippets and angles of the world. Pastorals, portraits, still lifes . . . each a story and an experience, each a voice shouting or whispering or singing about what that moment, that feeling, had been like, each a cry into the void of time that they had been here, had existed. Some had been painted through eyes like mine, artists who saw in colors and shapes I understood. Some showcased colors I had not considered; these had a bend to the world that told me a different set of eyes had painted them. A portal into the mind of a creature so unlike me, and yet . . . and yet I looked at its work and understood, and felt, and cared.

In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

The Seeker, The Teacher and The Genius:Knowing is an art; communicating that knowledge is art twice over; but it is only the genius who can use that knowledge.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

With the plundered people transferring their energies into relaxed and receptive thoughts, degradation and lust for power produced art.

Art is whatever makes you proud to be human.

The result may be important but it’s not the actual measure. The measure is the feeling you have made contact with something.

People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art.

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.

I do write about men now and then, but I mostly write about women because that's the work I like best. When I became a feminist, I realized that somebody had to write all about this women's art that was out there ignored, and it was going to be me. And of course the ideas were particularly interesting to me, and the discoveries, about what women's art was and could be. I often say I'm more interested and mediocre art by women than in mediocre art by men – which is interpreted as I only like mediocre art or women only do mediocre art – all that shit. I don't write about mediocre art but I look at it and it does interest me for the information it gives me about women's imagery, women's psyches, women's lives, women's experience.

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

There’s only one way to assure consistently good work. That is consistently thorough preparation.

As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I've no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you're a bore.

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.

Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics.

My heart was full and uplifted; it seemed that in my soul the question arose whether such things as Art, literature, science encompassed and completed life or whether there was still something in the distance which encompassed it even more completely and filled it with a far greater happiness.

Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

Standing naked on the beach with all of my secrets between my legs, I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself…

Storytelling--that's not the future. The future, I'm afraid, is flashes and impulses. It's mode up of moments and fragments, and stories won't survive.

A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.

Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.

There is something about the act of studying an unclothed body, as an artist does, that allows a person to appreciate it as pure form, regardless of the kinds of traits traditionally regarded as imperfections. In a figure drawing class, an obese woman's folds of flesh take on a kind of beauty. You can look at a man's shrunken chest or legs or buttocks with tenderness. Age is not ugly, just poignant.

It's good to vandalize one's own work.

The identification of fantasy is always an attempt to avoid one's own suffering: the identification of art is the sharing in the suffering of another.

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. Art is the aesthetic ordering of experience to express meanings in symbolic terms, and the reordering of nature--the qualities of space and time--in new perceptual and material form. Art is an end in itself; its values are intrinsic. Technology is the instrumental ordering of human experience within a logic of efficient means, and the direction of nature to use its powers for material gain. But art and technology are not separate realms walled off from each other. Art employs techne, but for its own ends. Techne, too, is a form of art that bridges culture and social structure, and in the process reshapes both.

Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.

You are my other self

The purpose of art is to create heavens to balance the world because there are so many hells in the world, there are wars, tortures and oppressions, there is unhappiness etc.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I have learned to thank God for what I cannot see, I have learned to trust God with what I cannot.

Divinity is accident of nature, magic is the work of an art.

Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is what makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.

Life is like butter - when things cool down it can be reshaped

SELF PORTRAIT: Throwing Armfuls of Air into the Air

I came to pen another poem for you, but even every unwritten poem is you.

What is life? Life is living in this moment, experiencing and experimenting but experience isn’t life. Life is reflecting and meditating but reflection isn’t life. Life is helping and guiding but philanthropy isn’t life. Life is eating and drinking but food isn’t life. Life is reading and dancing but art isn’t life. Life is kissing and pleasuring but sex isn’t life. Life is winning and losing but competition isn’t life. Life is loving and caring but love isn’t life. Life is birthing and nurturing but children aren’t life. Life is letting go and surrendering but death isn’t life. Life is all these things but all these things aren’t life. Life is always more.

I believe the greatest pleasure in writing is in the progressive artistry of it. Each project is an attempt to do better than before - to produce a worthy work of art - something having meaning not only for the writer but also for those who may share the experience of it later. I treasure the hope of producing something that will make a difference in the world - some kind of positive change.

Publishing is a business and writing is an art. The two have to be crammed together despite the clearly different motivations behind them.

The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.

Please DO waste art materials. Use paper. Empty paint jars. Deplete pens. if it's teaching you stuff, it's not being wasted.

Truth in art is truth n circumstances.

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

As I write, My fingers tap tap the keys the way Ravi Shankar's fingers pluck and strum the strings of his sitar.