Art Quotes

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 (1881-1973) Spanish artist.

Arts is man added to nature.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, essayist.

What is a work of art? A world made flesh… a thing seen, a thing known, the immeasurable translated into terms of the measurable.

Eric Gill (1882-1940) British sculptor.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment in recognition of the pattern.

Art is I; Science is we.

Claude Bernard (1813-1978) French physiologist.

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish artist.

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) American critic.

What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) American sculptor.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist, philosopher.

If there were no other proof of the infinite patience of God with men, a very good one could be found in His toleration of the pictures that are painted of Him.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) American author, clergyman.

I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, then all the allegorical paintings they can shew me in the world.

They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) English critic.

Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the world.

Eric Gill (1882-1940) British sculptor.

Painting consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect; but a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.

The art is reverent imitation of God.

Tryon Edwards.

All great art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work, not his own.

Ruskin.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

Goethe.

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

Michael Angelo.

All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.

Ruskin.

Art, as far as it has the ability, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master, so that art must be, as it were, a descendant of God.

Dante.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

Quintilian.

Never judge a work of art by its defects.

Washington Allston.

There is no more potent antidote to low sensuality than admiration of the beautiful. All the higher arts of design are essentially chaste, without respect to the object. They purify the thoughts, as tragedy purifies the passions. Their accidental effects are not worth consideration; for there are souls to whom even a vestal is not holy.

Schlegel.

The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl. Ah! The world, that cruel step mother, beats the poor child the harder to make him shed more pearls.

Heine.

The highest triumph of art, is the truest presentation of nature.

N.P. Willis.