The canvas glow'd beyond ev'n Nature warm,
The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form.
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.
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival.
Bringing reality to life has at once been the problem and the promise of pictorial art.
I do not believe in art which is not the compulsive result of humanity's urge to open its heart.
For a long time I limited myself to one color — as a form of discipline.
For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations.
Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.
Art quickens nature; care will make a face;
Neglected beauty perisheth apace.
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art.