14,373 Quotes About Art

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art - be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting.

There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science and the second is art.

Reading about the response of people in stories, plays, poems, helps us to respond more courageously and openly at our own moments of turning.

To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.

Just give me a thousand words and you may make your own pictures.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.Well, it's all over. We have to start again from the beginning, asking one another what's going on.

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it.