Art Quotes

“Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.”

-- Camille Paglia

“The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.”

-- Gustave Flaubert

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”

-- Oscar Wilde

“Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.”

-- Marshall McLuhan

“What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world.”

-- Emir Kusturica

“The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.”

-- Keanu Reeves

“All humanity is passion without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.”

-- Honore de Balzac

“When I work, and in my art, I hold hands with God.”

-- Robert Mapplethorpe

“A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.”

-- Beverly Sills

“I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that.”

-- Erykah Badu