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Quotes about art

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Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden1907–1973A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970), “Friday, Good”
- Christianity
- Poetry
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden1907–1973Another Time (1940)
- Life & Death
- Poetry
Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.
W. H. Auden1907–1973The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962)
- Science
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
W. H. Auden1907–1973The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962)
- Poetry
- Politics
I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!
Jane Austen1775–1817Pride and Prejudice (1813), Volume I, Chapter IXIn context
- Love
- Poetry
Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
Philip James Bailey1816–1902Festus (1839), Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
- Love
- Poetry
The urge for destruction is also a creative urge.
Mikhail Bakunin1814–1876“The Reaction in Germany” (1842)
- War & Peace
Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.
James Baldwin1924–1987“An interview with James Baldwin” (1961)
- Life & Death
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.
James Baldwin1924–1987“The Precarious Vogue of Ingmar Bergman” in Esquire (April 1960); republished as “The Northern Protestant”, also in The Price of the Ticket (1985)
What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?
Honoré de Balzac1799–1850Lost Illusions, Part II: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris (1839), tr. Ellen Marriage, ch. I
- Nature
People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish. But that’s only if it’s done properly.
BBanksyborn 1973Wall and Piece (2007)
- Comedy
T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.
BBanksyborn 1973Wall and Piece (2007)
- Photography
- Television
I don’t think about art while I work… I try to think about life.
Jean-Michel Basquiat1960–1988On his artistic process in “Jean-Michel Basquiat on How to Be an Artist” in Artsy (2019 Jun 6)
- Life & Death
You gave me your mud and I have turned it to gold.
Charles Baudelaire1821–1867“Ébauche d’un épilogue pour la 2e édition,” Les Fleurs du Mal (1861), Appendice II: Autres pièces
Nowadays what isn’t worth saying is sung.
Pierre Beaumarchais1732–1799Often credited to Voltaire
- Music