“Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.”
Art refuses to sit still or be easily defined, and the best quotes about it do the same. Here you will find painters, sculptors, musicians, and writers wrestling with creativity, beauty, meaning, and the maddening gap between what you imagine and what you manage to make.
“The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.”
“Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.”
“Art is science made clear.”
“Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.”
“Nature is the art of God.”
“If only we could persuade galleries to observe a fallow period in which, for two months every other year, new and old works of art could be sold in back rooms and all main galleries would be devoted to revisiting shows gone by.”
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
“No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.”
“The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.”
“When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.”
“Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.”
“There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.”
“The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.”
“I try to keep a low profile in general. Not with my art, but just as a person.”
“Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.”
“The history of art is the history of revivals.”