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Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

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Art

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• “Every filmmaker have their audience. It’s okay to find what your audience enjoy, if it’s the art for arts slogan, be loyal to them.”

  Aderounmu Adejumoke (1984–2024) said by 2024 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “These caves aren’t art galleries or shamanistic temples, they’re schools of the hunting arts—the equivalent of one of our museums of science and industry.”

  Daniel Quinn (1935–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “People producing arts, all along the roads, on the streets; everywhere and you begin to know that this is a city of Art.”

  Peju Layiwola (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I wanted was to create a great piece because I realised that many of our traditional arts and crafts evolved overtime to include practical and decorative items and that human expressions find their way through various forms of art.”

  Jumoke Dada wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I never thought of myself as a mathematician. I went to a performing arts school from the fourth to the eighth grade. Most of my formative years were spent in classes where there was creative dance, piano and art.”

  Ranthony Edmonds wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I hope that art organisations and people interested in the arts will get behind”

  Bronwen Holdsworth (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I believe the incredible mix of art voices that Southbank Centre offers has never been more important, and has huge potential as we develop a modern, post-lockdown cultural institution and explore new ways to innovate and bring arts to our communities.”

  Misan Harriman (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Being a lecturer allows me to constantly interact with other people; future artists and arts professionals. To discuss art and to get valuable feedback on my work.”

  George William Kyeyune (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The time is probably not far distant when music will stand revealed perchance as the mightiest of the arts, and certainly as the one art peculiarly representative of our modern world, with its intense life, complex civilization, and feverish self-consciousness.”

  Hugh Reginald Haweis (attributed) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Painting is an awkward thing to teach except the details of the medium. If you and your master are determined to look at nature and art in two different directions you are sure to stick.”

  Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Journal entry from May 28, 1883, quoted in "Introducing Beatrix Potter" from The Victoria and Albert Museum

• “In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it’s a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.”

  Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In an interview on the BBC arts program 'Omnibus', (1990); as quoted in 'Antoni Tàpies a Painter With Textures, Dies at 88', by William Grimes, in 'The New York Times', 8 Febr, 2012, p. B17

• “Kandinsky points out [in his book On the Spiritual in Art] that Theosophy (in its true sense; not as it generally appears) is yet another expression of the same spiritual movement which we are now seeing in painting.”

  Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In 'De Nieuwe beelding in de Schilderkunst', Piet Mondriaan, 'De Stijl' No. 1, October 1917, p. 54

• “Art will not only continue but will realise itself more and more. By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.”

  Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: quote, 1937; last lines of Mondrian's publication in 'Circle'; as cited in Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska; Thames and Hudson, London 1990, p. 117

• “[As a painting teacher] I'm not flirting, playing around. I'm serious about it.. .If you don't want to be serious about playing [at art], do something of no account. Go into banking. Buy collar buttons at five cents a dozen and sell them for five cents a piece.”

  John Sloan (1871–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But if politics is an art, it is not like sculpture or painting, where one side acts and the other is passive material. It is more like drama without a script, or dance without choreography - in other words, improvisation. Either player may surprise us again with a new move.”

  Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All the art since the Renaissance seemed too men-oriented. I liked (the) object quality. An Egyptian pyramid, a Sung vase, the Romanesque church appealed to me. The forms found in the vaulting of a cathedral or even a splatter of tar on the road seemed more valid and instructive and a more voluptuous experience than either geometric or action painting.”

  Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 9 : 'Notes from 1969'

• “What was Art, after all, if not simply giving out what you have inside you? Didn’t it all boil down to sticking a female in front of you and painting her as you feel she is?”

  Émile Zola (1840–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ch. 2 (tr. Thomas Walton and Roger Pearson, 1993)

• “In my art work, hand painting would take much too long and anyway that's not the age we're living in.”

  Andy Warhol (1928–1987) said by 1987 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In: Machine in the Studio, Caroline A. Jones, University of Chicago Press, 1996 pp. 197-198

• “Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms, well then think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affects us more or less intensely. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934].”

  Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Richard Friedenthal, (1963, pp. 257-258).

• “Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation.”

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.”

  Edward Hopper (1882–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.”

  Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: To Wilfred Watson, October 6 1965. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 325

• “New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is once again expressing outrage at an art exhibit, this time at a painting in which Jesus is depicted as a naked woman. Said the mayor, "This trash is not the sort of thing that I want to look at when I go to the museum with my mistress.”

  Tina Fey (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There's absolutely no difference between the greatest painting ever made and a joke. It's just something someone invented that someone else likes! That's art. And it has no reason to exist, except its own virtue.”

  Jerry Seinfeld (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]here are no rules in painting and.. ..the oppression, or servile obligation, of making all study or follow the same path is a great impediment for the Young who profess this very difficult art that approaches the divine more than any other.”

  Francisco Goya (1746–1828) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In a report, 1792 which Goya was invited to write to the Academy of San Fernando on the subject of teaching art; as cited by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 126

• “The study of nature is of no significance, for painting is a conventional art, and it is infinitely more worthwhile to learn to draw after w:Holbein.”

  Edgar Degas (1834–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quote from History of Impressionism, Rev. ed. John Rewald, Museum of Modern Art, 1961, p. 89

• “Organized perception is what is art all about.. .It is a process. It has nothing to do with any external form the painting takes, it has to do with a way of building a unified pattern of seeing...”

  Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said 'that's a clever anagram of art' and I had to pretend I'd known that all along.”

  Banksy (born 1973) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Graffiti ultimately wins out over proper art because it becomes part of your city, it's a tool; 'I'll meet you in that pub, you know, the one opposite that wall with a picture of a monkey holding a chainsaw'. I mean, how much more useful can a painting be than that?”

  Banksy (born 1973) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art.”

  Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) first seen 1525 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Art of Measurement (1525).

• “It’s been said many times in world art writing that one can find some of painting’s meaning by looking not only at what painters do, but what they refuse to do.”

  Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: In: Contemporary American Painting, University of Illinois, Urbana 1952, p. 226

• “The principal element of Suprematism in painting, as in architecture, is its liberation from all social or materialist tendencies. Through Suprematism art comes into its pure and unpolluted form. It has acknowledged the decisive fact of the nonobjective character of sensibility. It is no longer concerned with illusion.”

  Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Marc Chagall, – a Biography, Sidney Alexander, Cassell, London, 1978, p. 194

• “I have been living a hermit-life, though always with my pencil in my hand.. .How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, or nature has unveiled her beauties to me less fastidiously. Perhaps there is something of both, so we will divide the compliment.”

  John Constable (1776–1837) first seen 1812 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quote from Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (22 July 1812), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 40

• “Because he attempted to tell [in his painting 'The Jewish Cemetery' painted by Ruisdael,] that which is outside the reach of art... .there are ruins to indicate old age, a stream to signify the course of life, and rocks and precipices to shadow forth its dangers. But how are we to discover all this?”

  John Constable (1776–1837) said by 1837 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 304

• “Painting is first of all the art of imitation, and not the servant of some imaginary 'purity'”

  Maurice Denis (1870–1943) said by 1943 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I strive to make my art bear the same relation to painting that polyphony bears to music. Illustrative music is a thing of the past: it has become abstract and purely aesthetic, dependent for its effect upon rhythm and form.”

  Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890–1973) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quoted in Bryant American Pictures And Their Painters (1917), p. 302

• “The failure of abstract painting is due to the confusion that exists in the understanding of primitive art [as well as that] concerning the nature of abstraction.”

  Barnett Newman (1905–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.”

  Mark Rothko (1903–1970) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Joint statement with Adolph Gottlieb, to Edwin A. Jewell, often referred to as a Manifesto. (written June 7, 1943; published June 13, 1943)

• “[O]ne must agree with Rilke when he says that with 'nothing can one touch a work of art so little as with critical words...'. It was Marcel Duchamps who was critical, when he drew a moustache on the Mona Lisa. And so was Mondrian when he dreamed of the dissolution of painting, sculpture, and architecture into a transcendent ensemble.”

  Mark Rothko (1903–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You can't ask a man to talk sensibly about the art of painting if he simply doesn't know anything about it. But by God, how can he [ Zola, his childhood friend who characterized Cezanne in L'Oeuvre] dare to say that a painter is done because he has painted one bad picture? When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one.”

  Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quote in a conversation with Vollard in Cezanne's studio in Aix - after the death of Zola in 1902; as quoted in Cézanne, Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74

• “No one knows what it feels like to be constantly insulted [by art-critics in Paris]. It sickens and destroys you.. .The fools! They've never stopped telling me I'm inconsistent [in his painting style]; they couldn't have said anything more flattering.”

  Édouard Manet (1832–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: quote of Manet, recorded by his friend Antonin Proust in his last years, Manet by Himself, p. 304, as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 241

• “Subject.. ..no specific scene but many incidents. – The first word I spoke was Argula – it has no meaning. I was then five years old. Thus I called this painting 'Argula' as I was entering a new period closer to my instincts. (Technique..:) Hundreds and hundreds of layers of paint to obtain the weight of reality – Art this period I measured by weight. [mid 1930's]”

  Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: in his reply to Questionnaires of the MOMA museum, 1941

• “It's almost as if art, in painting and music and stuff, is the leftover of some activity. The activity is the thing that I'm most interested in. Nearly everything that I've done was to see what would happen if I did this instead of that.”

  Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two)”

  Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: from Selections from the Ileana and Michael Sonnabend Collection, Sam Hunter, exhibition catalogue The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1985 p. 21

• “Moonlight on canvas, midnight and wine,Two shadows starting to softly combine. The picture they're painting Is one of the heart; And to those who have seen it, It's a true work of art.Oh, the red strokes, Passions uncaged; Thundering moments of tenderness rage. Oh, the red strokes, Tempered and strong (Fearlessly drawn), Burning the night like the dawn.”

  Garth Brooks (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is from.. ..Renaissance that individualism in painting dates; and I do not believe there is any use in looking in this direction if we desire to bring into being a fresh mural art, one that shall be at once popular, collective and contemporary.”

  Fernand Léger (1881–1955) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quote from The New Realism goes on, F. Léger, Art Front, February 1937 pp. 7-8

• “Harmony, rhythm, concision, concinnity are all elements that are epitomized in poetry. Cultivated in poetry, which is the nucleus of the creative impulse, these elemetns serve every art form: acting a character, writing a novel, creating music, dance, sculpture, painting.”

  Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Proun is the the Step-over from the art of painting to Architecture [original text in German:] (Umsteige-station von Malerei nach Architectur).”

  El Lissitsky (1890–1941) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: quote, 1925: in 'Kunstismen' ('Artisms', art magazine published by Lissitzky and Hans Arp, 1925); as quoted in: Richtingen in de Hedendaagsche schilderkunst (Trends in the Present Day Art of Painting), Jacob Bendien; W.…

• “If a painting has a soulful effect on the viewer, if it puts his mind into a soulful mood, then it has fulfilled the first requirement of a work of art. However bad it might be in drawing, color, handling, etc.”

  Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) first seen 1809 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quote of Friedrich's letter 8 Feb. 1809, to 'Akademiedirektor Schulz'; as cited by Helmut Bôrsch-Supan and Karl Wilhelm Jàhnig in Caspar David Friedrich: Gemâlde, Druckgraphik und bildmassige Zeichnungen (Munich: Preste…

• “I have had no formal training in painting: I gave up Art A level because I was sick of drawing peppers.”

  Derren Brown (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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