Art Quotes

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts will follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

Paul explained that [the album cover concept for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”] was like a band you might see in a park. So the cover shot could be a photograph of them as though they were a town band finishing a concert in a park, playing on a bandstand with a municipal flowerbed […]

The instinctive sense of the dishonor which money-purchase does to art is so strong that sometimes a man of letters who can pay his way otherwise refuses pay for his work, as Lord Byron did, for a while, from a noble pride, and as Count Tolstoy has tried to do, from a noble conscience.

Art has no enemy except ignorance.

The block of wood should not dictate to the carver.

What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter, and then the painting.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

All good art is an indiscretion.

I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint.