Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not...

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

New arts destroy the old.

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood....

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Those who write for lucre or fame are grosser than the cartel robbers, for they steal the genius of the people, which is its will to resist evil.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

The true poem is the poet’s mind.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ”the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate,...

Every artist was first an amateur.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you’re an artist.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

Art for art’s sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

I can’t work without a model. I won’t say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter...

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he...