A   B   C   D   E  F  G   H  I  J   K   L   M  N  O  P  Q   R   S  T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z


A
Aeschylus: Art is far feebler than necessity.

Antiphanes:
Who of the Gods taught the artist's craft
Laid on the human race the greatest curse.

Apuleius:  Art is nature's rival.

Aristotle: 

Art is a higher type of knowledge than experience.

The general end of art is the good of man.

Jean Arp:
Art is the fuit growing out of man, like fruit out of the plant, like the child out of the mother.

I like nature, but not its substitutes. Illusionistic art is a substitute for nature.

Marcus Aurelius: There is no nature which is inferior to art, for the arts imitate the nature of things.

B

Aubrey Beardsley:
After all, the Muses are women, and you must be a man to possess them properly.

Happy ... those artistswho thus escape the injustice of juries and the shuffling of dealers.

William Blake:
What has reasoning to do with the art of painting? ... To generalize is to be an idiot.

The poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artist's Jealousy.

A fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees.

None but blockheads copy each other.

All forms are perfect in the poet's mind, but these are not abstracted  or compounded from nature, they are from imagination.

Pierre Bonnard:
You can't possibly invent painting all by yourself.

I always work on paintings that miscarry. They pose exciting problems. It's good to fail.

Constantin Brancusi:
When we are no longer children, we are then dead.

Nude men plastically are not as beautiful as toads.

The beautiful is absolute justice.

Theories are patterns without values. It is action that counts.

Georges Bracque
Nobility arises fromthe reticence of emotion.

The senses distort; the intellect alone is a shaping , a constructive force.

C

Emile Carsen:
Reproducing the roundness and firmness of a red apple is not very different from the modeling of a head.

Catullus:
I must confess, mine eye and heart
Dote less on nature than on art.

Paul Cezanne:
Taste is the best judge. It is rare. The artist can only appeal to an extremely restricted number of people.

Institutes, pensions and honours  ar intended only for idiots, tricksters and knaves. Don't be an art critic, paint.

Art is harmony parallel to that of nature.

Design and colour are in no wise distinct. Contrasts and relations of tone--there is the secret of desire and modelling.

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.

I wish to make Poussin after nature.

To talk about art is almost useless. The labour which brings about progress in one's own calling is sufficient compensation for lack of comprehension on the part of fools.

J. B. Chardin: Who told  you that one  paints with colours? One makes use of colours, but one paints with emotions.

Le Corbusier: This art which has been called abstract ... This art is concrete.

J. B. C. Corot:

I hope with all my heart that there will be painting in Heaven.

Of Leonardo: Here is the creator of modern landscape.

Cicero:
There is an art of seeming artless.

Fame is the nurse of the arts.

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

D

Eugene Delecroix
The French are good for only things that are spoken or that are read. They never had a taste  in music nor in painting.

Painting is the trade that takes the longest  to learn and is the most difficult. It demands erudition like that of the composer, but it demands execution like that of the violinist.

One needs to see a painter in his own place to have an idea of his merit.

To write treatises  on the arts ex professo, to divide, to treat methodically, to summarize, to make systems for categorical instruction -- all this is error, loss of time, a false and useless idea.

Paul Delaroche: An artist must compel nature to pass through his intelligence and his art.

E

F

Roger de la Fresnaye: Originality is the myth of painting.

Eugene Fromentin: The secret of fine painting is to render the invisible.

G

Thomas Gainsborough:
We are all going to Heave, and Van Dyke is of the company.

Damn you [Mrs Siddons], your nose, Madame, there is no end to it.

Paul Gaugin:

To know how to draw is not to draw well.

The artist is either a plagiarist or a revolutionist.

Nothing so resembles a daub as a masterpiece.

In art, all means are good; nature  may be violated and brought, by a sublime deformation, to a permanent beauty.

Alfred Gilbert:

The Puritan excommunicates music and art.

Study the past; live in the present; work for the future.

Hopelessly indifferent, if not absolutely antagonistic, is the English practical mind to art.

Albert Gleizes: In a work of art it is only the spirit  which should be visible.  The physical aspect is hidden and myterious, and we must struggle to find it.

Vincent van Gogh: As you know, the symbol of St. Luke, the patron  saint of painters,is an ox. So one must be as patient as an ox if one wants to work in the field of art.

Goya Y Lucientes: In nature colour exists no more than line, -- there is only light  and shade. Give me a piece of charcoal, I will paint your portrait for you.

H

William Hogarth: I have generally found that persons who had studied painting least were the best judges of it.

Other pictures we see, Hogarth's we read.

A picture is a poem without words. Horace

W. M. Hunt: The mission of art is to represent nature, not to imitate her.

I

J. A. D. Ingres:
Rarely has anything great been done in the world save through the genius and the firmness of a singel man struggling against the prejudices of the multitude.

Colour enhances painting: but she is only the lady-in-waiting, because all she does is to make still more attractive the perfection of art.

George Inness:  Art is an essence as subtle as the humanity of God and like it, personal only to love, a stranger to the worldly minded, a myth to the mere intellect.

J

I only feel, but want the power to paint. Juvenal

K

Godfrey Kneller: Only God almighty makes painters.

L

Fernand Leger:

In my search for brilliancy and intensity I made use of the machine as other artists have happened to employ the nude body or still lifes ... I never amused myself copying a machine.

The artist can only continue in his own line of fate.  His is complete solitude. This dramatic  experience is known to all those men who are condemned to invent, to create, to construct.

Colour gives joy, it can also drive a person crazy. It can heal, in the polychromatic hospital. It is a formidable material, as indispensible to life as water or fire.

M

Menander
'Tis in the arts life's safeguard lies.

Art is man's refuge from adversity.

Eduard Manet: There are no amateurs, but only those who paint bad pictures.

E. F. T. Marinetti: Immortality  in art is a disgrace.

N

O

Nothing is more useful to man than those arts which have no utility. Ovid

P

Plato:
Art has no end but its own perfection.

We cannot give the name of art to anything irrational.

Plutarch: Painting is silent poetry.

Q

Quintillian:
The perfection of art is to conceal art.

The learned understand the theory of art, the unlearned its pleasure.

R

S

Seneca: 
The arts are the servants of life: wisdom is its master.

Good material often stands idle for want of an artist.

Art is but imitation of nature.

Silentarius:
Not nature, but art, made the bacchant frenzied, mixing maddness with the stone.

Simonides:
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

T

U

V

W

X

Xenophon:
It is not possible for a man who follows many arts to do everything well.

Y

Z