Art Quotes IV
There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art; and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art.
©JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.
©ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Death in the Afternoon
Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
©CHINUA ACHEBE, Hopes and Impediments
The artist has some internal experience that produces a poem, a painting, a piece of music. Spectators submit themselves to the work, which generates an inner experience for them. But historically it’s a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator’s experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist’s. That idea comes from an over-industrialized society which has learned to distrust magic.
©SAMUEL R. DELANY, Dhalgren
No art is possible without a dance with death.
©KURT VONNEGUT, Slaughterhouse-Five
Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.
©DORIS LESSING, The Golden Notebook
Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute’s profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.
©JOHN GALSWORTHY, Vague Thoughts on Art
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.
©WILLIAM FAULKNER, The Paris Review, spring 1956
In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.
©JOHN BARTH, attributed, Passionate Virtuosity: The Fiction of John Barth
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
©ANDRE GIDE, Autumn Leaves
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