Great Art Quotes - Page 6

• There [is] a feeling of recognition, as of meeting an old friend, which comes to us all in the face of great artistic experiences. I had the same experience when I first heard an English folksong, when I first saw Michelangelo's Day and Night, when I suddenly came upon Stonehenge or had my first sight of New York City - the intuition that I had been there already.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  New York, Night, Sight

  "R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams". Book by Ursula Vaughan Williams, p. 30, "Musical Autobiography" (1950), 1964.

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• The purpose of subject matter is to veil technique. The great artist uses the cloak of resemblance to hide the means.

  John French Sloan

  Mean, Artist, Technique

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• No one would want to pay a penny for an empty canvas by me. But it would be quite another if the empty canvas were signed by a great artist. I would be surprised if an empty canvas by Picasso or Matisse signed and inscribed with the words, 'I wanted to paint such and such on this canvas, but did not do so,' would not fetch thousands... After all, with an empty canvas, the possibilities are limitless, and so perhaps is the cash.

  Semir Zeki

  Artist, Fetch, Cash

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• Self-censorship, whether known or unknown, is an unwelcome brake on creativity; it stifles self-expression and hence prevents a work from reaching the heights of great art.

  Semir Zeki

  Art, Creativity, Self

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• To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry. There are so many great artists out there. And the goal is to make great movies, you know? So to be successful, quality is the best business plan as I always say.

  John Lasseter

  Successful, Artist, Player

  "John Lasseter and Hayao Miyazaki Comic-Con Interview". Interview with Hunter Daniels, collider.com. July 24, 2009.

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• Flaubert spoke true: to succeed a great artist must have both character and fanaticism and few in this country are willing to pay the price. Our writers have either no personality and therefore no style or a false personality and therefore a bad style; they mistake prejudice for energy and accept the sensation of material well-being as a system of thought.

  Cyril Connolly

  Country, Mistake, Character

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

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• Great artists are products of their own time: they do not spring forth fully equipped from the head of Jove, but are formed by the circumstances acting upon them since birth. These circumstances include the ambiance created by the other, lesser artists of their own time, who have all done their part in creating the pressure that forces up an exceptional talent. Unjustly, but unavoidably, the very closeness of a great artist to his colleagues and contemporaries leads to their eclipse.

  Germaine Greer

  Spring, Artist, Creating

  Germaine Greer (2001). “The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work”, p.134, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Art, Past, Greatness

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• The immortality of great art seems bound up with the inevitable loss of its original surface meaning and its rebirth in the spirit of every new age.

  Anton Ehrenzweig

  Art, Loss, Age

  Anton Ehrenzweig (1967). “The Hidden Order of Art: A Study in the Psychology of Artistic Imagination”, p.77, Univ of California Press

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• Well, we have certainly produced great art before we did this. In my view, there are any number of areas of government which tax money should not be spent.

  Charlton Heston

  Art, Government, Views

  Interview with Ken Masugi, Senior Fellow, and Colleen Ryor, ashbrook.org. October 6, 1995.

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• A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Contentment, Artist

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

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• It is a great art to succeed in having your soul sanctified. A person can become a saint anywhere. He can become a saint in Omonia Square, if he wants. At your work, whatever it may be, you can become a saint through meekness, patience, and love. Make a new start every day, with new resolution, with enthusiasm and love, prayer and silence - not with anxiety so that you get a pain in the chest.

  Porphyrios (Bairaktaris) of Kafsokalivia

  Art, Prayer, Pain

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• The great artist is one whom constraint exalts, for whom the obstacle is a springboard.

  Andre Gide

  Artist, Greatness, Obstacles

  Andre Gide (2017). “Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality”, p.54, Routledge

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• Every great artist raises art to a science, and every great scientist raises science to an art, hence we have Michelangelo's David and Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

  Robert Breault

  Art, Greatness, Scientist

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• In the great artist you see daring bound by discipline and discipline stretched by daring.

  Robert Breault

  Artist, Discipline, Daring

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• All truly great art is propaganda.

  Ann Petry

  Art, Propaganda, Art Is

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• I'm speaking of the pursuit of excellence in all things. All things! Presence of mind and devotion to craft. A great artist has these. A great chef. A great master of tea. There's powerful kung fu in a well-built house or an eloquent letter, but the limit of your imagination is bones breaking and bullets flying.

  Scott Lynch

  Powerful, Artist, Presence Of Mind

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• Great artists are like loaded guns. They are dangerous in anybody's hands.

  Peter M. Brant

  Artist, Gun, Hands

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• I think I can see people wanting to hear more music-music now as opposed to all hip-hop. You know, which I have nothing against hip-hop. I think some of it is really good. But on the other hand, some of the real great artists are just being lost because they're not getting the airplay or anything to make them inspired to record again.

  Nickolas Ashford

  Real, Artist, Thinking

  "Still Solid, 40 Years Later: Ashford And Simpson". "News & Notes" with Ed Gordon, www.npr.org. September 11, 2006.

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• Guys don't understand great art. They don't care that sometimes the camera has power beyond the photographer to record emotion that only the heart can see. They're threatened when the camera jumps ahead of me. Todd Kovich was pissed when I brought my Nikon to the prom, but I'd missed too many transcendent shots over the years to ever take a chance of missing one again. A prom, I told him, had a boundless supply of photogenic bozos who could be counted on to do something base.

  Joan Bauer

  Art, Years, Guy

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• Remember, how often the great art of the past didn't look great at first, how often it didn't look like art at all; how much easier it is, decades or centuries later, to adore it, not only because it is, in fact, great but because it's still here; because the inevitable little errors and infelicities tend to recede in an object that's survived the War of 1812, the eruption of Krakatoa, the rise and fall of Nazism.

  Michael Cunningham

  Art, War, Fall

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• You need others. Too often people think that being unique means being isolated, and being a great artist means coming up with genius ideas out of nowhere. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

  John Lasseter

  Mean, Artist, Unique

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• That's the thing about great artists: They find the thing that's most obvious to themselves, what's most conscious and natural, and they put it out there and the audience comes.

  Steve Vai

  Artist, Natural, Conscious

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wise, Wisdom, Artist

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (1909). “Heretics”

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• A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!

  James Whistler

  Artist, Students, Paint

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