Art Quotes
Artists themselves fill the top places, which is unusual. Monet leads, then Erich Fromm, Renoir, John Galsworthy and Berthe Morisot, so the page has a lot of painters talking about painting. For the theory side, Tolstoy’s What Is Art? (1897) calls art a human activity whose purpose is to transmit the highest and best feelings to others, and Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), says that if the world were clear, art would not exist.
“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream” is credited to Vincent van Gogh and flagged misattributed. The notes list early versions: a French form, “Je rêve mon tableau, et plus tard je peindrai mon rêve,” cited in a 1918 book, and English translations in the Musical Courier of 1908.
Painters and poets have equal license in regard to everything.
By arts, sails, and oars, ships are rapidly moved; arts move the light chariot, and establish love.
That is the utterance of the greatest of physicians, that life is short and art long.
The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.
Art happens all the time, everywhere. All we have to do is to keep our minds open.
Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
For art to be 'unpolitical' means only to ally itself with the 'ruling' group.