Famous Artist Quotes

Artists say the funniest things.Well, not necessarily, but some artists do give interesting, insightful or otherwise entertaining quotes. We have gathered some of the more interesting quotes we have found and would like to share them with you. So sit back and enjoy the artists quotes below.
“Art is literacy of the heart” ~ Elliot Eisner “Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.” ~ Roy Adzak “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” ~ Maya Angelou “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” ~ Aristotle “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” ~ Francis Bacon “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher “What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things . . . it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.” ~ Brancusi “The function of Art is to disturb. Science reassures.” ~ George Braque “In whatever one does there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart.” ~ Henri Cartier-Besson “What a society deems important is enshrined in its art” ~ Harry (?) Broudy “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” ~ Paul Cézanne “Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.” ~ Paul Cézanne “What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is a harmony parallel with nature.” ~ Paul Cézanne “When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.” ~ Paul Cezanne “Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” ~ Marc Chagall “Great art picks up where nature ends.” ~ Marc Chagall “There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.”~ Charlie Chaplin “The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it.” ~ Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) – French artist “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” ~ Salvador Dali (1904-1989) – Spanish artist “Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci “As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) – Italian artist “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and commonsense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.” ~ Giorgio DeChirico “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.” ~ Edgar Degas “Painting is easy for those that do not know how, but very difficult for those that do!” ~ Edgar Degas “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” ~ Edgar Degas “If apple is the language of the future, then art must be the core.” ~ Elliot W. Eisner “What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.” ~ Eugene Delacroix “We work not only to produce but to give value to time.” ~ Eugene Delacroix “Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.” ~ Eugene Delacroix “The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.” ~ Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) – French artist “When I feel a little confused the only thing to do is to turn back to the study of nature before launching once again into the subjects closest to heart.” ~ Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) – French artist “The big artist…keeps an eye on nature and steals her tools.” ~Thomas Eakins “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” ~ Albert Einstein “We live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though this is how it sometimes appears.” ~ M. C. Escher (Dutch) “Art is a passion or it is nothing.” ~ Robert Fry (Vision and Design) “A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.” ~ Paul Gardner “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” ~ Paul Gaugin “I shut my eyes in order to see.” or “I close my eyes in order to see” ~ Paul Gaugin “…the object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” ~ Alberto Giacometti “Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.” ~ Eric Gill “The essence of drawing is the line exploring space.” ~ Andy Goldsworthy “Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.” ~ Francisco Goya (1746-1828) – Spanish artist “To create one’s own world in any of the arts takes courage.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe “Fill a space in a beautiful way” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe “Still – in a way – nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe “One day seven years ago I found myself saying to myself — I can’t live where I want to — I can’t go where I want to go–I can’t do what I want to — I can’t even say what I want to –….I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe, 1923 “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way-things I had no words for.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe “If I didn’t think what I was doing had something to do with enlarging the boundaries of art, I wouldn’t go on doing it.” ~ Claes Oldenburg “Imagination is the true magic carpet.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale “Art is a lie that helps us to realize the truth.” ~ Pablo Picasso “Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” ~ Pablo Picasso “There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” ~ Pablo Picasso “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” ~ Pablo Picasso “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” ~ Pablo Picasso “I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.” ~ Pablo Picasso “It takes a very long time to become young.” ~ Pablo Picasso “What good are computers? They can only give you answers.” ~ Pablo Picasso “I believe it is impossible to make sense of life in this world except through art.” ~ Daniel Pinkwater (author) “Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” ~ Camille Pissarro “Every good painter paints what he is.” ~ Jackson Pollock “The painting has a life of its own.” ~ Jackson Pollock If you find that we have left out a few must have artist quotes, then by all means, send them in. We like to hear what artists have to say about their own works, so if an artist says something, we listen.

Keith Haring had a different take on what art is, “The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint….I’d like to pretend that I’ve never seen anything, never read anything, never heard anything…and then make something….Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it….Nothing is important…so everything is important.”

With so many differing opinions it is hard to focus on exactly what is what is not art. Many will tell you their opinions such as “I don’t know what good art is, but I know if I like it or not” and this seems to be the sentiment with many.

Paul Gaugin at one time said, “Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed; contemplating it, everyone can create a story at the will of his imagination and.. with a single glance…have his soul invaded by the most profound recollections; no effort of memory, everything is summed up in one instant. A complete art which sums up all the others and completes them.” Gaugin was as eloquent with speech as he was with a paint brush and painter’s hat.

Theo Van Gogh once said of brother, Vincent, “He (Vincent) has painted a few portraits which have turned out well, but he always does them for no payment. It is a pity that he does not want to earn something, for if he did want to he could make something here, but you can’t change a person.”

So many artists have not had any acclaim to fame or fortune during their own lifetimes. It is only after they are gone that the general public tends to take notice and appreciate the master artist. And even for those few who have claimed some form of notoriety, it is not all a bed of roses.

As David Hockney has said, “I know some people think one leads a glamorous life, but I must admit I’ve never felt that myself. Even when you’ve sat here in Hollywood with a swimming pool out there, I still feel my life is just as a working artist, actually.”

And so goes the life of a working artist. Some get to live the dream and some are not impressed by it when they get it. Yet, a lucky few get to live the dream and are impressed by it at the same time. Which kind of artist do you want to be? Impressed or unimpressed? Or even depressed?

And, the bigger question is are you in it for the art or are you in it for the lifestyle? Many artists and writer dream of the lifestyle without a true passion and commitment to the art. If it’s only the lifestyle you want there are perhaps better ways to achieve this than being a working artist. If however, you would wrather do art than anything else, then you’ve found your bliss and that is a reward in and of itself.