John Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can accomplish this only by the most vigilant exercise of choice, but in a world that changes more swiftly than we can perceive there is always the danger that our powers of …
Andrew Wyeth On Art
Andrew Wyeth (July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) The brain must not interfere. You're painting so constantly that your brain disappears, and your subconscious goes into your fingers, and it just flows. If you think you're painting a good watercolor you can be sure it's lousy. It is important to forget what you are …
Maria Popova On Art From Heartache
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) To make art out of heartache is, of course, the most beautiful thing one could do with one’s sorrow, as well as the most generous — no artist knows how the transfiguration of their pain into beauty will salve another heart, give another sorrower the language of their own …
Megan O’Grady On Art And The Reflected Life
Megan O’Grady In any reflected life, there will be clarifying moments in which you travel to the edge of the shore. Art, at its best, does this mimetically, challenging us to see things differently by offering a set of open questions, rather than a verdict delivered from on high: a field of view that speaks …
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Amanda Palmer On Art
Amanda Palmer (April 30, 1976 -) Art is what happens if you’re able to hold fast — with one angry, trembling hand — to your art-mirror, the one that reflects you, your trials, your thoughts, your audience, your insights, your attempts to try to figure out and express What It All Might Fucking Mean.
Saul Bellow On Art
Saul Bellow (June 10, 1915 – April 05, 2005) Only art penetrates … the seeming realities of this world. There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can’t receive.
DH Lawrence On Design In Art
DH Lawrence (September 11, 1885 – March 02, 1930) Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can't invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.
Chinua Achebe On Art And Politics
Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930 - March 21, 2013) Those who tell you ‘Do not put too much politics in your art’ are not being honest. If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is… What they are saying is …
Teresita Fernández On Art
Teresita Fernández (May 12, 1968 -) Being an artist is not just about what happens when you are in the studio. The way you live, the people you choose to love and the way you love them, the way you vote, the words that come out of your mouth... will also become the raw material for …
Ann Hamilton On The Possibilities Of Art
Ann Hamilton (June 22, 1956 -) One doesn’t arrive — in words or in art — by necessarily knowing where one is going. In every work of art something appears that does not previously exist, and so, by default, you work from what you know to what you don’t know. You may set out for …
Iris Murdoch On Tyrants And Art
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth, he formulates ideas which would otherwise remain vague and focuses attention upon facts which can then no longer be ignored. The tyrant persecutes the …
Iris Murdoch On Art And Philosophy
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 8, 1999) Both art and philosophy constantly re-create themselves by returning to the deep and obvious and ordinary things of human existence and making there a place for cool speech and wit and serious unforced reflection. Long may this central area remain to us, the homeland of freedom …
Pablo Picasso On Art
Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 - April 08, 1973) A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.
Elizabeth Alexander On Art
Elizabeth Alexander (May 30, 1962 -) Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other’s lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth.
Mike Parr On Art
Mike Parr If you’re going to start consulting with people in order to do an artwork, how does that end? That’s not responsible political art. It’s populist. You’re trying to be all things for all people.
Mohsin Hamid On Art
Mohsin Hamid (July 23, 1971 –) Art is bigger than notions of black or white, male or female, American or non. Human beings don’t necessarily exist inside of (or correspond to) the neat racial, gendered or national boxes into which we often unthinkingly place them. It’s a mistake to ask literature to reinforce such …
Belkis Ayón On Art
Belkis Ayón (January 23, 1967 – September 11, 1999) These are the things I have inside that I toss out because there are burdens with which you cannot live or drag along. Perhaps that is what my work is about — that after so many years, I realize the disquiet.
Franz Kafka On Art
Franz Kafka (July 03, 1883 – June 03, 1924) Art, like prayer, is a hand outstretched in the darkness, seeking for some touch of grace which will transform it into a hand that bestows gifts. 🎂Happy Birthday Franz Kafka (July 03, 1883 – June 03, 1924) In Memoriam🌹
Melissa Pritchard On Writers And Art
Melissa Pritchard (December 12, 1948 -) Great writers are witnesses to the spirit of their age. They need not be accepted by their times; they rarely are. Speaking the truth, they may go unheard, be misunderstood or criticized. Later, posthumously, it is said they were ahead of their time…What you have chosen is a profound …
Robert Pinsky On Art And Poetry
Robert Pinsky (October 20, 1940 -) Poetry takes care of itself. All art does — that is paramount. In a survival race, I’m quite sure poetry will long outlast reality TV and Twitter.
Adrienne Rich On Art
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) Art is our human birthright, our most powerful means of access to our own and another's experience and imaginative life. In continually rediscovering and recovering the humanity of human beings, art is crucial to the democratic vision. And, for more than 50 years I have been …
