Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
Art Quotes
The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.
Art is self-conscious, not spontaneous; it exists to shield us from sordid reality, not to reflect it; it is partisan rather than disinterested, and its meanings are quite independent of whatever the author intended.
Every artist was first an amateur.
In art, as in love, instinct is enough.
The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.
Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days, and spoil him for his proper work.
It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call ‘The Ten Thousand Things’ around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I […]
To my mind the old masters are not art; their value is in their scarcity.
