Modern Art Quotes

• 

  To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Art, Mean, Color

  Charles Baudelaire (1995). “The Painters of Modern Life”, Phaidon Incorporated Limited

  96 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

  Banksy

  Art, Graffiti, Littles

  18 Copy quote

• The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty.

  Piet Mondrian

  Art, Emotion, Modern

  "Natural Reality and Abstract Reality" by Piet Mondrian, published in De Stijl magazine, 1919.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, Space, Feelings

  Elizabeth Frank, Jackson Pollock (1983). “Jackson Pollock”, Abbeville Pr

  81 Copy quote

  Show source

• In general, modern art... has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Desire, Inspired

  8 Copy quote

• You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

  Milan Kundera

  Art, Imagination, Modern

  "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Series Seven". Book editing by George Plimpton, Interview with Christian Salmon (Fall 1983), 1988.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art is the triumph over chaos.

  John Cheever

  Art, Triumph, Chaos

  John Cheever (1961). “Some Peoples, Places, and Things that Will Not Appear in My Next Novel”, New York : Harper

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

  Tom Stoppard

  Art, Wall, Sculpture

  18 Copy quote

• The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, Thinking, Painting

  "Jackson Pollock" by Francis V. O'Connor, (p. 79), 1967.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

  Salvador Dali

  Art, Tragedy, Modern

  9 Copy quote

• Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

  Tom Stoppard

  Art, Skills, America

  Artist Descending a Staircase (1972)

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

  Edith Wharton

  Art, Fear, Immature

  The Writing of Fiction (1925) ch. 1

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The modern artist... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.

  Jackson Pollock

  Artist, Serenity, Energy

  Jackson Pollock, Gagosian Gallery (1990). “Jackson Pollock: black enamel paintings, April-May 1990”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• The modern artist, by nature and destiny, is always an individualist.

  Herbert Read

  Artist, Destiny, Modern

  4 Copy quote

• The art world is the biggest joke going. It's a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak. And modern art is a disgrace - never have so many people used so much stuff and taken so long to say so little.

  Banksy

  Art, Taken, Home

  Source: prefuse.net

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• A painting in an interior spreads joy around it by the colors, which calm us.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Color, Joy

  "Matisse on Art".

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The impulse of modern art was this desire to destroy beauty.

  Barnett Newman

  Art, Desire, Modern

  "Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews".

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them.

  Freddie Mercury

  Art, Understanding, Trying

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Pain, Bears

  On Photography "America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" (1977)

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most painting in the European tradition was painting the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our subject matter was the person behind the mask.

  Robert Motherwell

  Art, Matter, Painting

  "The Times", November 17, 1985.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.

  Egon Schiele

  Art, Modern, Eternal

  Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (2005). “Egon Schiele: love and death”, Cantz

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.

  Jackson Pollock

  Artist, Etc, Painting

  Jackson Pollock, Gagosian Gallery (1990). “Jackson Pollock: black enamel paintings, April-May 1990”

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• Should #‎ graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that

  Banksy

  Art, Important, Graffiti

  37 Copy quote

• Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

  John Ciardi

  Girl, Art, Sex

  13 Copy quote

• The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

  Paul Gauguin

  Art, Loss, Architecture

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source