MY FAVORITE ART QUOTES Here is a collection of my favorite quotes about art, for art, and for education. Words expressed by great artists.
"Test knowledge through experience, be prepared to make mistakes, and be persistent about it." (Leonardo Da Vinci)"We work not only to produce but to give value to time." (Eugène Delacroix)
"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." (Degas)
"I can't teach you to be an artist; all I can do is help you learn to see." (J.P. Loveless)
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." (Pablo Picasso)
"Every artist deep his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures." (Henry Ward Beecher)
"Each artist is given a bag of tools
A shapeless mass and a book of rules
And each must make, ere life is flown
A stumbling block or a stepping stone." (R. L. Sharpe)
"The greatest discovery is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of Mind." (William James)
"I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time". (Pablo Picasso)
"I do not want ART for a few any more than Education for a few, or freedom for a few." William Morris, from The Lesser Arts)
"We have art so that we may not perish by the truth." (Nietzsche)
"Every good painter paints what he is." (Jackson Pollock)
"An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision." (James McNeill Whistler)
"Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life." (Pablo Picasso)
"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance." (Henry James)
"Painting...is one of the surest, most direct forms of communication known to man. (Stuart Davis)
"Art is a lie that helps us to realize the truth" (Pablo Picasso)
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands." (Michelangelo)
"There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books." (Charlie Chaplin)
"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun." (Pablo Picasso)
"The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel." (Piet Mondrian)
"A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places." (Paul Gardner)
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." (Albert Einstein)
"No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination" (Edward Hopper)
"What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough." (Eugène Delacroix)
"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." (Francis Bacon)
"Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist." (Rene-Francois-Ghislain Magritte)
"I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts." (Martin Ritt)
"To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams." (Giorgio DeChirico)
"I shut my eyes in order to see."(Paul Gauguin)
"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." (Pablo Picasso)
"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else." (Pablo Picasso)
Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing."(Camille Pissarro)
"It takes a very long time to become young." (Pablo Picasso)
"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)
"It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else." (Henri Matisse)
"I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me."(Henri Matisse)
"Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently." (Eugène Delacroix)
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."(Salvador Dali)
"Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish." (Michelangelo)
"Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated." (Auguste Rodin)
"A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.(Henri Matisse)
"I always pet a dog with my left hand because if he bit me I'd still have my right hand to paint with."(Juan Gris)
"A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth."(John Singer Sargent)
"When asked how he knew a piece was finished , he responded "When the dinner bell rings."(Alexander Calder)
"Painting is no problem; the problem is what to do when you're not painting."(Jackson Pollock)
"The function of Art is to disturb. Science reassures." (George Braque)
"A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art." (Paul Cézanne)
"Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything." (Eugène Delacroix)
"Art is either plagiarism or revolution." (Paul Gaugin)
"Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul." (Wassily Kandinsky)
"I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music." (Joan Miro)
"If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens." (Grandma Moses)
"What good are computers? They can only give you answers." (Pablo Picasso)
"One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity. (Auguste Renoir)
"I often think the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." (Vincent Van Gogh)
"A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his mind is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist." (Louis Nizer)
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." (J. R. Rowling)
"Inspiration is nothing without work." (William Morris Hunt)
"Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom." (Leonardo Da Vinci)
"The greatest enemy of art is the absence of limitation." (Orson Welles)
"To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves." (Virginia Woolf)
"I have touched with a sense of art some people--they felt the love and the life. Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist?" (Mary Cassatt)
"Art is man's expression of his joy in labor." (William Morris)
Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won't know what it is until I succeed in doing it." (Alberto Giacometti)
"The secret is to follow the advice of the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them." (Edgar Degas)
"Don't do watercolors on cheap paper.
Don't use fugitive inks.
Don't put your brush in your mouth--or smoke.
Don't think it's going to get easier.
Don't lock yourself into anything.
Don't try to sell your work right away.
Don't sweat the small stuff; go for the big picture.
Don't worry when somebody says your work is not so hot.
Don't worry when somebody says your work is great.
Don't take yourself too seriously.
Don't be afraid to do something over and over.
Don't listen too much to perceived authority.
Don't be afraid to listen to your own intelligence.
Don't try to please anybody except yourself.
Don't be either too vain or too modest.
Don't talk about what you're going to do.
Don't be afraid to look at other people's stuff.
Don't think you're an undiscovered genius.
As well as "don't", don't use the word "can't," "won't," and "shouldn't."
Don't give up. (Robert Gwenn)