“And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves ''It's pretty, but is it Art?''”
“Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.”
“Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.”
“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.”
“Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.”
“Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.”
“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.”
“For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential --the imagination.”
“All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.”
“Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.”
“Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.”
“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, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ''Artist.''”
“There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.”
“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling ''Kilroy was here'' on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
“All art is quite useless.”
“New arts destroy the old.”
“Caricature is rough truth.”
“Art is a form of catharsis.”
“O, had I but followed the arts!”
“If that's art, I'm a Hottentot!”
“What is art but a way of seeing?”
“It is either easy or impossible.”
“The true poem is the poet's mind.”
“A picture is a poem without words.”
“Art has an enemy called ignorance.”
“All art is an imitation of nature.”
“With an apple I will astonish Paris.”
“Art, that great undogmatized church.”
“In art as in love, instinct is enough.”