Art Quotes - Page 37

In the example of the navigator, no writing was essential to draw the meaning of observing the object at a distance from the ship. In the real theobservation has been noted and that is enough to give it a meaning, a subjective meaning, a meaning exclusively important for the navigator himself.

And what the music elicits—in me, in most everyone who hears it and takes to it—is a strangely comforting, sensual melancholy, a gentle sadness, the kind that comes with soft rain. It’s the same for all truly great dark art. There’s a pleasure in seeing our shadows paraded beautifully. It’s liberating to find them so prettily decked out, a sort of reverse Halloween.

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

As a photographer you have a deep love for light, life and yourself. You know that the eyes of love aren’t blind, they are wide open. Only when your eye, heart and soul shine brighter than the sun, you realize how ordinary it is to love the beautiful, and how beautiful it is to love the ordinary.

If artists and poets are unhappy it is after all because happiness does not interest them.

The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.

I am bothered by poems I don't understand.

Seeing beautiful art is like feeling kisses from angels all over your face.

Art gropes it stalks like a hunter lost in the woods listening to itself and to everything around it unsure of itself waiting to pounce.

Keep it weird. They'll get it later.

I can certainly identify with The Villain. A Villain is someone who has a past, who is strongly opinionated, fearless, doesn't get intimated by anything, and went beyond suffering. It's an empowerment figure.

I always suspect an artist who is successful before he is dead.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

Have you killed anyone?” she asked quickly.“What? Did you miss what I said, about turning murder intoan art form?”“But you haven’t actually killed anyone yet, have you? I readyour file.”He glowered. “Technically, yeah, all right, maybe I haven’t

I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.

Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.

The stratagems by which briefly youameliorated, even seeminglyuntwisted what still twists within you —you loved their taste and lay thereon your sidenursing like a puppy.

So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?

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

There's a point at which when I start to know a man well--this isn't true of women--I wonder whether there's something in him that's evil. Something that's pure and can't be touched. This quality of evil may be related to the quality of artistry, for an artist has the same characteristics.

A month passed in silence and then came an email asking if Qayennat would care to further amend, fortify or prune various sections of her proposal; Like all communication for them so far, this was well written and polite but abhorrent in its covert attempt to stamp out anything like love, to turn passion into hot air. She wanted to tell them as much, inviting them to take their stuffy foundation and stuff it up their backside

Not every artistic person should have to be a photographer, but every photographer should be artistic.

I’m going to punch words in your ear holes.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.

The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.

Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people'--affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.

Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for art's sake: it exists for people's sake.

Love is an art and this love lacks artists.

Proportion is the heart of beauty.

The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible

A critic must be knowledgeable in several fields, practices, and mediums. Brushing off art that they personally don't understand, is not a critique.

It's clever but is it art?

It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He must create if he can, first and foremost, especially if his creation does not side-step the problems of his time.

The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.

... she wore a masterpiece smile with smudges of paint and graphite across her cheek, and her eyes were a Jackson Pollock painting.

What is bad for the heart is good for art.

Gormenghast. Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet beats away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of stone a doll's hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs... And darkness winds between the characters.- Gormenghast

All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.

The data on the economic utility of artists is really, really strong. Artists and entrepreneurs are the same people...and of course entrepreneurs are the people who provide all of the vision for the entire capitalist system. They're absolutely necessary.But conservatives tend to be so blind to art that they can't even see that the artists are the ones who drive the economy forward!

It's not what you look at that matters, It's what you see

In the past an artist produced things that were necessary socially; they were instruments, albeit of a special kind, that helped the dead reach eternity, spells to be cast, prayers to be liturgically fleshed. . . . The aesthetic component of those instruments enhanced their function but was never central, never an independent, nonutilitarian thing.

I'm an unabashed elitist. Everyone needs a good editor, and there is peril in worshiping amateurism and the unedited in science, art, and journalism.

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

She was never going to seek gainful employment again, that was for certain. She'd remain outside the public sector. She'd be an anarchist, she'd travel with jaguars. She was going to train herself to be totally irrational. She'd fall in love with a totally inappropriate person. She'd really work on it, but abandon would be involved as well. She'd have different names, a.k.a. Snake, a.k.a. Snow - no that was juvenile. She wanted to be extraordinary, to possess a savage glitter.

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass. The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. This requires a moment of pause--a contract with yourself through the object you look at or the page you read. In that moment of pause, I think life expands. And really the purpose of art--for me, of fiction--is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have. That is the moment of finding something which you have not known about yourself, or your environment, about others and about life.

The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell.

...hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV - I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay does not make one witty (you can suck a mile of cock, as my friend Sarah Thyre puts it, it still won't make you Oscar Wilde, believe me), the only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.

You know how creative people are, we have to try everything until we find our niche.

For ages past the Genius of Literature and the Genius of Art have walked together hand in hand. For the Goddess of letters is blind, and only she of Art can lend her sight.

It is wrong to assume that art needs the spectator in order to be. The film runs on without any eyes. The spectator cannot exist without it. It insures his existence.

How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art.

Edsel is the artist in our family. Art is something I know nothing about.

Too much war, hatred and fear in the world.Desperately needed: More art, love and poetry.

When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic I cannot afford to be less than an artist.

We are all born artists. The nature generally doesn’t discriminate among newborns with respect to art. Yet most of us try very hard as we grow, without knowing, to stop being artists.

A blank canvas is a playground for the imagination.

When I was your age, art was a lonely thing: no galleries, no collecting, no critics, no money. We didn't have mentors. We didn't have parents. We were alone. But it was a great time, because we had nothing to lose and a vision to gain.

He smirks, shaking his head and letting his eyes wander. I watch him carefully, wondering what I can say to get him to leave. “I’m not leaving until you answer some questions. Plus, I’m holding your sketchbook hostage, so you might want to cooperate.” I raise an eyebrow at him. I guess there isn’t much I can say. “This isn’t a hostage negotiation.” He chuckles half-heartedly as his eyes take me in, almost sizing me up. “I guess I should introduce myself.” He holds a hand out for me to shake. “I’m Nathan.” I stare at his hand for a moment. “Taylor,” I reply, meeting his eyes again without taking his hand. He lets his hand fall back to his side. “At least I got you to say something non-hostile.” “I haven’t been hostile,” I object. His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, haven’t you?” “Why don’t you leave me alone?” I snap. “Leave and don’t come back.” I move passed him, heading for my apartment. He can’t follow and annoy me if I lock the door. “Where are you going?” he demands. I look back over my shoulder and roll my eyes at him, indicating the answer should be obvious: anywhere he isn’t. Once inside, I slam the door behind me. “That was totally not hostile!” he calls after me, sarcastically. I quickly head for my bedroom door, slamming it, too.

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.