Art And Life Quotes

“My first memory is of light -- the brightness of light -- light all around.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Summing Up

“Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. I try to act in that gap between the two.

- 1959, from a catalogue”
― Robert Rauschenberg

“Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I paint to rest from the phenomena of the external world - to pronounce it -- and to make notations of its essences with which to verify the inner eye.”
― Morris Graves

“All the media of modern consciousness—from the printing press to radio and the movies—were used just as readily by authoritarian reactionaries, and then by modern totalitarians, to reduce liberty and enforce conformity as they ever were by libertarians to expand it.”
― Adam Gopnik

“A nation lives by its myths and heroes. Many societies have survived defeat and invasion, even political and economic collapse. None has survived the corruption of its picture of itself. High and popular art are not in competition here. Both may help citizens decide what they are and what they admire. In our age, however, high art has given up speaking to the body of its fellow citizens. It devotes itself to technical displays that can appeal only to other technicians.”
― E. Christian Kopff, The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition

“Despite all the lovely and undoubtedly accurate statements pertaining to what art is, perhaps art is merely a person creating a new ethical world in which they can reside. Perhaps when the sculptor, painter, writer, musician, and poet arrive at the point where after many trials and glorious errors they create art, they can put down their chisel, paintbrushes, pen, musical instruments, and verse making. Perhaps when the artist travels beyond the realm of the ordinary, they no longer feel a need to pay homage to a world where other people’s values and principles rule. Creating a new realm for their personal occupancy, they can now destroy all their crutches, burn, crush, and obliterate all their prior creations for what they now perceive as an abomination.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Art without purpose is decoration; life without art is hollow.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul