Art Quotes

“It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946, when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met, principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art.”

-- Jerry Saltz

“In fact, in many ways my mother was quite hippy-dippy, serving macrobiotic food and reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.'”

-- Kristin Scott Thomas

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”

-- Edgar Degas

“Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.”

-- Karl Kraus

“What is art? Nature concentrated.”

-- Honore de Balzac

“I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth.”

-- Charlie Chaplin

“I don't think there is such a thing as being too raunchy when it comes to the art form of burlesque.”

-- Christina Aguilera

“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.”

-- John Ruskin

“Art is born of humiliation.”

-- W. H. Auden

“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”

-- Tom Stoppard