What is art? Is it something that is created to be appreciated by the senses, or is it something more? In this blog post, we explore the world of art and what it means to different people. We've collected 58 quotes about art from a variety of sources, including artists, writers, and other creative minds.
Whether you're an artist yourself or just enjoy appreciating art, we hope you'll find these quotes insightful and inspiring. Enjoy!
Quotes About Art
1. True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. - Albert Einstein
2. If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. - Vincent Van Gogh
3. The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person. - Abraham Lincoln
4. The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. - Aristotle
5. A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. - Oscar Wilde
6. The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. - Pablo Picasso
7. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. - Oscar Wilde
8. Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse. - Winston Churchill
9. Every artist was first an amateur. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
10. The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. - Friedrich Nietzsche
11. Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. - Oscar Wilde
12. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. - Thomas Merton
13. In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
14. Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life. - Oscar Wilde
15. A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. - Albert Camus
16. This world is but a canvas to our imagination. - Henry David Thoreau
17. An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. - James Whistler
18. Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed. - Khalil Gibran
19. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. - Scott Adams
20. A picture is worth a thousand words. - Napoleon Bonaparte
21. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. - Anais Nin
22. Pictures must not be too picturesque. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
23. Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. - Twyla Tharp
24. An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. - Henry Miller
25. We have art in order not to die of the truth. - Friedrich Nietzsche
26. Art is the proper task of life. - Friedrich Nietzsche
27. Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. - George Bernard Shaw
28. Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad. - Salvador Dali
29. Art is not a thing it is a way. - Elbert Hubbard
30. You don't take a photograph, you make it. - Ansel Adams
31. Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. - Jonathan Swift
32. A picture is a poem without words. - Horace
33. Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. - Albert Camus
34. The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination. - Elbert Hubbard
35. I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for. - Georgia O'Keeffe
36. Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. - Henry Ward Beecher
37. A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. - Michelangelo
38. An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have. - Andy Warhol
39. The beginning is the most important part of the work. - Plato
40. A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires. - Hedy Lamarr
41. The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. - Pablo Picasso
42. An artist cannot fail it is a success to be one. - Charles Horton Cooley
43. Personality is everything in art and poetry. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
44. Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. - Ambrose Bierce
45. Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. - Andre Gide
46. Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do. - Edgar Degas
47. The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. - Dale Carnegie
48. Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. - Fran Lebowitz
49. The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
50. Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. - Pablo Picasso
51. In art as in love, instinct is enough. - Anatole France
52. Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art. - Miguel Angel Ruiz
53. Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. - Gilbert K. Chesterton
54. In art the best is good enough. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
55. Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. - Gilbert K. Chesterton
56. The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it. - Carl Rogers
57. I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning. - Andy Warhol
58. Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. - Pablo Picasso
We hope you enjoyed this collection of quotes. Check out our picture quote of the day here.
