Art Quotes

“When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art.”

-- Marc Chagall

“Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.”

-- Robert Smithson

“The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.”

-- Gertrude Stein

“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.”

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Good art provides people with a vocabulary about things they can't articulate.”

-- Mos Def

“Megacollectors suppose they can enter art history by spending astronomical amounts.”

-- Jerry Saltz

“The reason the art world doesn't respond to Kinkade is because none - not one - of his ideas about subject-matter, surface, color, composition, touch, scale, form, or skill is remotely original. They're all cliche and already told.”

-- Jerry Saltz

“Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.”

-- Constantin Stanislavski

“Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.”

-- Herbie Hancock

“Art must take reality by surprise.”

-- Francoise Sagan