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Art Quotes


"I think a craft becomes an art form when the space of possible solutions becomes so huge that engineering can't carry you through."


"It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain vis-a-vis a work of art."


"The '20s ended in an era of extravagance, sort of like the one we're in now. There was a big crash, but then the country picked itself up again, and we had some great years. Those were the days when American believed in itself. I was happy and proud to be painting it."


"I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it."


"Statesmanship is harder than politics. Politics is the art of getting along with people, whereas statesmanship is the art of getting along with politicians."


"And that Newman wasn't, and yet to me Pollock is just as radical and unlike Expressionism as Newman."


"In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is - as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art."


"When you look at art made by other people, you see what you need to see in it."


"This art of acting is a process I love very much. It's an unbelievably fulfilling experience for me and I look forward to building upon my art in the years to come."


"People were more interested in the phenomena than the art itself. This, combined with the growing interest in collecting art as an investment and the resultant boom in the art market, made it a difficult time for a young artist to remain sincere without becoming cynical."


"I've just begun to dare to think I perhaps am a bit of an artist."


"One thing that took a while to really adjust to was, you do it for the the art, for the money, for being together and having a good time, but you do it for all those people out there who really care about the show. We are now talking about a show we did over 20 years ago."


"I usually use quick sketches that I accumulated from the figure drawing classes I once instructed."


"Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction: Simply to participate."


"Performance art can involve the audience with taste, smell and sounds not available with electronic media and not practical with conventional theater. This is due to the usually small audience."


"She was a poetry book with the wrong dust jacket, shelved in the Reference section."


"Its Vermeer'Kat turned to the boy who lingered in the doorway. 'It's stolen''What can I say?' Hale eased behind her and studied the painting over her shoulder. 'I met a very nice man who bet me he had the best security system in Istanbul.' His breath was warm on the back of her neck. 'He was mistaken."


"The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard."


"Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner."


"And then we moved to New Jersey and I went to the Art Students League."


"It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know."



"Art's development should be dialectical and not metaphysical."


"Entertainment is in art like color in pictures."


"All art is a kind of confession more or less oblique. All artists if they are to survive are forced at last to tell the whole story to vomit the anguish up."


"The painted aircraft took on sunlight and pulse. Sweeps of color, bands and spatters, airy washes, the force of saturated light-the whole thing oddly personal, a sense of one painter's hand moved by impulse and afterthought as much as by epic design. I hadn't expected to register such pleasure and sensation. The air was color-scrubbed, coppers and ochers burning off the metal skin of the aircraft to exchange with the framing desert."


"When Socrates was about 30, and his father was long dead, he was still pursuing the art of sculpture, but from necessity, and without much inclination."


"A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported whatthe rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong generalresemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf.Her shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion."
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