168 Visual Art Quotes

Following is our list of visual art quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about seeing art.

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Famous Visual Art Quotes

Fine art is knowledge made visible. — Gustave Courbet

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there. — Kathleen Hanna

Artmaking is making the invisible, visible. — Marcel Duchamp

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

Art is literacy of the heart — Elliot W. Eisner

Art is the objectification of feeling. — Suzanne K. Langer

What is art but a way of seeing? - Thomas Berger

What is art but a way of seeing? — Thomas Berger

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

What we call art would seem to be specialist artifacts for enhancing human perception. — Marshall McLuhan

Great art picks up where nature ends. - Marc Chagall

Great art picks up where nature ends. — Marc Chagall

Art is the flower... life the green leaf. — Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Painting and sculpture help other people to see what a wonderful world we live in. — Henry Moore

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

Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain. — Childe Hassam

Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world. — Gwendolyn Brooks

Short Visual Art Quotes

  • Art is the colors and textures of your imagination. — Meghan Trainor
  • Art provides the language we need to appreciate life. — Oscar Wilde
  • Art is a spiritual, immaterial respite from the hardships of life. — Fernando Botero
  • Art is what you can get away with. — Andy Warhol
  • Art is an international language, understood by all. — Igor Babailov
  • Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. — Pablo Picasso
  • Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. — Edgar Degas
  • abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true vision of reality. — Piet Mondrian

Visual Art Image Quotes

Visual art 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.

What Are Some Art Quotes

My main concern is that there is a balance in the system and that some art-based hip-hop can get out to the masses, 'cause right now people are not responding to what they don't know. Most people are just afraid to think on their own. — Black Thought

There are people who claim to be instinctive cooks, who never follow recipes or weigh anything at all. All I can say is they're not very fussy about what they eat. For me, cooking is an exact art and not some casual game. — Delia Smith

Some of the best art occurs when people are oppressed. That's just what we do as a species when something shakes us up. — Pharrell Williams

Visual art quote The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.

And that's what art is, a form in which people can reflect on who we are as human beings and come to some understanding of this journey we are on. — Wendell Pierce

Some go on to trade schools or get further training for jobs they are interested in. Some go into the arts, some are craftsmen, some take a little time out to travel, and some start their own businesses. But our graduates find and work at what they want to do. — Daniel Greenberg

What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art. — Max Beckmann

Visual art 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.

With what we've been taught is the proper role of art, which is that you want to have it very neatly matted and framed and put on a white wall in some room where only a certain class of people are going to go in. — Eric Drooker

A comedian, or any artist, needs their time to develop what they are doing. There has to be some respect for the art form and when it's allowed to be seen. — Keenen Ivory Wayans

We are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

You are some kind of a mystery suspended between two eternities. And in that moment, when a mind looks out at a world and asks the question, ‘What is it?’ In that moment art can be created. — Terence McKenna

Seeing Art Quotes

Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture. — Rudolf von Laban

You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa. — Dave Barry

At the very least, participatory involvement with the many forms of art can enable us to see more in our experience, to hear more on normally unheard frequencies, to become conscious of what daily routines have obscured, what habit and convention have suppressed. — Maxine Greene

Visual art quote There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

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

For me fashion is an expression of art that is very closely related both to me and to my body. I see it as an expression of identity combined with desire, moods and a cultural setting. — Iris van Herpen

Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time, with eyes of a child, fresh with wonder. — Joseph Cornell

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. — Elliott Erwitt

I can get obsessed by anything if i look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer. — Irving Penn

Start your day with a quote that you love. Start your day by looking at a picture of someone that you love. Start your day with a work of art that inspires you. Make the first thing that you see so closely connected to your purpose that your monk-mind naturally comes alive. — Jay Shetty

Never stop looking, no matter where you are, everywhere there are good photographs — Art Wolfe

Visual Artist 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

There is no must in art because art is free. — Wassily Kandinsky

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out. — Anthony Bourdain

Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual. — Edward Tufte

I think that a visual artist's philosophy develops much more freely than a writer's or a thinker's philosophy. It is not so disciplined. The photographer works with both his eyes and his mind. — Manuel Alvarez Bravo

What to paint was a problem for the war artist... the old heroics, the death and glory stuff, were gone forever... the impressionistic technique I had developed was now ineffective, for visual impressions were not enough. — A. Y. Jackson

Mark Ryden is my favorite visual artist. — Melanie Martinez

Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract for he must create his own work from his visual impressions. A realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts. — Richard Diebenkorn

A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars. — Steve Albini

We used the camera only as a means of expression and as a visual medium that offers possibilities found in no other artistic technique, possibilities that the eye cannot catch in their totality. We tried to establish a characteristic vision of photography. — Piet Zwart

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

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

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

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

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

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

Modern Art Quotes

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Neckties satisfy modern man's desire to dress in art. — Harry Anderson

We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams. — Albert Einstein

It was not very easy for a woman to impose herself as a modern artist in Germany… Most of our male colleagues continued for a long time to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status. — Hannah Hoch

To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts. — Charles Baudelaire

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

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

The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating. — Jackson Pollock

Know the enemy and know yourself. — Sun Tzu

I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born. — Eric Kandel

Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization. The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet. — Ada Louise Huxtable

Fine Arts Quotes

Remember, success is a journey not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine. — Bruce Lee

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

The fine art of preparing sushi is something that you watch and learn. — Nobu Matsuhisa

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it. — Laurence J. Peter

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

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

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. — Francisco Goya

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. - Havelock Ellis

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. — Havelock Ellis

Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art. — Andy Warhol

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

Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing. - Marc Chagall

Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing. — Marc Chagall

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 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

The viewer brings something individual to the experience of any artwork. — Olafur Eliasson

Avant Garde Art Quotes

If I paint like a barbarian, it's because we live in a barbarous age — Karel Appel

The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end. — Clement Greenberg

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done. — Jeff Koons

You might argue that the history of contemporary art is a series of avant-garde movements, each new wave outraging the last. — Michael Scott

Avant-garde is French for bullshit — John Lennon

Dance in this century has remained primarily a personal ritual operating, like most avant-garde art, as an idiosyncratic form rather than a tribal expression of religious powers or a corporate expression of societal values. — Jamake Highwater

I didn't set out to do something different so much as do something that interested me. I wasn't trying to be avant-garde - that's being fashionable. You don't set out to revolutionize art, you make statements for yourself. — Arnold Newman

I think that music is a very difficult art form in which to be avant-garde. When we sit down to listen to a piece of music, I think our implicit hope is that we're going to find it beautiful, or at least emotional, on some level. — Steven Soderbergh

In my home country, there was a little shop with old books, but it was really in the countryside. You couldn't find English books. I found this very avant-garde American art book that had information about Georgia O'Keeffe. I was very much impressed by her. — Yayoi Kusama

Experiment - exercising to see the result. We planned Europa not as an experiment in this sense but as a work of art. Yet The Eye and the Ear was done as a consciously designed experiment. Not every avant-garde dealt with experiments and not every experiment equalled avant-garde. — Stefan Themerson

Street Art Quotes

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. — Ansel Adams

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

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss. — 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

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow. — Imogen Cunningham

Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. lt must be spread everywhere – on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers' homes. — Vladimir Mayakovsky

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

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

People Writing About Visual Art

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet
quotes on love, art and life

31 134
Read quotes by Kathleen Hanna

Kathleen Hanna
quotes on love, feminism and culture

149 257
Read quotes by Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp
quotes on art

70 812
Read quotes by Elliot W. Eisner

Elliot W. Eisner

26 478
Read quotes by Zoltan Kodaly

Zoltan Kodaly
quotes on love, life and music

15 760
Read quotes by Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan
quotes on media

369 2937

More Visual Art Quotes

No other creative field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity. — Faith Ringgold

Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics. — Fritjof Capra

I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful — Kara Walker

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

The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images. — Camille Paglia

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

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

Neither camera, nor lens, nor film determine the quality of pictures; it is the visual perception of the man behind the mechanism which brings them to life. Art contains the allied ideas of making and begetting, of being master of one's craft and able to create. Without these properties no art exists and no photographic art can come into being — Helmut Gernsheim

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

Art is humanity's most essential, most universal language. It is not a frill, but a necessary part of communication. The quality of civilization can be measured through its music, dance, drama, architecture, visual art and literature. We must give our children knowledge and understanding of civilization's most profound works. — Ernest L. Boyer

The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance. — Sol LeWitt

A lot of people in the art world hate to use the word "Photoshop", like it's cheating or easy or something. I say bollocks to that - for me, it's my tool, my paintbrush if you like, and lets me create my own visual language. — Idris Khan

Art is an idea that has found its perfect visual expression. And design is the vehicle by which this expression is made possible. Art is a noun, and design is a noun and also a verb. Art is a product and design is a process. Design is the foundation of all the arts. — Paul Rand

I had no special training at all; I am completely self-taught. I don’t fit the mold of a visual arts designer or a graphic designer. I just had a strong concept about what a game designer is – someone who designs projects to make people happy. That’s his purpose. — Toru Iwatani

Lucifer is the patron saint of the visual arts. Color, form - all these are the work of Lucifer. — Kenneth Anger

When you're actually making a film, it's just people on your back all the time wanting stuff and you're constantly having to it deal with them. It's probably the most time consuming of all the arts, but I do love it because it is a great mix of visual art and music and writing. — Taika Waititi

The role of art for me is the visualization of attitude, of the human attitude towards life, towards the world. — Josef Albers

No one questions the fact that verbal language has to be learned, but the commonplaceness of visual experience betrays art; people tend to assume that, because they can see, they can see art. — Anne Truitt

There are three forms of visual art: Painting is art to look at, sculpture is art you can walk around, and architecture is art you can walk through — Dan Rice

Graphic design is a popular art and a practical art, an applied art and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the art of visualizing ideas. — Jessica Helfand

I don't think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art. — Roy Lichtenstein

Be drawn to the visual arts for it can expand your imagination. — Barbara Januszkiewicz

A picture book is a small door to the enormous world of the visual arts, and they're often the first art a young person sees. — Tomie dePaola

As the spiral of modern art history continues to wind down, we can see the increasing demand for tradition in the visual arts. — Igor Babailov

For me, visuals are as important as the music. I just love escapism and giving people something to escape to. To me, that's what art is. — Iggy Azalea

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it. — Dorothea Lange

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. — Dorothea Lange

Symphony is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new. Visual artists in particular are good at seeing how the pieces come together. I experienced this myself by trying to learn to draw. — Daniel H. Pink

It's as though aesthetic value, quality, could be preserved only by concentrating on 'absolute' or 'autonomous' art: thus on visual art... that held and moved and stirred the beholder as sheer decoration could not. — Clement Greenberg

There are many ways in which people are made aware of their power to believe in the supremacy of Divine guidance and power: through music or visual art, some event or experience decisively influencing their life, looking through a microscope or telescope, or just by looking at the miraculous manifestations or purposefulness of Nature. — Ernst Boris Chain

I try to express in my films things that no other art can approach. In my monster films for example, I use special effects in the same way one would use a special film stock, a special camera, and so on. Monster films permit me to use all of these elements at the same time. They are the most visual kind of film. — Ishiro Honda

Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist. — Wayne McGregor

Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork... they will receive my new work als they always have when something new presents itself: with indignation and screams of scorn. — Kurt Schwitters

In Conclusion

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