165 Fine Arts Quotes

Following is our list of fine arts quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about fine artists.

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Famous Fine Arts Quotes

Fine art is knowledge made visible. — Gustave Courbet

The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves. — Edward Albee

The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. - Mae Jemison

The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. — Mae Jemison

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. — John Ruskin

All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living. — Bertolt Brecht

True art awakens the Extraordinary Ovation — Hafez

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. — Kurt Vonnegut

Art's for art. Money's for pizza. — Tim McGraw

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress. — Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. — Steven Pinker

An arts education helps build academic skills and increase academic performance, while also providing alternative opportunities to reward the skills of children who learn differently. — Gavin Newsom

Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development. — Harry Belafonte

The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world. — Elliot W. Eisner

Creating something that is universally beautiful. That is art. — Shu Uemura

There is a growing evidence that arts education improves student learning and thereby produces better citizens — David J. Skorton

Fine Arts Education Quotes

At any rate, girls are differently situated. Having no need of deep scientific knowledge, their education is confined more to the ordinary things of the world, the study of the fine arts, and of the manners and dispositions of people. — William John Wills

My major was Fine Arts and Education thinking I would become an Art Teacher. I couldn't visualize myself as an art teacher, thinking how it wouldn't work. — Mark Mothersbaugh

I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities. — Joshua Lederberg

Fine arts quote You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.

Fine and delicate taste is the fruit of education and experience. — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

The fine arts, both in those who cultivate and those only who admire them, open and expand the mind to great ideas. They inspire liberal feelings, create a harmony of temper, favorable to a sense of justice and a habit of moderation in our social intercourse. — Joel Barlow

Fine Artists Quotes

Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist. — Helena Rubinstein

Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so. — Henri Matisse

Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. - Rembrandt

Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. — Rembrandt

Fine arts quote Confidence is not "They will like me". Confidence is "I'll be fine if they don't"
Confidence is not "They will like me". Confidence is "I'll be fine if they don't"

I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word. — Pharoah Sanders

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. — William Faulkner

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. — James Whistler

Fine arts quote The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.

The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting. — Vincent Van Gogh

For some reason I've been labeled that and it's fine, but there are a lot of other artists that sing real traditional stuff, so I don't know why they picked me. That's what I've always done. — Alan Jackson

Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters — Francisco Goya

We designers, we don't work in a vacuum. We need business people. We are not the fine artists we are often confused with. — Dieter Rams

Visual Art Quotes

The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design. — Massimo Vignelli

I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary. — Barbara Kruger

The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age. — Marshall McLuhan

Fine arts quote Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

Our one goal is to give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding. Through the visual arts, the art of celebration of life. — Steven Spielberg

In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. — Walt Disney

I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality...to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not? — Storm Thorgerson

Fine arts quote There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. — Jerry Saltz

Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves. — Julia Morgan

Don't be afraid of expressing what you really mean in your art, what you really feel. Say it visually, as strongly as you can. Push as far a reach as you can, then go all the way! — Kay WalkingStick

We never really perceive what color really is, as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art. — Josef Albers

High Art Quotes

I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. - Archilochus

I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. — Archilochus

You're mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity. — Banksy

There's a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It's the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college. — Jill Scott

Vision may be a high-enough throughput input to the brain that is also sufficiently connected to its reward modules that AI-assisted generative art may converge to wire-heading. Probably nothing. — Andrej Karpathy

Atlantis was a highly evolved civilization where the sciences and arts were far more advanced than one might guess. Atlantis was technologically advanced in genetic engineering, computer science, inter-dimensional physics, and artistically developed with electronic music and crystal art forms. — Frederick Lenz

Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time. — Harold Pinter

My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life, but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar. — Gus Van Sant

I don’t create art to get high dollar projects, I do high dollar projects so I can create more art. — Chase Jarvis

I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity. — Cindy Sherman

Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts. — O. Henry

Graphic Art Quotes

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist - Francis of Assisi

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist — Francis of Assisi

Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy. — Jan Tschichold

Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people. — Shepard Fairey

The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive. — Vladimir Lenin

The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people. — El Lissitzky

The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects. — Wassily Kandinsky

Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated. — Paul Rand

You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt... or in front of a piece of graphic design. — Stefan Sagmeister

The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail. — John Wesley Powell

The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness. — Massimo Vignelli

Works Of Art Quotes

Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system. — Le Corbusier

I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work. — Augusta Savage

Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling. — Vincent Van Gogh

Every great work of art should be considered like any work of nature. First of all from the point of view of its aesthetic reality and then not just from its development and the mastery of its creation but from the standpoint of what has moved and agitated its creator. — Amedeo Modigliani

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet you're my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek, is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart? — Chet Baker

Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them. — Paul Hawken

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. - Leonardo da Vinci

The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. — Leonardo da Vinci

The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. — James Joyce

The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being. — Wassily Kandinsky

My work seen in its totality is a statement about the integration of the contemporary artist into an industrial society. — Herbert Bayer

Performing Arts Quotes

Posing is a performing art. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor. — Ernest Hemingway

no work of art is ever finished, nothing is ever static, no performance is for keeps. — Uta Hagen

Personality is essential. It is in every work of art. When someone walks on stage for a performance and has charisma, everyone is convinced that he has personality. I find that charisma is merely a form of showmanship. Movie stars usually have it. A politician has to have it. — Lukas Foss

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic. — Simone Weil

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic. — Uta Hagen

My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes. — Steve Prefontaine

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. — Marcel Duchamp

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. — Aristotle

The old Atlantean sciences from the tribe of enlightenment, of which there are only a few remnants and chards left in this world, were medicine, law, computers, and the performing arts. — Frederick Lenz

Contemporary Art Quotes

If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? - Melvin Glover

If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? — Melvin Glover

The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls. — Maya Deren

Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward. — Ben Eine

For me it's very important to turn Kiev into one of the main centers of contemporary art in the world. There is New York. There's London. And there will be Kiev. Everyone will come and say, 'Wow! — Victor Pinchuk

A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with. — Banksy

I especially like to collect contemporary art. — Yusaku Maezawa

I began collecting artwork as a way to help young artists to promote their work as well as to increase awareness of contemporary art among the younger generation. — Yusaku Maezawa

New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. — Sol LeWitt

There is no new wave, only the sea. — Claude Chabrol

I've been immersed in manga since I was a kid. I grew up with this culture. So I started to think about how to compare manga to contemporary art. — Takashi Murakami

Beautiful Art Quotes

A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person. — Saul Leiter

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing. — Georgia O'Keeffe

I grew up hearing everyone tell me 'God loves you'. I would say big deal, God loves everybody. That don't make me special! That just proves that God ain't got no taste. And, I don't think He does. Thank God! Because He takes the junk of our lives and makes the most beautiful art. — Rich Mullins

Music is a beautiful thing to listen to. It is not a thing to preach to others about, it’s not a cause. It is what it is-and that’s a beautiful artform. — Synyster Gates

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. — Albert Einstein

The drawings don't start with 'a beautiful mark'. It has to be a mark of something out there in the world. It doesn't have to be an accurate drawing, but it has to stand for an observation, not something that is abstract, like an emotion. — William Kentridge

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. — Albert Einstein

In my sculpture, it's not an image I am seeking, it's not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about. — Louise Bourgeois

Tagore once said - art has to be beautiful, but, before that, it has to be truthful. — Ritwik Ghatak

Have you ever learned the beautiful art of letting God take care of you and giving all your thought and strength to pray for others and for the kingdom of God? It will relieve you of a thousand cares. — A. B. Simpson

Teaching Art Quotes

The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things. — Miyamoto Musashi

I sit before flowers hoping they will train me in the art of opening up I stand on mountain tops believing that avalanches will teach me to let go I know nothing but I am here to learn. — Shane Koyczan

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Judo teaches us to look for the best possible course of action, whatever the individual circumstances. — Kano Jigoro

The teaching of one virtuous person can influence many; that which has been learned well by one generation can be passed on to a hundred. — Kano Jigoro

The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer. — Elliot W. Eisner

Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers. — Josef Albers

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. - Mark Van Doren

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. — Mark Van Doren

As far as possible, I want nothing more than to don my training gi and teach Karate. — Mas Oyama

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. — Charlie Parker

People Writing About Fine Arts

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet
quotes on love, art and life

31 134
Read quotes by Edward Albee

Edward Albee
quotes on education, art and love

175 494
Read quotes by Mae Jemison

Mae Jemison

22 2583
Read quotes by John Ruskin

John Ruskin
quotes on beauty, quality and art

601 5637
Read quotes by Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht
quotes on war, politics and fascism

189 2166
Read quotes by Hafez

Hafez
quotes on love, friendship and life

127 12699

More Fine Arts Quotes

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. — Neil Gaiman

Be true to yourself, help others, make each day your masterpiece, make friendship a fine art, drink deeply from good books - especially the Bible, build a shelter against a rainy day, give thanks for your blessings and pray for guidance every day. — John Wooden

I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. Oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly.You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it. — Vita Sackville-West

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I grew up a Red Sox fan. I grew up going to Fenway Park and the Museum of Fine Arts and the Science Museum and Symphony Hall and going to the Common, walking around. My whole family at different times lived and worked in Boston. — James Spader

When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself. — Edward Steichen

My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater. — Kanye West

There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics. — Norman Foster

Sunday night meant, in the dark, wintry, rainy Midlands ... anywhere where two creatures might stand and squeeze together and spoon.... Spooning was a fine art, whereas kissing and cuddling are calf-processes. — D. H. Lawrence

Some people's photography is an art. Not mine. Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine art crap is killing it already. — Helmut Newton

The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land. — Abraham Lincoln

If you do not start with the idea, you are creating fine art - its personal, but it tends not to communicate. — Seymour Chwast

Some people`s photography is an art. Mine is not. If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that`s fine. But that`s not why I do them. I`m a gun for hire. — Helmut Newton

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. — Arthur Quiller-Couch

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. — Robert Henri

A lot of people thought I got famous as a studio artist, then decided to cash in on it. But it actually was just a matter of survival for many years, and I felt it was really important for me to be able to say whatever I wanted with my street art and fine art. — Shepard Fairey

The division between the useful arts and the fine arts must not be understood in too absolute a manner. In the humblest work of the craftsmen, if art is there, there is a concern for beauty, through a kind of indirect repercussion that the requirements of the creativity of the spirit exercise upon the production of an object to serve human needs. — Jacques Maritain

I don't say everything, but I paint everything. — Pablo Picasso

My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see. — Paul Getty

I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace. — Alfred North Whitehead

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them. — Andy Warhol

The painting has a life of its own — Jackson Pollock

The fine art of executive decision consists in not deciding questions that are not now pertinent, in not deciding prematurely, in not making decision that cannot be made effective, and in not making decisions that others should make. — Chester Barnard

To equip a pedestrian with shelter, bedding, utensils, food, and other necessities, in a pack so light and small that he can carry it without overstrain, is really a fine art. — Horace Kephart

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. — Robert Hughes

On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. — Jackson Pollock

Sadistic excess attempts to reach roughly and by harshness what art reaches by fineness. — Percy Wynham Lewis

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