Art Quotes

10 Quotes About Creativity

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Playground swans made from old tires; Bayan-Ulgii, western Mongolia 2015
Playground swans made from old tires; Bayan-Ulgii, western Mongolia 2015

“Creativity takes courage. ”
― Henri Matisse

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
― Erich Fromm

“For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Birds

Playground tricycle made from old tires; Bayan-Ulgii, western Mongolia, 2015
Playground tricycle made from old tires; Bayan-Ulgii, western Mongolia, 2015

“But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.”
― Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

“That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.”
― Rollo May

“Creative activity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”
― Arthur Koestler, Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955-1967

Playground metal pipe snakes; Bayan-Ulgii, western Mongolia 2015
Playground metal pipe snakes; Bayan-Ulgii, western Mongolia 2015

 

 

 

 

10 Favorite Quotes About What Art Is

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Cupid's Span by Claes Oldenburg (collaboration with van Bruggen)
Cupid’s Span by Claes Oldenburg (collaboration with van Bruggen); located near the bay in San Francisco, California

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

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

Portrait of the Artist's Mother
Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by Pablo Picasso

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Pablo Picasso

Girl Before a Mirror by Pablo Picasso
Girl Before a Mirror by Pablo Picasso

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. Edgar Degas

At the Races by Edgar Degas
At the Races by Edgar Degas

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. Twyla Tharp

Dog by Alberto Giacometti
Dog by Alberto Giacometti

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. Alberto Giacometti

What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is in harmony parallel with nature. Paul Cezanne

La Montagne Saint Victorie by Paul Cezanne
La Montagne Saint Victorie by Paul Cezanne

Painting is a means of self-enlightenment. John Olsen

Eraser by Claes Oldenburg
Eraser by Claes Oldenburg

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum. Claes Oldenburg

 

 

 

Inspirations: 12 Great Quotes About Painting

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Claude Monet Painting in his Garden at Argenteuil by Renoir
Claude Monet Painting in his Garden at Argenteuil by Renoir

If a painting of a tree was only the exact representation of the original, so that it looked just like the tree, there would be no reason for making it; we might as well look at the tree itself. But the painting, if it is of the right sort, gives something that neither a photograph nor a view of the tree conveys. It emphasizes something of character, quality, individuality. We are not lost in looking at thorns and defects; we catch a vision of the grandeur and beauty of a king of the forest.
-Calvin Coolidge, speech, Jan. 17, 1925

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.
-Paul Cezanne

Jackson Pollock painting
Jackson Pollock painting

I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.
-Jackson Pollock

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
-Jackson Pollock

Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.
-Edgar Degas

Portrait as an Artist by van Gogh
Portrait as an Artist by van Gogh

“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint“, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
-Vincent van Gogh

“You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.”
-Henri Matisse

After the first brush-stroke, the canvas assumes a life of its own; at this point, you become both governor and spectator to your own event.
-Anonymous

Turner on Varnishing Day by William Parrott
Turner on Varnishing Day by William Parrott

When making a painting, only one thing counts: what you do next.
-Darby Bannard

“Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.”
– Robert Henri, in his book The Art Spirit, p135.

Churchill Painting at the Easel by
Churchill Painting at the Easel by

In Cezanne’s paintings, “edges aren’t boundaries but places where paint, surging across the surface, changes color.”
– Art critic Peter Schjeldahl, “Cezanne versus Pissarro”, New Yorker magazine, 11 July 2005

The painter’s work will be of little merit if he takes the painting of others as his standard, but if he studies from nature he will produce good fruits.
-Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life