A Page of 52 Quotes about Art, Life and Whatever

Circle of Life .(Newman)

This summer I've been doing an inventory of my 11 years of blogging. As regular readers of this blog know, I frequently begin with a quote of some kind, perhaps because I've always enjoyed reading stories and essay that begin with a thought provoking zinger or tone-setting parcel of pith.

What follows are primarily quotes used to begin a blog post or, on a few occasions, a set of quotes that filled in for that day's blog entry. Most of these were from 2009.

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"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."

~Abraham Lincoln

"All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?"

~Nicholas Johnson

"It’s easy to lie with statistics, and even easier to lie without them."

~Unknown

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

~Napoleon Bonaparte

"A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing."

~William Dobell

"Creativity takes courage."

~Matisse

"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music."

~Angela Monet

"Painting has one foot in architecture and one foot in the dream." 

~Roberto Matta

Tiger by Ellen Sandbeck

"I have never produced anything good except by a long succession of slight efforts."

~Andre Gide

Man: Did Hemingway ever talk to you?

God: Everybody talks to me… sooner or later.

"Hey, do you want to make a deal?"

~-Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone

"The problem with reality is that there’s no background music, so you don’t know whether you’re experiencing a comedy, suspense or a tragedy."

~Unknown

"It is above all by imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope."

 ~Ursula Le Guinn

“The sole difference between me and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!”

 ~Salvador Dali

"When a white army battles Indians and wins, it is called a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre."

~Chiksika, Shawnee

“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.” ~Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

"Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other." ~C.P. Snow

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

~Winston Churchill

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

~ T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Animalia by Shawna Gilmore

"Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing."

~Quincy Jo

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

~John Keats

“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”

~Thomas Carlyle

"Many lives remain unfulfilled because of a lack of courage in affirming one's inner convictions in spite of all obstacles."

~Paul Tournier

"If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well."

~Alexander Smith

"The writer of any first person work must decide two obvious questions: what to put in and what to leave out."

~Annie Dillard

“Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things… I am tempted to think there are no little things.”

~Bruce Barton

Inside the Matrix

"Art... makes life possible."

~Joseph Beuys

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."
~Mark Twain

"She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon."
~Groucho Marx

"I don't drink; I don't like it--it makes me feel good."
~Oscar Levant

"An optimist is a man who has never had much experience."
~Don Marquis

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
~Oscar Wilde

"The average dog is a nicer person than the average person."
~Andy Rooney

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
~James Thurber

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
~John Kenneth Galbraith

"Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel."

~Hans Hofmann

"Youth is wasted on the young."

~George Bernard Shaw

"There's always a moment in childhood when a door opens and lets the future in."

~Graham Greene

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

~H.G. Wells

"Ideas are like cattle. They have to be gathered and herded if you want to keep track of them, otherwise they just wander off and get lost."

~M.L. Bennett

“I am not afraid…I was born to do this.”

~Joan of Arc

“There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”

~Martha Graham

"You've been given a great gift, George: A chance to see what the world would be like without you. " 

~Clarence (The angel in It's a Wonderful Life)

On Democracy: “The bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.”

~Oscar Wilde

On Golf: “I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.”

~G.K. Chesterton

On Love: “A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”

~Ambrose Bierce

On Mankind: “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.”

~Charles Schultz

On Optimism: “An optimist is a man who has never had much experience.”

~Don Marquis

On Art: "Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."

~George Bernard Shaw

"Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species."

~W. Somerset Maugham

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Monday Motivation: Ten Art Quotes That Will Surprise You

A Red Rothko. 

"I'm not telling you it's going to be easy. I'm telling you it's going to be worth it."
--Art Williams

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Living isn't a simple thing... no one said it's supposed to be.
--Art Alexakis

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The two best interview subjects are children under 10 and people over 70 for the same reason: they say the first thing that comes to their mind. The children don't know what they're saying and the old folks don't care.
--Art Linkletter

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Paul has more, I think, of a feel for the stage. Whereas I have it more for the notes themselves. I love record making and mixing, arranging, producing. That I love. I love to make beautiful things, but I don't like to perform.
 --Art Garfunkel

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Life is available to anyone no matter what age. All you have to do is grab it.
--Art Carney

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Jazz washes away the dust of every day life.
--Art Blakey

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Remember, before you can be great, you've got to be good. Before you can be good, you've got to be bad. But before you can even be bad, you've got to try.
--Art Williams

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If you don’t see the wonder in the most ordinary phenomenon, you’re not going to resonate very much.
--Art Shaw

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There is no such thing as a wrong note.
--Art Tatum

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All you have to do is be able to feel.
--Art Blakey

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ON THIS DAY in 1903, American painter Mark Rothko was born. Whatever your feelings about abstract art in general and color field painting in particular, the 2014 play RED provides insights into the mind of the artist and why he was influential.

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Meantime, Arts go on all around you.

Back to the Age Old Question: What Is Art?

It used to be obvious. Or so it seemed. Art galleries, collectors and museums preserved and displayed the art from each generation. In the past century a breakdown occurred, and over time it no longer became clear what was and was not considered art. Warhol's Brillo Boxes contributed.

"Doubles, With Baseboard" -- 12"x 16" Oil on Panel, Frank Holmes

I woke the other day thinking about a gallery in which lumber had been stacked in the middle of the room as one of the pieces of art in an exhibition there. The question being asked, I believe, is whether the same lumber stacked behind Menard's would be considered art, or does it only become art when stacked in a museum or gallery?

I remember seeing Warhol's Brillo boxes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They looked strikingly out of place, as if the janitor had put them down at the top of the stairs and forgot to go back and pick them up. Duchamp's famous urinal is also here in this same museum.

These latter two examples exemplify the post-modern ethic of questioning authority. Who decides what is art and not art? Who decided what is good and bad art? At one time print making was a craft outside of the realm of fine art. When is it sculpture and when is it simply ornamental embellishment?

As one reviewer stated regarding an Arthur Danto book, "Being an artist this question is never far from my mind on a daily basis." I myself can't say it is a daily question, but it certainly has been a recurring one. (Check out my 2012 posts related to this topic: Culture or Trash and It's Interesting, But Is It Art?)

While rummaging through listings on Amazon.com about this theme I came across a book carrying the same title as that last blog post, But Is It Art? by Cynthia Freeland. The book looks interesting and one of the comments on its subject matter is by Arthur C. Danto himself: "I know of no work that moves so swiftly and with so sure a footing through the battle zones of art and society today."

"Doubles" -- Oil on Panel, Frank Holmes

When one travels through quotes about art, one more often finds quotes about the feelings art generates than a definition of what art is. Here are some examples.

"Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity."
Leo Tolstoy, in an essay "What Is Art?

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."
Oscar Wilde

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
Thomas Merton

These kinds of quotes inspire artists, but avoid the black-and-white definitions that dogmatists are hoping for, and many artists don't really care all that much about how art gets defined as long as they are able to do, to produce, whatever it is that is striving to emerge from within. It doesn't always have to be beautiful, but it does seem necessary for the public to trust that the art is sincere or authentic, though maybe the only arena that matters is the one in which the artist herself or himself stands before the blank canvas -- or blank sheet of paper -- and does battle alone.

Georgia O'Keeffe stated, "Filling a space in a beautiful way. That's what art means to me." But what about the artist striving to reflect the world, whose vision of the world is its horror?

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Well, this is a discussion best left for another day. It's too big of a question for the small amount of time I have at this moment...

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Engage it.

Art Credit: Paintings by American artist Frank Holmes, winner of 1973 Prix de Rome.

More Questions and Quotes on Art

Yesterday I barely scratched the surface with a few questions about why we do art and the purpose of art. As I drove to the office more questions began to bubble up.

How serious should one take one’s art?
How intense is too intense? (re: taking art seriously)
What about playfulness?
Is it OK to lighten up?
Who makes the rules anyways?

How important is it that other people understand our work?
How important that we understand our own work?

For myself there is a certain amount of pleasure involved in making pictures. The aesthetic pleasure of color, line, shape and form... The tactile pleasure of smearing pigment onto a surface… The emotional pleasure of experimentation… what happens when I scrape? What happens when I scrub? What happens when I drip or spray or splash? And the pleasure one gets when others express appreciation for what you have created...

Here are some quotes by others on the purpose of art.

The role of art for me is the visualization of attitude, of the human attitude towards life, towards the world. ~Josef Albers

As an artist my mission in relation to the universe is to realize and actualize the mirror of the human psyche. ~Raul D. Arellano

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. ~Aristotle

There has probably never been an artist that only painted for his or her eyes alone. ~Moncy Barbour

Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings. ~Pierre Bonnard

The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought, and then fix it in form. ~Delsarte

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them? ~Bob Dylan

The task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable. ~Lucian Freud

The arts teach and moralise by their beauty alone, not by translating a philosophical or social formula. For the truly artistic person, painting has itself as it's purpose, which is quite enough. ~Theophile Gautier, 1861

We are trying to evoke and reinforce meanings from the spaces we cover and the times we're given. Short or long this becomes our purpose. What we artists do is important stuff. ~Robert Genn

An artist's job is to say the most with the least. ~Andrew Hamilton

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint... ~Keith Haring

My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature. ~Hans Hofmann

My paintings are not intended to alter the history of twentieth-century art or change the political climate of our times. I'm simply a story-teller. ~Carolyn Hoyle

Only just now awakening after years of materialism, our soul is still infected with the despair born of unbelief, of lack of purpose and aim. ~Wassily Kandinsky

We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness. ~Anish Kapoor

Art is an articulator of the soul's uncensored purpose and deepest will. ~Shaun McNiff

The purpose of art is nothing less than the upliftment of the human spirit. ~Pope John Paul II

I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainebleau. I get 'green' indigestion. I must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions. ~Pablo Picasso

The great end of all arts is to make an impression on the imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds. ~Sir Joshua Reynolds

It is the mission of art to remind man from time to time that he is human, and the time is ripe, just now, today, for such a reminder. ~Ben Shahn

Just as the farmer provides sustenance for the body, the painter provides sustenance for the soul. ~Arturo Tello

My aim is not to exhibit craft, but rather to submerge it, and make it rightfully the handmaiden of beauty, power and emotional content. ~Andrew Wyeth

In an ideal world I would have more time to create links from the names and quotes cited above to examples of the art they produced. But then again, in an ideal world I wouldn't be here writing a quick blog entry before going to the office, I would be putting more pigment on a palette and starting another painting. Oh well, we can only dream.

Keep chasing yours and have a very special day.