Art Quotes
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Blind hope. Blind hope is all we have. There's a Greek tragedy called Prometheus Bound; Prometheus is the [titan] that gave humans fire. He's chained to a rock and bemoaning his fate and saying, "I gave you everything. By giving you fire, I gave you blind hope. By giving you a little light that kept you warm at night, I let you believe that this was all going to be okay." For me, that's what art has been. Music and books, it's an act of hope to make them, and it's an act of hope to listen to them. That hope will be dashed, you will say goodbye.
Torquil Campbell
Broken Social Scene
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Making people dance has another function that has nothing to do with art, and I mean that in the most positive way possible. It's like food - if you're not eating it, you're doing something wrong. If they're not dancing, something is wrong.
James Murphy
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In the West, we avoid painful encounters with art by trivialising it, or by familiarising it. Our present obsession with the past has the double advantage of making new work seem raw and rough compared to the cosy patina of tradition, whilst refusing tradition its vital connection to what is happening now.
Jeanette Winterson
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As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.
Albrecht Durer
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Praying is the same to the new creature as crying is to the natural. The child is not learned by art or example to cry, but instructed by nature; it comes into the world crying. Praying is not a lesson got by forms and rules of art, but flowing from principles of new life itself.
William Gurnall
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Art is what gets communicated at a live show, which is why live shows are so amazing. To communicate in a different way is a mixed message. It devalues everything.
Alex Scally
Beach House
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They just want to get a handle on you and the idea, and that's enough. Some people sense more but they don't really get into it because it's going one step too far. But the whole idea of making art is to be open, to be generous, and absorb the viewer and absorb yourself, to let them go into it. I have to go into all those places in order to make it work.
Frank Stella
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Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space.
Douglas Coupland
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A lack of methodology in Upper Palaeolithic art research has led to confusion of priorities.
David Lewis-Williams
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I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood I'm in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good.
Jerry Saltz
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I honestly think that's one of the greatest motivators of art - the fear of not making great art.
Jason McCoy
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Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we're trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn't.
Brad Holland
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Never sound pompous. You always sound noble, noble. Absolute character of music is nobility. Even popular music can be noble, you see. If it's not noble, then it's not very good... Music is an art of emotion, of nobility, of dignity, of greatness, of love, of tenderness. All that must be brought out in music but never a show of pompousness.
Arthur Rubinstein
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A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established.
John Cotton Dana
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There is in the DNA of the Italians a bit of madness, which in the overwhelming majority of cases is positive. It is genius. It is talent. It's the masterpieces of art. It's the food, fashion, everything that makes Italy great in the world.
Matteo Renzi
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Art has to change things, and if it was immediately acceptable it would not be doing the job.
Antony Gormley
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When you fall in love with a work of art, you’d die to meet the artist. I am a student of the galleries of Pacific sunsets, full moon rises on the ocean, the clouds from an airplane, autumn forests in Raleigh, first fallen snows.
Yasmin Mogahed
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Art is one of the prime ways we have of opening ourselves and going beyond ourselves. That's what art is: it's the product of the human being in the world and imagination, all coming together.
Ali Smith
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It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.
Clive Bell
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Spirituality is nothing more than the art of paying attention. When I give my whole heart and mind to a task such as singing - life's worry, suffering, or conflicts don't exist in that moment. Additionally, singing is about breath work, which is the most essential practice to living a conscious & healthy life.
Jason Mraz
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We have lost the art of living, and in the most important science of all, the science of daily life, the science of behavior, we are complete ignoramuses. We have psychology instead.
D. H. Lawrence
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Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.
W. H. Auden
