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.
No work of art is worth the bones of a Pomeranian Grenadier.
Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty and injustice.
Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.
His art with nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed.
..we [Impressionists] are carrying on a despairing fight & need all our forces.
The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.
It's true that things are beautiful when they work. Art is function.