“Every artist writes his own autobiography.”

“My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.”

“At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.”

“I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.”

“Originality is the art of concealing your source.”

“The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.”

“Almost all institutions own a lot more art than they can ever show, much of it revealing for its timeliness, genius, or sheer weirdness.”

“Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.”

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

“Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.”

“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.”

“What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.”

“Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.”

“The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.”

“Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books.”

“There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.”

“I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'”

“Your talent is your art. It is not to be taken for granted.”

“Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.”

“Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness.”

“Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.”