Good art quotes

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Amy on Salt Spring
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Good art quotes

Post by Amy on Salt Spring »

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

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau

An artist has been defined as a neurotic who continually cures himself with his art
Lee Simonson

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
Paul Valery

Art is lies that tell the truth.
Piccaso

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
Alberto Giacometti

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

All art is solitary and the studio is a torture area.
Alexander Liberman

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

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
Charles Horton Cooley

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all thedifference in art.
Dante Gabriel Rosetti

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

People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
William Faulkner, In Frustration

Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
Leonardo da Vinci

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

Re: Good art quotes

Post by Cynthia »

Amy on Salt Spring wrote: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

All art is solitary and the studio is a torture area. Alexander Liberman

People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy. William Faulkner, In Frustration

Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
Leonardo da Vinci
I couldn't agree more with Vonnegut. Going to art school was tantamount to becoming a social deviant for my folks...and Liberman has a good sense of humor about the torture chamber known as a studio. Faulkner knew his vegetables, but my favorite recent quote from an artist is by Twyla Tharp, bless her pointed little head. "Get over yourself!" I have that writtten in bold silver ink over my work table.

Then there is da man...Da Vinci. A flamboyant who had enough nerve to be openly homosexual and thumb his nose at the church with paintings that were full of pagan symbology and imagery that challenged the patriarchy. What a guy!
Carolina Cricket
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Amy's art quotes

Post by Carolina Cricket »

Amy, those were great! I have saved them over to a word file for re-reading. Thanks for taking the time to share the art quotes!
Cricket
Bert Weiss
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Re: Good art quotes

Post by Bert Weiss »

Cynthia wrote:
Then there is da man...Da Vinci. A flamboyant who had enough nerve to be openly homosexual and thumb his nose at the church with paintings that were full of pagan symbology and imagery that challenged the patriarchy. What a guy!
Cynthia

Either you just read The Davinci Code or you should. It is a fun read and about "the goddess" and other pagan symbology.
Bert

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Gale aka artistefem
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Post by Gale aka artistefem »

"I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief." Gerry Spence

"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." Mark Twain

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." Einstein

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." Oscar Wilde

"The purpose of art is not a rarified, intellectual distillate -- it is life, intensified, brilliant life." Alain Arais-Misson

"The best artists know what to leave out." Charles de Lint

"The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." Agnes de Mille

"Keep an open mind, I always say. Drives sensible people mad, I know, but what did we ever get from sensible people? Not poetry or art or music, that's for sure." Charles de Lint

"All art is the expression of the same thing - the relation of the spirit of man to the spirit of other men and to the world." Ansel Adams
Cynthia

Re: Good art quotes

Post by Cynthia »

Bert Weiss wrote:Cynthia

Either you just read The Davinci Code or you should. It is a fun read and about "the goddess" and other pagan symbology.
I had many happy years of art history and of course those classes only scratched the surface of what has been done, who did it and why. Monet, for example was a low life, philanderer and heartless scoundrel. Manet could have used a few lessons on being a good guy too. I was fortunate to have access to an art history department with professors who gave life to the artists as well as the work.

I have heard of the daVinci Code and fully intend to read it. Sounds like my kinda book. Wish I had more good quotes to add, but it looks like all the bases are covered (too much baseball going on). :roll:
Lori Love
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more quotes

Post by Lori Love »

I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
--Vincent van Gogh

My mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the pope.' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
--Pablo Picasso

The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.
--T. S. Eliot

As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them.
--Julia Cameron

Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail.
--Julia Cameron

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

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
--Albert Einstein

Artistic creativity is a whirlpool of imagination that swirls in the depths of the mind.
--Robert Toth

Art is not living. It is a use of living. The artist has the ability to take that living and use it in a certain way, and produce art.
--Audre Lorde

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
--Margot Fonteyn (1919-____) English dancer

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that the others are behind the time.
--Martha Graham

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
--G.K. Chesterton

Good art maketh glad the heart of man.
Jeff Krewson

Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.
--Katherine Anne Porter (1894-1980) US novelist, short-story writer

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

I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.
--Louise Nevelson US sculptor, painter

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis - Art (is) Long, Life (is) Short
--Hippocrates

Art is just a pigment of your imagination.
--Tony Follari Comedian

Let your natural inclination be road sign that will take you to your destiny.
--Robert Richard Toth, Artist

:lol:
lori
ellen abbott
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Post by ellen abbott »

Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
--Pablo Picasso
I read somewhere that every child decides at a certain age (I forget the age but pre-teen I think) that they can or cannot draw (ie be an artist) and if they decide they cannot/are not, they stop trying. Then I saw it happen in my own children no matter how much encouragement and access I gave them.

E
Terrie Corbett
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art quotes

Post by Terrie Corbett »

---posted in my studio---


"I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it -- how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that the critics can write what they please. I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free."
____ Georgia O'Keefe

"Don't settle for success when EXCELLENCE is within your grasp."
_____ H. Jackson Brown


Terrie
Duane Sitton
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Post by Duane Sitton »

Here's a little poem that helps me keep from takeing myself to seriously. I don't know the source.

First you do it,
Then you do it for fun.
Then you do it seriously
And then you're done!

Duane
gone

Post by gone »

Here's one that's cheesy, but true.

When you think you're green, you're growing.
When you think you're ripe, you're rotting.

Els
Pat Watkins
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Post by Pat Watkins »

The DeVinci Code is a good book. I think the author's wife is has a PHD in art history or something. I immediately went to look for and at a copy of the Last Supper because of all the symbolism behind the disciples. I think a movie is coming out based on the book. I wish I could have benefited from your teachers being the artists to life as you did Cynthia. I only read books. But anyway The DeVinci Code is well worth reading - just for inspiration alone.
lane1222
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Post by lane1222 »

Art: if you can't make it good, make it big; if you can't make it big, make it red. -- unknown
Barbara Muth
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Post by Barbara Muth »

ellen abbott wrote:
Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
--Pablo Picasso
I read somewhere that every child decides at a certain age (I forget the age but pre-teen I think) that they can or cannot draw (ie be an artist) and if they decide they cannot/are not, they stop trying. Then I saw it happen in my own children no matter how much encouragement and access I gave them.

E
In my case my parents decided. They sent my sister to art classes and sent me to learn how to cook. I kept drawing. She paints reproductions and claims her work is original. If it is in you I don't think you can run away from it.

But I have seen what you are describing happen. In fact, it is happening with my goddaughter right now.

Years ago I read the diaries of Anais Nin, not her exceedingly edited ones, but her adolescent diaries. There is a moement when she describes a dream she had where she had to choose between painting, music and writing. In the dream she chose writing. It sent her off on a frenzy of adolescent angst. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if she had chosen otherwise.

Barbara
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Geri Comstock
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Re: Good art quotes

Post by Geri Comstock »

Bert Weiss wrote: Either you just read The Davinci Code or you should. It is a fun read and about "the goddess" and other pagan symbology.
Heh! Funny you should mention this book. I finished reading it for the second time last night. Wonderful book, full of mystery and art history, not to mention some alternate theories on traditional Christian religious thought.

Geri
ellen abbott
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Post by ellen abbott »

Amy's post disappeared so here it is quoted:
This is a really interesting topic. My parents did not encourage artistic expression--they encouraged language, reading, and the pursuit of a certain type of education. I was an english major, did my independent studies on Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neill. However I took art history and art appreciation courses as electives because the subject interested me so much and I went to every art show they had. I remember a pottery demo at college that lasted many hours. Observers were on a catwalk looking down at the artist working--people came and went but I stayed there watching the entire 4 hours. Looking back I even dated artists or people who were in the theater pretty much exclusively and married the most artistically talented person I have ever met (not for that reason alone of course!). Despite all of this I never considered that perhaps I wanted to express myself artistically--there was no validation for me in that way so it just didn't occur to me that it was even possible. I won't bore you with rest of the story about my path to art (I've probably bored you enough already) but I think its really significant how we are shaped in growing up and what limitations it puts on our view of ourselves. Perhaps there is a moment when children make that decision and they choose not to continue as your kids did Barbara but at least they will always know that that road is open to them if they want it!
-Amy

My personal slant about parental acceptance of an artistic career...my parents recognised in me a talent at an early age. I was always taking art lessons. If not in public school, then private lessons to the point where by the time I graduated high school I was not sure if this was what I wanted or what they wanted. My father loved going to art openings and galleries, sort of was a patron of an artist friend in New Orleans. (I remember one summer when I spent several weeks there supposedly getting tutored. Jack, the alcoholic painter whose studio was in the French Quarter, let me wander to my heart's content...not exactly what my father had in mind.)

Anyway, I did go on to find a career as an artist after I found my medium...glass. But my father never accepted my medium. He was waiting, til the day he died, for me to 'get serious' and become a painter.

E
Amy on Salt Spring
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Post by Amy on Salt Spring »

An interesting counterpart to mine (which I deleted shortly after I posted it because I get self conscious talking about myself and worry too much, so thanks for responding). I'd love to know what you did with all that time in New Orleans :) What is the deal with the painting being "real art" but other mediums not being? I've run into it several times and I just don't get it. It can't be a skill thing since I've seen plenty of glass or other medium work that is better than the paintings I see in the same galleries/shows. There is a woman here that everytime she sees me asks, "are you still doing glass" in the most condescending tone. She doesn't paint, her work is all pastels and what she sells the most of are pictures of brightly colored animals doing amusing things with a catchy title which she calls her "Party Animal" series. They are skillfully done but... Also one of the things that has amazed me in every show and every gallery I have been in is that, unless dissuaded in every way possible, people touch my work. Not just touch but grab, fondle, shake (one person put her hands around a frame, grabbed the glass panel from both sides and shook it back and forth), spin (someone grabbed a kinetic panel in a large sculpture and spun it HARD) etc. and that is just what happened when I was there to observe it (in both cases the gallery had put up "do not touch" signs). This is sitting side by side with untouched ceramic pieces, paintings etc. In a way its flattering but is it not also kind of disrespectful? I mean they wouldn't grab a painting or scrape the paint to see what it was, they didn't even touch some of the cool and intriguing ceramic pieces or stone carvings. Its not something I get upset about (unless it looks like they might damage something) but it does make me wonder...
Amy
Don Burt
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Post by Don Burt »

Pat Watkins wrote:clip I only read books. But anyway The DeVinci Code is well worth reading - just for inspiration alone.
Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and Thomas Hoving's King of Confessors are similar books that you might enjoy. Probably less spurious history than what I've heard about Da Vinci code. But every review of Da Vinci code that I've read, has stated pretty much that they don't care if its history and art history are urban legend, its still a cool book.
Brock
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Post by Brock »

Art is not a handicraft. It is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
Leo Tolstoy

Art is in the domain of personal expression, design, the realm of function and communication, craft, the extent of materials and tools. A significant artifact blurs these distinctions.
Sam Carter - Curator-Educator - Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design
My memory is so good, I can't remember the last time I forgot something . . .
jerry flanary
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Post by jerry flanary »

Hey these are a couple of quotes that I have on the doors by the furnace in the studio- things I think about while I work:

#1. Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind. (from Zen and Motorcycle maintainence)

#2. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Anon.

#3. What doesn't bend breaks. Ani di Franco

#4. No sudden inspiration can replace the long toil which is indispensable to give the eyes a true knowledge of form and of proportion and to render the hand obedient to the commands of feeling. Rodin

#5. Let our practice form our doctrine, thus assuring precise theoretical coherence. Doc Sarvis in the Monkey Wrench Gang

I've got some others but those are the most important to me. I would recommend Dictionary of the Khazars as well to any one who is enjoying the davinci stuff.
j.

A lack of doubt doesn't lend certainty.
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