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Art Quotes
"When I was an art student in the early 60's before the acid scene began I was smoking pot just like anyone else who was an artist."
58
"The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey."
57
"Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity."
57
"Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation."
56
"The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity."
56
"One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom."
56
"A farce or comedy is best played, a tragedy is best read at home."
56
"Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted."
56
"Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things."
56
"What can a man do with music who is not benevolent?"
56
"Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words."
55
"The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity."
55
"The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his sneses, and the mind is no longer in him."
55
"The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive."
54
"A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories."
54
"Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art."
54
"Art is an expression of who you are. Parts that I play are my sculptures."
53
"Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins."
53
"The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of white marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image."
52
"Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness."
52
"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."
52
"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music."
52
"Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious."
52
"To have great poets there must be great audiences too."
52
"Diversity: the art of thinking independently together."
52
"All my ways of being are musical and mysterious.Yet I embrace you openly.Ripe with expectancy."
52
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
52
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