Welcome to this blog space. I decided to start one just for you guys because sometimes I leave class frustrated because I haven’t been able to say as much as I would like to, and also because I haven’t heard comments from some of you in a while. So here is a space to debate about this questions that sometimes pop out.
Last class, several questions were formulated: What is art? What is the difference between a piece of art and a piece of crap?
Last class, several questions were formulated: What is art? What is the difference between a piece of art and a piece of crap?
Here are some definitions:
1- Art is a diminutive form of the common name Arthur. (I love this one!)
2- Art is a particular type of creative production generated by human beings.
1- Art is a diminutive form of the common name Arthur. (I love this one!)
2- Art is a particular type of creative production generated by human beings.
3- Art is the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
4- Art is the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria
5- Art is the manifestation of creative expression.
4- Art is the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria
5- Art is the manifestation of creative expression.
[source: wikipedia.org, and dictionary.com]
To the opposite of food, art lacks of a satisfactory definition (one that pleases everybody). That’s why I can’t compare entering into an art gallery with entering into a restaurant (sorry Bob). Food is food for everybody. Art means different things to different people. Therefore, when I enter an art gallery, someone else (with probably a different personal definition of art) has picked those pieces for me to see. Why do I have to accept somebody else’s criteria of what is art and what is not? Or even worse, of what is good art, and what is not?
Art is something that makes you think—said Laura.
I don’t know if I agree. I think that if we go through this path, at least I need to add the intentionality of the artist, of making somebody think.
The view of a road kill makes me think if I am going to die with my guts spread all over the pavement or not.
But even with the intention there, something, created intentionally to make me think, is art? I would say not always.
“Here is your review of your performance in this company last year. Think about it. If you keep making drawings instead of writing reports, you’ll lose your benefits.”
I like the above definition No.2. But this is my definition:
-Art is a particular type of creative production generated by human beings that makes you feel.
And once I feel, and I notice the feeling, I can start thinking about why do I feel that way, and what are the hidden thoughts beneath that feeling.
To the opposite of food, art lacks of a satisfactory definition (one that pleases everybody). That’s why I can’t compare entering into an art gallery with entering into a restaurant (sorry Bob). Food is food for everybody. Art means different things to different people. Therefore, when I enter an art gallery, someone else (with probably a different personal definition of art) has picked those pieces for me to see. Why do I have to accept somebody else’s criteria of what is art and what is not? Or even worse, of what is good art, and what is not?
Art is something that makes you think—said Laura.
I don’t know if I agree. I think that if we go through this path, at least I need to add the intentionality of the artist, of making somebody think.
The view of a road kill makes me think if I am going to die with my guts spread all over the pavement or not.
But even with the intention there, something, created intentionally to make me think, is art? I would say not always.
“Here is your review of your performance in this company last year. Think about it. If you keep making drawings instead of writing reports, you’ll lose your benefits.”
I like the above definition No.2. But this is my definition:
-Art is a particular type of creative production generated by human beings that makes you feel.
And once I feel, and I notice the feeling, I can start thinking about why do I feel that way, and what are the hidden thoughts beneath that feeling.
So the debate is open! what is your definition?
Haruka, go for it you too!
10 comments:
Why would "makes you feel" be different from "makes you think". Road kill makes me feel -- sorry for the animal, sorry for the person who hit the animal, but it's not art.
I agree with your resistance, Chris, with having someone else, a curator or a gallery owner, decide for me what is art. The food analogy doesn't work for me; we can all decide what's edible, even if we don't all want to eat it.
I think there's a think/feel component to art - it evokes something in the viewer (and the artist), and there's a congruence between that idea/concept/feeling that is evoked and the craft of the work -- how the idea/concept/feeling is executed.
THanks for starting this, Chris. I've never written a comment in a blog before!!!!
I just wanted to say that "Art is something that makes you think" is part of what I think art is but it doesn't really represent my definition of art as a whole. The question of what art is, is something I'm still trying to work out for myself. -- Laura
Michele,
I agree with you. The road kill also makes me feel. The difference is on the intentionality. However, even adding that- there is something missing in the definition. And the food analogy does not work for me either.
I think we are agreeing in the fact that "if it makes you think" and "if it makes you feel" is not enough in order to be considered art. But then, what is missing? Do we need to add that it has to be visually appealing? If so, I still don't know why that shelf was art.
Bob's and Kata's answers were in the line of "study the artist's life and career and you'll understand why". OK. I can do that. But then, I have other questions that I'll bring up in the next post, otherwise this is going to be too long.
I am glad you guys are posting! If any of you are interested in writing a post, let me know. I can set you up as author, and then you'll be able to.
Laura,
I admit I took your comment out of context. I understand you meant that that's and "add in" to the definition, not the whole thing. Don't take it personally, I just wanted to "pinch you" to make you post! Welcome! :)
I didn't take it personally. I'm just a private person and was surprised to see something I said in class put on the Internet representing my definition of what art is.
Honestly, I think it's something that can't really be put into words and that's why we have art. I think the definition of what art is changes from person to person and for each individual person, it changes over time and I think that's a good thing. That piece I responded to in class made me think, so that's why I said what I said in class.
Thank you to Cris for setting up this space for us to communicate and exchange our thoughts. Good idea. Like Michele, this is my 1st blog posting
In terms of defining art, that's an ambitious opening topic. I am hesitant to put my definition of art to writing, because my definition is fluid. If you ask me 10 different times in a day, I would probably have 10 different answers. So for discussion's sake, here are a couple of broad characteristics of art, based on my current thinking:
* Resonnance
* Makes a statement
* Elicits a response
* Characterizes the artist
I also change my definition all the time. Over the weekend it has mutated 5 or 6 times! Welcome to the blog!
excerpts from an essay by Leo Tolstoy from 1896:
#1. In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man.
#2. Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.
#3. Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as a means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner. The peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it from intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas by words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he transmits his feelings.
#4. The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man's expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man seeing him comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses courage and determination or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and phenomena.
#5. And it is upon this capacity of man to receive another man's expression of feeling and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is based.
#6. If a man infects another or others directly, immediately, by his appearance or by the sounds he gives vent to at the very time he experiences the feeling; if he causes another man to yawn when he himself cannot help yawning, or to laugh or cry when he himself is obliged to laugh or cry, or to suffer when he himself is suffering - that does not amount to art.
#7. Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the woods, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf's appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had experienced is art. If even the boy had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an encounter with a wolf and recounted it so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced when he feared the world, that also would be art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in imagination) expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, courage, or despondency and the transition from one to another of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by sounds so that the hearers are infected by them and experience them as they were experienced by the composer.
#8. The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most various - very strong or very weak, very important or very insignificant, very bad or very good: feelings of love for one's own country, self-devotion and submission to fate or to God expressed in a drama, raptures of lovers described in a novel, feelings of voluptuousness expressed in a picture, courage expressed in a triumphal march, merriment evoked by a dance, humor evoked by a funny story, the feeling of quietness transmitted by an evening landscape or by a lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a beautiful arabesque - it is all art.
#9. If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.
#10. To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.
#11. Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.
#12. 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.
#13. As, thanks to man's capacity to express thoughts by words, every man may know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by all humanity before his day, and can in the present, thanks to this capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in their activity and can himself hand on to his contemporaries and descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others, as well as those which have arisen within himself; so, thanks to man's capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to others.
#14. If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts, or like Kaspar Houser.
#15. And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from, and more hostile to, one another.
#16. And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.
#17. We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions, together with buildings, statues, poems, novels. . . . But all this is but the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human life is filled with works of art of every kind - from cradlesong, jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, up to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to which we attach special importance.
#18. This special importance has always been given by all men to that part of this activity which transmits feelings flowing from their religious perception, and this small part of art they have specifically called art, attaching to it the full meaning of the word.
#19. That was how man of old -- Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - looked on art. Thus did the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Christians regard art; thus it was, and still is, understood by the Mohammedans, and thus it still is understood by religious folk among our own peasantry.
#20. Some teachers of mankind - as Plato in his Republic and people such as the primitive Christians, the strict Mohammedans, and the Buddhists -- have gone so far as to repudiate all art.
#21. People viewing art in this way (in contradiction to the prevalent view of today which regards any art as good if only it affords pleasure) considered, and consider, that art (as contrasted with speech, which need not be listened to) is so highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their wills that mankind will lose far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art.
#22. Evidently such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied that which cannot be denied - one of the indispensable means of communication, without which mankind could not exist. But not less wrong are the people of civilized European society of our class and day in favoring any art if it but serves beauty, i.e., gives people pleasure.
#23. Formerly people feared lest among the works of art there might chance to be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art altogether. Now they only fear lest they should be deprived of any enjoyment art can afford, and patronize any art. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first and that its consequences are far more harmful.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
#24. Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art.
#25. There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without exercising effort and without altering his standpoint on reading, hearing, or seeing another man's work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of art. And however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by it).
#26. It is true that this indication is an internal one, and that there are people who have forgotten what the action of real art is, who expect something else form art (in our society the great majority are in this state), and that therefore such people may mistake for this aesthetic feeling the feeling of diversion and a certain excitement which they receive from counterfeits of art. But though it is impossible to undeceive these people, just as it is impossible to convince a man suffering from "Daltonism" [a type of color blindness] that green is not red, yet, for all that, this indication remains perfectly definite to those whose feeling for art is neither perverted nor atrophied, and it clearly distinguishes the feeling produced by art from all other feelings.
#27. The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else's - as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist - not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.
#28. If a man is infected by the author's condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the author and with others who are moved by the same work - then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.
#29. The stronger the infection, the better is the art as art, speaking now apart from its subject matter, i.e., not considering the quality of the feelings it transmits.
#30. And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions:
On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted;
on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted;
on the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.
#31. The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does it act on the receiver; the more individual the state of soul into which he is transferred, the more pleasure does the receiver obtain, and therefore the more readily and strongly does he join in it.
#32. The clearness of expression assists infection because the receiver, who mingles in consciousness with the author, is the better satisfied the more clearly the feeling is transmitted, which, as it seems to him, he has long known and felt, and for which he has only now found expression.
#33. But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased by the degree of sincerity in the artist. As soon as the spectator, hearer, or reader feels that the artist is infected by his own production, and writes, sings, or plays for himself, and not merely to act on others, this mental condition of the artist infects the receiver; and contrariwise, as soon as the spectator, reader, or hearer feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing for his own satisfaction - does not himself feel what he wishes to express - but is doing it for him, the receiver, a resistance immediately springs up, and the most individual and the newest feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any infection but actually repel.
#34. I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may be all summed up into one, the last, sincerity, i.e., that the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. That condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he will express the feeling as he experienced it. And as each man is different from everyone else, his feeling will be individual for everyone else; and the more individual it is - the more the artist has drawn it from the depths of his nature - the more sympathetic and sincere will it be. And this same sincerity will impel the artist to find a clear expression of the feeling which he wishes to transmit.
#35. Therefore this third condition - sincerity - is the most important of the three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition almost entirely absent from our upper-class art, which is continually produced by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or vanity.
#36. Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits, and which also decide the quality of every work of art apart from its subject matter.
#37. The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work form the category of art and relegates it to that of art's counterfeits. If the work does not transmit the artist's peculiarity of feeling and is therefore not individual, if it is unintelligibly expressed, or if it has not proceeded from the author's inner need for expression - it is not a work of art. If all these conditions are present, even in the smallest degree, then the work, even if a weak one, is yet a work of art.
#38. The presence in various degrees of these three conditions - individuality, clearness, and sincerity - decides the merit of a work of art as art, apart from subject matter. All works of art take rank of merit according to the degree in which they fulfill the first, the second, and the third of these conditions. In one the individuality of the feeling transmitted may predominate; in another, clearness of expression; in a third, sincerity; while a fourth may have sincerity and individuality but be deficient in clearness; a fifth, individuality and clearness but less sincerity; and so forth, in all possible degrees and combinations.
#39. Thus is art divided from that which is not art, and thus is the quality of art as art decided, independently of its subject matter, i.e., apart from whether the feelings it transmits are good or bad.
#40. But how are we to define good and bad art with reference to its subject matter?
Reading through the following answers from renowned people has helped me think in different ways about the question, "What is Art?" I agree with some; I disagree with others; some are just hilarious (like the Jack Handey one, for example). I hope this provides additional food for thought to help us all progress in our journey od understanding what art is. Sorry for the long post, but I think it's good stuff.
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall
- Cyril Connolly
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
- Oscar Wilde
Art is lies that tell the truth.
- - Piccaso
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
- Ad Reinhardt
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
- Albert Einstein
The greatest work of an artist is the history of a painting.
- Alberti
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
- Alberto Giacometti
All art is solitary and the studio is a torture area.
- Alexander Liberman
Art is what you can get away with.
- Andy Warhol
People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.
- Andy Warhol
Creative minds have been known to survive any sort of bad training.
- Anna Freud
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a huge granite mountain cannot be denied--it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
- Ansel Adams
An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.
- Charles Bukowski, "Notes of a
Dirty Old Man" ( $ ) ( ? )
An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
- Charles Horton Cooley
There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.
- Charlie Chaplin
If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!
- Claude Monet, flinging away a pair of glasses for which he had been fitted to correct a severe astig
Kunst ist Scheisse
- Dadaist Motto
Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all thedifference in art.
- Dante Gabriel Rosetti
Little kids draw pictures of the ground, the sky, and space in between. If you ask them what the in-between space is, they say 'that's where we are.'
- Ed McCullough
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
- Francis Bacon
Kandinsky was right to appreciate Cézanne. The emergence of triangularity in the ‘Large Bathers’ was an unconscious step in the right direction, a step about to break through the crust of the future’s pictorial surface. However, agile and muscular as it may have been, Cézanne’s triangle could not shake the pyramid anchoring Raphael’s composition. The dogged perseverance of this pyramid illuminates the mystical dead weight which Kandinsky and all abstract painting following him have always had difficulty accounting for, and which in the end we, if not they, cannot live without.
- Frank Stella
But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.
- Frank Stella
Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
- Georges Braque
They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it.
- Georges Seurat
Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life. Psychologically speaking, to discover something mysterious in objects is a symptom of cerebral abnormality related to certain kinds of insanity. I believe, however, that such abnormal moments can be found in everyone, and it is all the more fortunate when they occur in individuals with creative talent or with clairvoyant powers. Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.
- Giorgio de Chirico
A great artist… must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.
- Goethe
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
- Hans Hofmann
The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl.
- Heinrich Heine
It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
- Henri Matisse
It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision -- a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage.
- Henri Matisse
Precision is not reality
- Henri Mattisse
Art among a religious race produces relics; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.
- Henry Fuseli
All art is an individual's expression of a culture. Cultures differ, so art looks different.
- Henry Glassie
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance . . . and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
- Henry James
I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions. Beside the perfection of Turgenev I put the perfection of Dostoevski (is there anything more perfect than "The Ethernal Husband"?). Here, then, in one and the same medium, we have two kinds of perfection. But in van Gogh's letters there is a perfection beyond either of these. It is the triumph of individual over art.
- Henry Miller, "The Tropic of Cancer" ( $ ) ( ? )
Vita brevis, ars longa
- Hippocrates
When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college- that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?"
- Howard Ikemoto
When this girl at the museum asked me who I liked better, "Monet" or "Manet", I said, "I like mayonnaise." She just stared at me, so I said it again, louder. then she left. I guess she went to try to find some mayonnaise for me.
- Jack Handey
Art is coming face to face with yourself. That's what's wrong with Benton. He came face to face with Michelangelo-- and he lost
- Jackson Pollock
The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state and an attempt to point out the direction of the future - without arriving there completely.
- Jackson Pollock
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.
- James Baldwin
If you want to have a million dollars and be an artist, start with two.
- James Bauerle
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
- James McNeill Whistler
As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.
- James Mcneill Whistler
I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
- Joan Miro
That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.
- John A. Locke
There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
- John Constable, "Lecture" ( $ ) ( ? )
Nobody ever called Pablo Picasso an asshole
- Jonathan Richman
The function of the artist is the mythologization of the culture and the world. In the visual arts there were two men whose work handled mythological themes in a marvelous way: Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso
- Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth" ( $ ) ( ? )
Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.
- Julian Barnes
It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.
- Kojiro Tomita
If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.
- Kurt Vonnegut
If you really want to upset your parents, and you are not brave enough to be gay, go into the arts!
- Kurt Vonnegut
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man's reasonable perception into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man-we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling. The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means-by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspection, etc.-should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside. And it is only art that can accomplish this.
- Leo N. Tolstoy
Art renders accessible to men of the latest generations all the feelings experienced by their predecessors and also those felt by their best and foremost contemporaries . . . [Art] is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling . . . Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by those feelings and also experience them . . . A real work of art destroys in the consciousness of the recipient the separation between himself and the artist, and . . . also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.
- Leo Tolstoy, "What is Art?" ( $ ) ( ? )
Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
- Leonardo da Vinci
I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working.
- Louise Nevelson
The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.
- Lucian Freud
I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.
- Lucien Freud
The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.
- Lucien Freud
I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.
- Marcel Duchamp
Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him.
- Marcel Duchamp
Art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it. Art has absolutely no existence as varacity, as truth. People speak of it with great, religious reverence, but I don't see why it is to be so much revered. I'm afraid I'm an agnostic when it comes to art. I don't believe in it with all the mystical trimmings. As a drug it's probably very useful for many people, very sedative, but as a religion it's not even as good as God.
- Marcel Duchamp
Art is like a shipwreck .. it's everyman for himself.
- Marcel Duchamp
Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only be explored by those willing to take the risks.
- Mark Rothko
The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. He is an outsider.
- Mark Rothko
Great designers innovate, good designers emulate.
- Mark Stosberg
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that the others are behind the time.
- Martha Graham
Talent and all that are really for the most part just baloney. Any schoolboy with a little aptitude can perhaps draw better than I; but what he lacks in most cases is that tenacious desire to make it reality, that obstinate gnashing of teeth and saying, "Although I know it can't be done, I want to do it anyway
- Maurits Cornelius Escher
Lord, let me always desire more then I think I can do.
- Michelangelo
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
Art is the highest task and proper metaphysical activity of this life.
- Nietzsche
The proper school to learn art is not life but art
- Oscar Wilde
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
Art is the most intense mode of invidualism that the world has known.
- Oscar Wilde
The past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
- Oscar Wilde
Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?
- Pablo Picasso
I do not seek. I find.
- Pablo Picasso.
The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.
- Paul Cezanne
Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?
- Paul Gauguin
The more horrifing the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.
- Paul Klee
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.
- Paul Klee
An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.
- Paul Valéry
Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be the indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.
- Pierre Auguste Renoir
The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel.
- Piet Mondrian
Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Art is a way of saying what it means to be alive, and the most salient feature of existence is the unthinkable odds against it. For every way that there is of being here, there are an infinity of ways of not being here. Historical accident snuffs out whole universes with every clock tick. Statistics declare us ridiculous. Thermodynamics prohibits us. Life, by any reasonable measure, is impossible, and my life—this, here, now—infinitely more so. Art is a way of saying, in the face of all that impossibility, just how worth celebrating it is to be able to say anything at all.
- Richard Powers
One might truthfully say that abstract art is stripped bare of other things in order to intensify it, its rhythms, spatial intervals, and color structure. Abstraction is a process of emphasis . . . Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come into existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience -- intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.
- Robert Motherwell
Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.
- Rollo May, "The Courage to Create" ( $ ) ( ? )
There must be something about art... almost all cultures have done art. Its a refining of the senses, which are there to keep us alive. As far as we know, no other animals do that.
- Roy Lichtenstein
Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms.
- Roy Lichtenstein
Since mechanically obtained randomness contains all kinds of possible permutations, including the most regular ones, it cannot be relied upon always to exhibit a pervasive irregularity.
- Rudolf Arnheim, "Entropy & Art" ( $ ) ( ? )
Art is a half-effaced recollection of a higher state from which we have fallen since the time of Eden.
- Saint Hildegarde
The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad
- Salvador Dali
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
- Salvador Dali
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
- Scott Adams
The difference between mediocrity and excellence is attention to detail.
- Sebastian J. Barbarito
He who knows how to appreciate color relationships, the influence of one color on another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinitely diverse imagery.
- Sonia Delaunay
Life is not a support system for art. It is the other way around.
- Stephen King
Great art can communicate before it is understood.
- T. S. Eliot
You can never do too much drawing.
- Tintoretto
In the staircase of life, Art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
- Tom Robbins
My dear Tristan, to be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war.
- Tom Stoppard
Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in destructive action: Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners: Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memroy: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity: Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere; trajectory of a word tossed like a screeching phonograph record; to respect all individuals in their folly of the moment: whether it be serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, determinded, enthusiastic; to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them - with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least - with the same intensity in the thicket of one's soul - pure of insects for blood well-born, and gilded with bodies of archangles. Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colours, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE
- Tristan Tzara, "Dada Manifesto" - 1918 ( $ ) ( ? )
An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance. Almost dull, in fact. In reality, however, [it's] crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and [is] full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged ... It can contain anything but cannot sustain everything ... An empty canvas is a living wonder -- far lovelier than certain pictures.
- Vasili Kandinsky, (1866-1944)
I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.
- Vincent van Gogh
I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.
- Vincent van Gogh
...dass in Wirklichkeit nichts Kunstlerischer ist als die Menschen zu lieben
- Vincent van Gogh, letter #538 from Arles to Theo
There is no must in art because art is free.
- Wassily Kandinsky
The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.
- Wassily Kaninsky
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.
- William Faulkner
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remembered the people, because they created.
- William Morris
I've decided, I'm going to feed every little addiction and silently go mad 'cause right now my writing sucks
- Zaffel
Holly Cow, Ed!!!
I am going to need a month to read al this.
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