Top 100 Art Purpose Quotes
#1. Beauty is not the purpose of creation, it is its reward. Its appearance, often late in the day, is no more than an indication that the disrupted equilibrium between man and nature has once again been restored by art. Submitted to this test, what remains of contemporary works of art?
Brassai
#2. The primary purpose of the Museum is to help people enjoy, understand, and use the visual arts of our time.
Alfred H. Barr Jr.
#3. The law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.
Patti Smith
#4. We're all so mauled by information, but it's recycled information. We need to shut it out. So, you've got to get bizarre. This is an artist's purpose - to break away from the recycled. Performance art can do that.
Jack Bowman
#5. For a moment he felt like devoting the next ten years to working his way to a position as art critic on purpose to review Bertrand's work unfavorably.
Kingsley Amis
#6. As soon as a work of art is of practical use, betrays a purpose or a tendency its beauty vanishes.
August Strindberg
#7. The purpose of art is to elevate the spirit or to pay a surgeon's bill. Or both. It can help a person remember or forget.
Barbara Kingsolver
#8. Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.
Dorothea Tanning
#9. That life has no clear purpose or meaning is the best possible news for artists.
Marty Rubin
#10. The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.
John Gardner
#11. If art serves any purpose at all, it is to keep alive the spirit of freedom.
Marty Rubin
#12. You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.
Rick Riordan
#13. I want that glib and oily art to speak and purpose not, since what I well intend, I'll do't before I speak.
William Shakespeare
#14. Art originates in play - in improvisation, experiment, and fantasy; it remains forever, in its deepest instincts, playful and spontaneous, an exercise of the imagination analogous to the exercising of the physical body to no purpose other than ecstatic release.
Joyce Carol Oates
#15. The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like both cats and dogs.
Marva Collins
#16. Redemption in Christ should give the artistically gifted not only a new orientation and a new sense of purpose, but also a new vision of reality, seeing the world through the eyes of faith, looking at the human condition through the eyes of Christ.
John Walford
#17. Only after several years of training did I come to realize that the deepest purpose of the martial arts is to serve as a vehicle for personal spiritual development.
Joe Hyams
#19. Human ingenuity," wrote Leonardo da Vinci, whose Vitruvian Man became the ultimate symbol of the intersection of art and science, "will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does.
Walter Isaacson
#20. The purpose of art actually is, in many cases, to make you feel quite uncomfortable. Or at least to go to that place that's already of discomfort inside of you and tap into that.
Michael Moore
#21. The role of art for me is the visualization of attitude, of the human attitude towards life, towards the world.
Josef Albers
#22. An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature.
Viktor E. Frankl
#23. This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.
Eugen Herrigel
#24. It reminded us that propaganda in some form or other lurks in every book, that every work of art has a meaning and a purpose - a political, social and religious purpose - that our aesthetic judgements are always coloured by our prejudices and beliefs
George Orwell
#26. The purpose of art is nothing less than the upliftment of the human spirit.
Pope John Paul II
#27. If Goddess religion is not to become mindless idiocy, we must win clear of tendency of magic to become supertition. Magic - and among its branches I include psychology as its purpose to describe and change consciousness - is an art.
Starhawk
#28. You don't create or write to be successful; you don't create or paint to be famous or to increase your wealth. You do all of these things because your soul is calling you to do them.
Kelly Martin
#29. Lee explained to her that art for art's sake is an upper-class aesthetic. To create art divorced from any purpose, you can't be living a life driven by need and desire.
Nell Zink
#30. The purpose of farming is to deprive other species of the land and sequester it for our own use. But by perfecting the art of monoculture, it has become too easy for us to exterminate everything else, leaving no wild plants, no food for insects, and a barren land for birds.
Tristram Stuart
#32. He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious.
Sun Tzu
#33. Most teachers waste their time by asking question which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what pupils knows or is capable of knowing.
Albert Einstein
#34. The art of writing is not unlike the act of screaming. A constant flow of otherworldly emotions with tempos high and hymns low. All to amount to some purpose not so loudly spoken: the whisper of change the heart of a writer weeps to reap.
Rosca Marx
#35. Punctuation is the art of dividing a written composition into sentences, or parts of sentences, by points or stops, for the purpose of marking the different pauses which the sense, and an accurate pronunciation require.
Lindley Murray
#36. The purpose of education is to fit us for life in a civilised community, and it seems to follow from the subjects we study that the two most important things in civilised life are Art and Science.
Anthony Burgess
#37. I don't think you can talk about progress in art - movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it's a horizontal line, not a vertical one.
Donald Barthelme
#38. Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can.
Edward Abbey
#39. Art is self-sufficient and need serve no moral or political purpose
Walter Pater
#40. The General who in advancing does not seek personal fame, and in withdrawing is not concerned with avoiding punishment, but whose only purpose is to protect the people and promote the best interests of his sovereign, is the precious jewel of the state.
Sun Tzu
#41. Art isn't indiscriminate shit-flinging. It's pure communication, crafted with intention and care. Every comedian on every stage is saying what he's saying on purpose. So shouldn't we be welcome to examine that purpose, contextualize it within our culture at large, and critique what we find? The
Lindy West
#42. You should never have a power, in any area, with the purpose of harming someone.
Helio Gracie
#43. If you have learnt enjoying life without purpose, like a flowing river, you have learnt the art of living.
Girdhar Joshi
#44. We should observe the place, the occasion, the temper in which we find the person who listens to us, for if there is much art in speaking to the purpose, there is no less in knowing when to be silent.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#45. To suffer is better than to do evil;' and the art of rhetoric is described as only useful for the purpose of self-accusation.
Plato
#46. Our senses and emotions are the great source of inspiration for creating compelling and interesting art pieces (books included). Each art piece, be it a book, a song, a painting, a photograph or a product should touch our senses and evoke emotions. Emotionless art lacks purpose and interest.
Serafima
#47. It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to its life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.
Louis Sullivan
#48. The alienation effect in German epic theater is achieved not only through the actors, but also through music (chorus and song) andsets (transparencies, film strips, etc.). Its main purpose is to place the staged events in their historical context.
Bertolt Brecht
#49. The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
Norman Mailer
#50. Making of poetry, music, dance and art as culture-making in the service of nation-making. You can find writings that make that purpose for art quite explicit.
Mark McMorris
#51. We all have a unique art, our personal passion that serves as a vessel through which our souls can speak. True happiness is found by filling it, and purpose is fulfilled by pouring it out.
Cristen Rodgers
#52. Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?
Bob Dylan
#53. I have not attempted to try to relive or recreate the past; but I have sought guidance from those timeless elements in the past which remain valid and vital to the future ... The purpose of my art is to seek beauty and truth, and to explore and glorify the human being and the universe.
Frederick Hart
#54. Art has done many things in human history, but in the last century especially, it has primarily tried to bother and provoke us. To force us to see things differently. Art changes. Its very purpose, we might say, is to change, and to change us along with it.
Ian Bogost
#55. There are those who think that Zeffirelli's Hamlet is the way to treat Shakespeare. I think that cinema can handle much more. We somehow expect cinema to provide us with meaning, to console us. But that's not the purpose of art.
Peter Greenaway
#56. Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.
Mark Rothko
#57. We are not moving towards some kind of goal. We are at the goal, and it is changing with us. If art has any purpose, it is to open our eyes to that fact.
Antony Gormley
#58. The purpose of art is the fight for freedom,
Ai Weiwei
#59. I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.
Roy Lichtenstein
#60. For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
#61. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows it to realize its supreme purpose through him.
Carl Jung
#62. The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
James Baldwin
#64. Rule of art: let half-blind purpose lead you.
Mason Cooley
#65. To me, art's highest purpose is to entertain, to enlighten, to inspire, to evoke emotion and to change an audience in some way, big or small.
Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick
#66. My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don't see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity.
Chinua Achebe
#67. For me, it's important to experience aesthetic shock, which sets in motion our imagination, our emotions, our feelings, and our thoughts. That's the purpose of a painting and of art in general.
Pierre Soulages
#68. The purpose of activism and art, or at least of mine, is to make a world in which people are producers of meaning, not consumers, and
Rebecca Solnit
#69. On Writing About Nora Hawks
I write about a female character to try, in vain, to understand two things: the purpose of life, and women.
Dennis R. Miller
#70. I love fashion. I love couture. I'm going to erect a shelf in my bedroom with an art light to be the spot for the shoes of the month. I want them to serve another purpose.
Sandra Bullock
#71. Art is meant to provoke emotions, Avery. Its sole purpose is to arouse our senses, even if it disturbs. Even if it's ugly. Even if it fucking scares the living shit out of you.
Lara Adrian
#72. The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Pablo Picasso
#73. Thou art but a feeble flower in the garden of the universe, yet thou hath a purpose much greater than thyself.
Raneem Kayyali
#74. The purpose of art is to represent the meaning of things. This represents the true reality, not external aspects.
Aristotle.
#75. I had no special training at all; I am completely self taught. I don't fit the mold of a visual arts designer or a graphic designer. I just had a strong concept about what a game designer is. Someone who designs projects to make people happy. That's a game designer's purpose.
Toru Iwatani
#76. - It doesn't do anything obvious. But it might be able to do something in here. - Then she touched her hand to her heart. - Beautiful things sometimes do.
Veronica Roth
#77. At the end of time I want my art to stand up and my soul to bow down.
Rob Ryser
#78. Design isn't Art. It's not about creating beautiful or thought-provoking things for the sake of it. Design is a discipline creating communication with a purpose.
Ben Hunt
#79. Let no act be done without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art.
Marcus Aurelius
#80. Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
John Cage
#81. The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.
W. Eugene Smith
#82. The purpose of art is to console and amuse - myself, and, I hope, others.
Ludwig Bemelmans
#84. So, I'm not on a diet. I'm on a journey with Jesus to learn the fine art of self-discipline for the purpose of holiness.
Lysa TerKeurst
#85. The snapshots in CHINA: Portrait of a People are not meant to be works of art. I was too preoccupied with participating, with reveling in the moment, to worry about their perfection. Their purpose, then, is to form a candid portrait of China exactly as China presented itself to me.
Tom Carter
#86. The purpose of art is to reflect new emerging values and to define the new heroes and heroines so that people can absorb them into their perceptions.
Edward De Bono
#87. The purpose of art is ... to press forward into the whole of the external world and the soul, to see and communicate those objective realities within it which rule and convention have hitherto concealed.
Max Scheler
#88. Art can lead you to God. I think that's the purpose of everything. If it's not doing that, what's it doing? It's leading you the other way. It's certainly not leading you nowhere.
Bob Dylan
#89. I would say if you are familiar with our history and the history of our art and literature that you see a clear cut pattern of people wanting to contribute, not only artistically, but in some practical purpose, for the benefits of the community.
Gil Scott-Heron
#90. The purpose of concept art as a genre is to unbrainwash our mathematical and logical faculties.
Henry Flynt
#91. The purpose of art is to add to our quality of life.
Marty Rubin
#92. But I reckon that this realm of higher needs, of something more than just forgetting about everyday life, of mere recreation, this realm of needs has been clearly neglected by us.
Krzysztof Kieslowski
#93. The onlooker turns from the artist who has higher ideals and who cannot see his life purpose in an art without aims.
Wassily Kandinsky
#94. Art without color would lose much of its purpose.
Andrew Loomis
#95. Art is about cosmic beauty. Science is about cosmic order. Religion is about cosmic purpose.
Paul G
#96. I do not conceive of any manifestation of culture, of science, of art, as purposes in themselves. I think the purpose of science and culture is man.
Fidel Castro
#97. The underlying purpose of all art is to create patterns of imagery which somehow convey a sense of life set in a framework of order ... all great art ... harmonises consciousness with the ego-transcending Self.
Christopher Booker
#98. The real purpose of the martial arts must be to purge oneself of petty ambitions and desire, to obtain control of one's own character.
Morihei Ueshiba
#99. Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.
Franz Grillparzer
#100. The purpose of art is to stop time.
Bob Dylan
