Arts And Artists

(547 votes)   The object of art is to give life a shape. [Midsummer Nights Dream]

William Shakespeare
1564-1616, British Poet, Playwright, Actor

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(464 votes)   I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

Vincent Van Gogh
1853-1890, Dutch Painter

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(421 votes)   Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.

Guillaume Apollinaire
1880-1918, Italian-born French Poet, Critic

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(419 votes)   Art… the end result of perception, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and coincidence.

Source Unknown

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(409 votes)   It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Vincent Van Gogh
1853-1890, Dutch Painter

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(380 votes)   Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

Susan Sontag
1933-, American Essayist

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(376 votes)   Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.

Rainer Maria Rilke
1875-1926, German Poet

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(373 votes)   Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Edward Dahlberg
1900-1977, American Author, Critic

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(371 votes)   Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

A. Alvarez
1929-, British Critic, Poet, Novelist

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(325 votes)   Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Willa Cather
1876-1947, American Author

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(318 votes)   As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.

Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
1759-1805, German Dramatist, Poet, Historian

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(307 votes)   In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

Willem De Kooning
1904-, Dutch-born American Artist

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(305 votes)   As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Edmond and Jules De Goncourt
1822-1896, French Writers

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(300 votes)   Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

George Sand
1804-1876, French Novelist

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(282 votes)   Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Ayn Rand
1905-1982, Russian Writer, Philosopher

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