The best Quotes and Sayings about Art

Philippe: "Tell me Driss, why do you think people are interested in art?"
Driss: "I don't know, it's a business?"
Philippe: "No. That's because it's the only thing one leaves behind."

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.

Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.

Art is a way of survival.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

A picture means I know where I was every minute. That's why I take pictures. It's a visual diary.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you're doing. If you're not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it.

I like that about art, that what you see is sometimes more about who you are than what’s on the wall. I look at this painting and think about how everyone has some secret inside, something sleeping like that yellow bird.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

I am an artist... I am here to live out loud.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

As I create art, it is like a love affair. My days go by loving what I do.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

The only thing they can't teach you at art school is art.

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

For a while, for as long as you're looking at it, that painting is the world and you get to be in it.

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.

The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.

Solidarity makes me creative - you drink a glass of wine and feel even worse. Art can't exist without pain; and art exists to cure pain.

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown.

Some of the greatest works of art were produced by intense grief.

Great artists suffer for the people.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.

Great art picks up where nature ends.

Art has never been a popularity contest.

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

It is hard to separate the art from the artist.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.

I've seen beautiful art on the sides of buildings. I've seen beautiful art in museums. I've seen beautiful art in galleries. Beautiful art is everywhere.

A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.

Perfectionism kills art. I find that if I criticise myself, it spoils the fun. You can get paralysed by analysis - it takes all the playfulness away.

Even a true artist does not always produce art.

That's what all art's about - a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't in real life. Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really - to do something that's just not possible. But you try to do as much as you can within those physical boundaries.

My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature.

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.

All artists are egotistical maniacs with inferiority complexes.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

[Upon being asked what his art meant] Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don't. But you listen to them anyway.