Some Notable Quotables

Some Notable Quotables

    As I begin teaching the Summer III session of a course called “Art as a World Phenomenon” at Kent Stark, it occurs to me once again that even though I’m the “teacher,” I am in fact, first and foremost, a perpetual student of art. As such, over my lifetime, I’ve gathered a bountiful crop of ideas and attitudes about art and artists. As teacher, then, I’m simply an impassioned student who gets to literally give away the fruits of my labors to other students . Or at the very least, I see my role as tilling the soil of other minds and souls in order to sow the seeds of an authentic and lasting art appreciation (not to be confused with “liking” art).

    And so it is that I present the following list of quotes not just to my university students, but to all of you faithful readers who share my passion to any degree. These words are NOT to be taken as indisputable truths or ironclad definitions of art. And I don’t agree with all of them. Rather, let them plow up contextual possibilities for embracing the sheer vastness of what we call art. In any case, I hope there are plenty enough seeds here to lead to a nourishing harvest.    

    The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.  -Aristotle

    The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. – Michelangelo

    Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.   -Leonardo da Vinci

    The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.  -Winston Churchill

    A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. -Oscar Wilde

   Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.  -Edgar Degas

   Art is a harmony parallel with nature.  -Paul Cezanne

   Great art picks up where nature ends.  -Marc Chagall

    Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.  -George Bernard Shaw

    To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.  -Robert Schumann

    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 enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.  -Thomas Merton

    I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.  -Georgia O'Keeffe

    You don't take a photograph, you make it.  -Ansel Adams

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

    Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. -Twyla Tharp

   If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.  -Anais Nin

    Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.  -Gian Carlo Menotti

   Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.  -Khalil Gibran

  The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them. ― Anton Chekhov

  A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.  –Gertrude Stein

  What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. -John Updike

  Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.  –Ambrose Bierce

  Art is what you can get away with. ― Andy Warhol

    It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception.  -Robert Motherwell

   Photography is a major force in explaining man to man. -Edward Steichen

    Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies. -Anish Kapoor

   Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”  ― C.S. Lewis

   Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.― Banksy

    PHOTO: The Sower, by Vincent Van Gogh