Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.
There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body.
Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.
Do not expect pictures to say the expected; some of the best will have surprises for you, which will, at first, shock you.
To be free, to be happy and to be fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.
A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.
Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.
Your only hope of satisfying others is in satisfying yourself. I speak of a great satisfaction, not a commercial satisfaction.
Renoir had not only a great interest in human character, in human feeling, but had also a great love for the people he painted.
After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.
It's a wrong idea that a master is a finished person. Masters are very faulty; they haven't learned everything and they know it.
It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him.
The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.
Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.
Whatever you feel or think your exact state at the exact moment of your brush touching the canvas is in some way registered in that stroke.
Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds.
All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed.
When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature.
All outward success, when it has value, is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full play and enjoyment of one's faculties.
The true artist regards his work as a means of talking with men [and women], of saying his say to himself and to others. It is not a question of pay.
There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it-frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.
It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual, a new one, very distinct from others.
Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in.
Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.
Let every student enter the school with this advice. No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands. All education must be self education.
The pernicious influence of the prize and medal giving in art is so great that it should be stopped. History proves that juries in art have been generally wrong.
There is only one reason for art in America, and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time, and their own land.
Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.
Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.
Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.
The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.
Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.
Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.
There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.
Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.
Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure.
You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you.
When the motives of artists are profound, when they are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their work creates a stir in the world.
Because we are saturated with life, because we are human, our strongest motive is life, humanity; and the stronger the motive back of the line the stronger, and therefore more beautiful, the line will be.
Your painting is the marking of your progression into nature, a sensation of something you see way beyond the two pretty colors over there. Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.
Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.
Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it. Don't let it matter if your works are not "accepted" at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance.
Strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and the littlenesses are in it.
Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition.
Through art, mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.
Perhaps whatever there is in my work that may be really interesting to others and surely what is interesting to me, is the result of a sometimes successful effort to free myself from any idea that what I produce must be art.
I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and exclaiming the things of one's own time.
The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish, and spirits must flow. There must be courage. There are no easy ruts to get into which lead to happiness.
There has never been a painting that was more beautiful than nature. The model does not unfold herself to you, you must rise to her. She should be the inspiration for your painting. No man has ever over-appreciated a human being.
An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.