Top 85 Art Quotes

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A picture says a thousand words. With that in mind, check out the top 85 art quotes to better understand the world around you.

#85 – 80. Art Quotes

85. Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy. – Albert Einstein

84. Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons. – Al Hirschfeld

83. To be an artist is to believe in life. – Henry Moore

82. Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. – Pablo Picasso

81. The most seductive thing about art is the personality of the artist himself. – Paul Cézanne

80. Success is a worn down pencil. – Robert Rauschenberg

#79 – 70. Art Quotes

79. The Achilles heel of an artist lies in the hope that his art is good. – Kapil Gupta

78. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton

77. Everything you can imagine is real. – Pablo Picasso

76. The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before. – Neil Gaiman

75. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. – John F. Kennedy

74. If you as a designer don’t believe in your design and don’t see it beyond the context of the film, instead of as a real creature in a real world then how can you expect the audience to believe it? – Peter Jackson

73. An empty canvas is full. – Robert Rauschenberg

72. Art is to console those who are broken by life. – Vincent Van Gogh

71. Art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. – Rainbow Rowell

70. You have a million excuses. Write anyway. – Carrie Kei Heim

#69 – 60. Art Quotes

69. It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. – Henry David Thoreau

68. One eye sees, the other feels. – Paul Klee

67. Art is coming face to face with yourself. – Jackson Pollock

66. In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better. – Ernest Hemingway

65. Art is a way of recognizing oneself. – Louise Bourgeois

64. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. – John F. Kennedy

63. If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing. – Marc Chagall

62. The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. – Friedrich Nietzsche

61. Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colours flowers, so does art colour life. – John Lubbock

60. Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better. – André Gide

#59 – 50. Art Quotes

59. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little. – Banksy

58. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. – Anais Nin

57. Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy. – Albert Einstein

56. A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others. – Salvador Dali

55. Art will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind. – Magdalena Abakanowicz

54. Anything I can not transform into something marvellous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls. – Anais Nin

53. A true masterpiece does not tell everything. – Albert Camus

52. Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. – Banksy

51. Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. – Pablo Picasso

50. Art is what you can get away with. – Andy Warhol

#49 – 40. Art Quotes

49. As I work at my drawings, day after day, what seemed unattainable before is now gradually becoming possible. Slowly, I’m learning to observe and measure. I don’t stand quite so helpless before nature any longer. – Vincent van Gogh

48. The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. – Pablo Picasso

47. When I paint, I never think of selling. People fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights. – Edvard Munch

46. The more we can get in tune with the harmony of the planet, the more our art can benefit from that relationship. – Rick Rubin

45. Art deteriorates when it is done for the audience. – James Pierce

44. Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. – Pablo Picasso

43. …and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough? – Vincent Van Gogh

42. Drawing is not what one sees, but what one can make others see. – Edgar Degas

41. Every artist was first an amateur. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

40. If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. – Edward Hopper

#39 – 30. Art Quotes

39. The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. – Alberto Giacometti

38. 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. – James Baldwin

37. The principle of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. – Jerzy Kosiński

36. Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. – Leonardo da Vinci

35. Obsessive people make great art. – Susan Sontag

34. Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today? – Salvador Dalí

33. Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will. – Anselm Kiefer

32. Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. – Leonardo da Vinci

31. It is only when we are no longer fearful that we begin to create. – J. M. W. Turner

30. To my mind a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful and pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is, without creating still more of them. – Pierre-Auguste Renoir

#29 – 20. Art Quotes

29. There is no must in art because art is free. – Wassily Kandinsky

28. The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle

27. To draw you must close your eyes and sing. – Pablo Picasso

26. Art is my life and my life is art. – Yoko Ono

25. A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. – Paul Cézanne

24. Whoever wants to know something about me, they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want. – Gustav Klimt

23. Art is not a thing, it is a way. – Elbert Hubbard

22. Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. – Edgar Degas

21. Art is never finished, only abandoned. – Leonardo da Vinci

20. Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. – Leo Tolstoy

#19 – 10. Art Quotes

19. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Scott Adams

18. I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for. – Georgia O’Keeffe

17. In drawing, one must look for or suspect that there is more than is casually seen. – George Bridgman

16. There is no must in art, because art is free. – Wassily Kandinsky

15. All these months I’ve been trying to find find a pattern. Trying not so much to draw hands as gestures. Not so much faces as the expressions of people. – Vincent van Gogh

14. What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap. – Marcel Duchamp

13. Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Pablo Picasso

12. If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery. It wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. – Michelangelo

11. Drawing at its best is not what your eyes see but what our mind understands. – Millard Sheets

10. Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. – Georges Braque

#9 – 1. Art Quotes

9. Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb. – Hans Jean Arp

8. Art is a line around your thoughts. – Gustav Klimt

7. I started painting as a hobby when I was little, I didn’t know I had any talent, I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Anybody can do what I do. – Bob Ross

6. While drawing I discover what I really want to say. – Dario Fo

5. Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it. – Leon Trotsky

4. Art is an international language, understood by all. – Igor Babailov

3. Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings. – Agnes Martin

2. Art must destroy violence, only it can do it. – Leo Tolstoy

1. Art is the expression of the profoundest thoughts in the simplest way. – Albert Einstein

Ideas for the top 85 art quotes come from the following sources.^[1]keepinspiring.me – art quote^[2]cravepainting – 101 Quotes about Art if you need some Inspiration^[3]Your Art Path – 60 Best Art Quote That Will Actually Inspire You!