180 Great Art Quotes

Following is our list of great art quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about beautiful art.

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Famous Great Art Quotes

Real art is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind, and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possible is a benefactor of humanity. — Zoltan Kodaly

True art awakens the Extraordinary Ovation — Hafez

Great art picks up where nature ends. - Marc Chagall

Great art picks up where nature ends. — Marc Chagall

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

A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle. — Grace Hartigan

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. — George Jean Nathan

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

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

All great works of art are trophies of victorious struggle. — Julius Meier-Graefe

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. — Edward Hopper

All great art is born of the metropolis. — Ezra Pound

Fine art is knowledge made visible. — Gustave Courbet

All great art comes from a sense of outrage. — Glenn Close

Good art inspires; Good design motivates. — Otl Aicher

Art is too important not to share. — Romero Britto

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality. — Simon Schama

Short Great Art Quotes

  • Art is the signature of civilizations. — Beverly Sills
  • Art is the highest form of hope. — Gerhard Richter
  • When you see a great teacher, you are seeing a work of art. — Geoffrey Canada
  • Art is the most beautiful of all lies. — Claude Debussy
  • Nature is the art of God. — Dante Alighieri
  • True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. — Albert Einstein
  • Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development. — Harry Belafonte
  • Art is the triumph over chaos. — John Cheever
  • Art is the proper task of life. — Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Good art provides people with a vocabulary about things they can't articulate. — Mos Def

Top 10 Great Art Quotes

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation. - Marcus Tullius Cicero

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike. — Margot Fonteyn

Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on. — James Connolly

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. — Malcolm Muggeridge

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. - Lord Byron

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. — Lord Byron

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess? — Ludwig van Beethoven

A great artist has to be ready to fail. - Marina Abramovic

A great artist has to be ready to fail. — Marina Abramovic

Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life. — Burton Hill

All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. — G. K. Chesterton

Great Art Image Quotes

We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. - Steve Jobs quote

We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. — Steve Jobs

Great art quote Good artists borrow, great artists steal.
Good artists borrow, great artists steal.

Excellent Art Quotes

No matter how you may excel in the art of Karate, and in your scholastic endeavors, nothing is more important than your behavior and your humanity as observed in daily life. — Gichin Funakoshi

PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence. — Ambrose Bierce

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

Great art quote While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.
While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. — Aristotle

Those who have arrived at any very eminent degree of excellence in the practice of an art or profession have commonly been actuated by a species of enthusiasm in their pursuit of it. They have kept one object in view amidst all the vicissitudes of time and torture. — John Knox

Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance, nor can they ever, in any material, be made at small expense. A composition for cheapness and not excellence of workmanship is the most frequent and certain cause of the rapid decay and entire destruction of arts and manufacturers. — Josiah Wedgwood

Great art quote To make a great film need three things - the script, the script and the script.
To make a great film need three things - the script, the script and the script.

As the excellence of steel is strength, and the excellence of art is beauty, so the excellence of mankind is moral character. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Here’s to freedom, cheers to art. Here’s to having an excellent adventure and may the stopping never start. — Jason Mraz

The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate. — John Keats

Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well. — Andre Breton

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 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

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. — Vincent Van Gogh

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

Good 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

Keep a good heart. That's the most important thing in life. It's not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart. — Joni Mitchell

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. - Jackson Pollock

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. — Jackson Pollock

Good generals select intelligent officers, thoughtful advisors, and brave subordinates. They oversee their troops like a fierce tiger with wings. — Zhuge Liang

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

I believe that every human being should try to do good for someone else. There are so many different ways to do it. My art can be an instrument for helping people... What a good feeling - that I can do that with my art. — Romero Britto

One of the things my career as an artist might say to young artists is: The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best. And unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art. — Sally Mann

A leader leads by example not by force. - Sun Tzu

A leader leads by example not by force. — Sun Tzu

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

Nowadays, with digital printing, it's so easy to make everything perfect, which is not always a good idea. Sometimes the mistakes are really what make a piece. — Cindy Sherman

Great Artist Quotes

The things of nature are the Lord's silent ministers, given to us to teach us spiritual truths. They speak to us of the love of God and declare the wisdom of the great Master Artist. — Ellen G. White

A great chef is an artist that I truly respect. - Robert Stack

A great chef is an artist that I truly respect. — Robert Stack

It is something that artists do all the time unconsciously, working in the style of someone they consider a great master. I just wanted to make that relationship literal. — Sherrie Levine

Artists who are able to continually create great works throughout their lives often manage to preserve these childlike qualities. Practicing a way of being that allows you to see the world through uncorrupted, innocent eyes can free you to act in concert with the universe’s timetable. — Rick Rubin

Any great warrior is also a scholar, and a poet, and an artist. - Steven Seagal

Any great warrior is also a scholar, and a poet, and an artist. — Steven Seagal

If you subtracted all of the great artists who never drank, who never went to excess, you wouldn't have any more art left. What kind of poem are you gonna get out of a glass of iced tea? — David Lee Roth

I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic, and a progressive religious experience. — Shelley Winters

I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience. — Shelley Winters

History shows us that the people who end up changing the world - the great political, social, scientific, technological, artistic, even sports revolutionaries - are always nuts, until they are right, and then they are geniuses. — John Eliot

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world. — Leonard Bernstein

Artwork Quotes

I tried different techniques during my career, but I especially fell in love with painting with oil and pallette-knife. Every artwork is the result of long painting process; every canvas is born during the creative search; every painting is full of my inner world. — Leonid Afremov

They paint me as a villain, I just autograph the artwork. - Lil Wayne

They paint me as a villain, I just autograph the artwork. — Lil Wayne

Unfortunately, the general interest in art among the Japanese is very low compared to that of Western countries. I would love to be able to correct that by bringing many more pieces of interesting artwork to Japan. — 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

I always see these landscapes in my dreams, and feel happy. I desperately try to transform these dreams into artwork, so that even while napping, I construct and reconstruct various images. — Yayoi Kusama

I could never live without artwork. It's a constant inspiration. — Narciso Rodriguez

I would love to be able to share my artwork with as many people as possible so that I can help spread an appreciation for art in general. — Yusaku Maezawa

The seed of your next artwork lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece. Such imperfections are your guides - valuable, objective, non-judgmental guides to matters you need to reconsider or develop further. — David Bayles

People who have ordered my pieces to be removed should have asked themselves before if they were artworks or vandalism. — Invader

I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork. I don't want you to stop while you're reading one of my books and say, 'Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!' I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, 'This is a good book. — Chris Raschka

Wall Art Quotes

People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly. — Banksy

Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint. — Banksy

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. - Banksy

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. — Banksy

Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place. — Banksy

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it. — Michelangelo

You can create the perfect triceps by just pushing yourself off your wall. — Jean-Claude Van Damme

There are four basic human needs; food, sleep, sex and revenge. — Banksy

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

A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves. — Banksy

The Art Snob can be recognized in the home by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. This is followed either by complete and pained silence or a comment such as 'That's really a very pleasant little water color you have there. — Russell Lynes

Passion For Art Quotes

I would rather die of passion than of boredom. - Emile Zola

I would rather die of passion than of boredom. — Emile Zola

If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and color. — Mary Cassatt

The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion - others pray in church. It's a banality, but you don't possess art, it possesses you. It's like falling in love. — Francois Pinault

Western art is built on the biographical passion of one artist for another. — Jim Dine

I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it. — Marilynne Robinson

Dance music is my love, is my passion, is my life. I live for my fans and take my art very seriously. — Steve Aoki

Ask yourself what makes you come alive. — Howard Thurman

Advice for a human 86. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love. — Matt Haig

So now, from this mad passion Which made me take art for an idol and a king I have learnt the burden of error that it bore And what misfortune springs from man's desire... The world's frivolities have robbed me of the time That I was given for reflecting upon God. — Michelangelo

The most beautiful thing in the world is, precisely, the conjunction of learning and inspiration. Oh, the passion for research and the joy of discovery! — Wanda Landowska

Painting And Art Quotes

Bodybuilding is an art, your body is the canvas, weights are your brush and nutrition is your paint. We all have the ability to turn a self portrait into a masterpiece. — Kai Greene

You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it — Faith Ringgold

Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential. — Wassily Kandinsky

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't. — Jean-Luc Godard

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't. — JeanLuc Godard

You paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. — Franz Kline

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

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

Choose only one master - Nature. - Rembrandt

Choose only one master - Nature. — Rembrandt

Simplify, slow down, be kind. And don't forget to have art in your life - music, paintings, theater, dance, and sunsets. — Eric Carle

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

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

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

Now sexual obsessions are the basis of artistic creation. Accumulated frustration leads to what Freud calls the process of sublimation. Anything that does not take place erotically sublimates itself in the work of art — Salvador Dali

Everyone should consider his body as a priceless gift from one whom he loves above all, a marvelous work of art, of indescribable beauty, and mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that a word, a breath, a look, nay, a thought may injure it. — Nikola Tesla

Great Architecture Quotes

One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again. — Renzo Piano

It wasn't that I had any great dream of being an architect. I just wanted to make things. Whether it was furniture, painting, interior design, or architecture. I just wanted to create something. — Tadao Ando

There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons. — Edwin Lutyens

The dance is the mother of the arts. Music and poetry exist in time; painting and architecture in space. But the dance lives at once in time and space. — Curt Sachs

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space. — Philip Johnson

Great architecture has only two natural enemies: water and stupid men. — Richard Nickel

My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we - architects - can effect the quality of life of the people. — Richard Rogers

I truly believe that the great heroes that create the history of architecture are people who take risks and write to tell about it. — Peter Eisenman

The decorator of Las Colimas must have been a great admirer of both early Aztec and late Taco Bell architectural styles. — Ilona Andrews

To practice space is thus to repeat the joyful and silent experience of childhood; it is, in a place, to be other and to move toward the other...Kandinsky dreamed of: 'a great city built according to all the rules of architecture and then suddenly shaken by a force that defies all calculation. — Michel De Certeau

People Writing About Great Art

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Read quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche
quotes on god, love and morality

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Read quotes by Zoltan Kodaly

Zoltan Kodaly
quotes on love, life and music

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Read quotes by Hafez

Hafez
quotes on love, friendship and life

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Read quotes by Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall
quotes on love, life and art

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Read quotes by Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan
quotes on love, friendship and life

11 106
Read quotes by George Jean Nathan

George Jean Nathan
quotes on education, religion and leadership

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More Great Art Quotes

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way. — Anton Chekhov

If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains. — Niccolo Machiavelli

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist. — Diego Rivera

My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art. — Benjamin Disraeli

Thoroughness characterizes all successful men. Genius is the art of taking infinite pains. All great achievement has been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail. — Elbert Hubbard

The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts — D.T. Suzuki

The great World Champions Morphy, Steinitz, and Lasker were past masters in the art of Pawn play; they had no superiors in their handling of endgames. The present World Champion has not the strength of the other three as an endgame player, and is therefore inferior to them. — Jose Raul Capablanca

Never sound pompous. You always sound noble, noble. Absolute character of music is nobility. Even popular music can be noble, you see. If it's not noble, then it's not very good... Music is an art of emotion, of nobility, of dignity, of greatness, of love, of tenderness. All that must be brought out in music but never a show of pompousness. — Arthur Rubinstein

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

To do the right thing at the right season is a great art. — Helio Gracie

The best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae to draw in the energy resonating at a particular moment. Many great artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves. They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel everything more deeply. — Rick Rubin

The great artists throughout history are the ones able to maintain this childlike enthusiasm and exuberance naturally. Just as an infant is selfish, they’re protective of their art in a way that’s not always cooperative. Their needs as a creator come first. Often at the expense of their personal lives and relationships. — Rick Rubin

Know the enemy and know yourself. — Sun Tzu

God gave me a great body and it's my duty to take care of my physical temple. — Jean-Claude Van Damme

The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation. — Louise Brooks

My art speaks and will continue to speak, transcending barriers of nationality, language and other forces that may be divisive, fortifying the greatness of the spirit that has always been the foundation of the Ojibwa people. — Norval Morrisseau

To improve our schools, we have to humanize them and make education personal to every student and teacher in the system. Education is always about relationships. Great teachers are not just instructors and test administrators: They are mentors, coaches, motivators, and lifelong sources of inspiration to their students. — Ken Robinson

I can’t write five words but that I change seven. — Dorothy Parker

When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time. — Neal A. Maxwell

Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. — Seth Godin

What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating. — Paul Dirac

1988 I also received from the city of Vienna the cross of honour for art and science. These titles and the various honors mean a great deal to me, most of all for the reason that they would mean a great deal to my parents too. — Leon Askin

The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness. — Loren Eiseley

The pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second — comics, picnic tables, men’s trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles. All the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried not to notice at all. — Andy Warhol

No great work of art is ever finished. — Michelangelo

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

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