Top 100 Quotes About A Work Of Art

#1. Love isn't just a feeling. It's an art. And like any art, it takes not only inspiration but also a lot of work.

Paulo Coelho

#2. In the world of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure, was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different minds which assisted in its development.

Lafcadio Hearn

#3. What kind of judgment does one apply, then, to a work of art? I believe that there are four basic standards: (1) technical excellence, (2) validity, (3) intellectual content, the world view which comes through and (4) the integration of content and vehicle.

Francis A. Schaeffer

#4. Just as you would when making a new work of art, don't ask for help or seek the judgment of others. You don't want to be subjected to another person's limitations or expectations.

Jackie Battenfield

#5. A mystery confounds the problem of industry in art. In the last analysis, to work is simply not enough. But we have to act as if it were, leaving reward aside.

Anne Truitt

#6. A work of art is finished, from the point of view of the artist, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis.

Hans Hofmann

#7. I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour, but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

#8. The big pay-off was to work as an artist and gain some shred of respect from your friends, who were also artists. But there was never any notion that you could make a living out of art. On the rare occasions you had a gallery show, and sold a little work, well, that was just gravy.

Edward Ruscha

#9. Isherwood did not so much find himself in Berlin as reinvent himself; Isherwood became a fiction, a work of art.

Ian Buruma

#10. If by day art is in the service of business, the evenings are devoted to the businessman's enjoyment of it. That is asking a lot of art, but art and the businessman make it work.

Karl Kraus

#11. To know how to produce a work of art is to know how to discard the extraneous.

Laura Esquivel

#12. In every form of art, you really want the experience of the images to transcend the medium, for the medium to disappear into the greater experience of viewing the work. So that you forget you are looking at a painting, or a photograph.

Bill Henson

#13. The work of art of the future will be the construction of a passionate life.

Raoul Vaneigem

#14. I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

Conrad Hall

#15. The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.

Lewis Mumford

#16. I don't know of any good work of art that doesn't have a mystery.

Henry Moore

#17. Movie acting may not have a certain kind of glory as true art, but it is damn hard work.

William Holden

#18. When contemplating a work of art it is possible to perceive if it has been created according to the eye or to the spirit, in other words, if it projects three-dimensional reality or spiritual n-dimensionality.

Theo Van Doesburg

#19. The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Oscar Wilde

#20. The personality is a work of art.

Diana Vreeland

#21. Then I sit down, work at it, because now I have a convincing feeling about what that place wants to be, you see? And it's not just me. Me and my talent comes in taking that consensus and then making something wonderful out of it - a work of art.

Lawrence Halprin

#22. I think that is what film and art and music do; they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.

Bruce Springsteen

#23. Winckelmann wished to live with a work of art as a friend. The saying is true of pen and pencil. Fresh lustre shoots from Lycidas in a twentieth perusal. The portraits of Clarendon are mellowed by every year of reflection.

Robert Aris Willmott

#24. But what does interest me is the notion that if you do a lot of work it means there's a potential for other people to understand that a lot of things are possible with a sustained effort and that the broadening of experiences is possible and I think that's all art can be.

Richard Serra

#25. As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.

Edward Weston

#26. You are a work of art.

Steven Morrissey

#27. I believe that God is (and must be) a transcendent presence in any worthy work of art.

Joy Williams

#28. If a work of art is to be truly immortal, it must pass quite beyond the limits of the human world, without any sign of common sense and logic. In this way the work will draw nearer to dream and to the mind of a child.

Giorgio De Chirico

#29. We all agree now - by 'we' I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.

Clive Bell

#30. A person's work allows their character to form and provides a creative outlet for their inner world of imaginative thoughts and creative impulses. A person whom fails to find suitable work that allows their soul room to grow will quickly begin eroding into a withered and desiccated being.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#31. The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.

Leonardo Da Vinci

#32. A lot of young girls don't realise how diverse the career opportunities are in games development. Many think that you need elite math skills and a vast knowledge of all things tech to work in games, and haven't thought about avenues like design, producing, art, writing or composing.

Rhianna Pratchett

#33. I did work at Christie's for a couple of weeks, getting ready for 'The Devil Wears Prada,' getting people coffee and doing whatever they needed around the office. It was amazing. I got to see some wonderful art, and everybody was really nice. It was great.

Anne Hathaway

#34. A dog can be a living work of art, a constant reminder of the exquisite design and breathtaking detail of nature, beauty on four paws.

Dean Koontz

#35. If every museum in the New World were emptied, if every famous building in the Old World were destroyed and only Venice saved, there would be enough there to fill a full lifetime with delight. Venice, with all its complexity and variety, is in itself the greatest surviving work of art in the world.

Evelyn Waugh

#36. The measure of a work of art is how much art it has in it, not how much 'relevance'. Relevant to whom? Relevant to what? Nothing is more ephemeral than a hot topic.

Edward St. Aubyn

#37. A picture is a work of art, not because it is 'modern,' nor because it is 'ancient,' but because it is a sincere expression of human feeling.

John F. Carlson

#38. In many times, after creating a piece of work I want to stand up and applaud.

Shawn Lukas

#39. I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity.

Cindy Sherman

#40. I enjoy theater just for the sheer excitement of it and the immediate response that you get, and how every night the audience is a little bit different; but then, it's expensive to work in N.Y., and stage work is limited, so you're just doing it for the art.

Dorian Missick

#41. When Lionel Giles began his translation of Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR, the work was virtually unknown in Europe. Its introduction to Europe began in 1782 when a French Jesuit Father living in China, Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy of it, and translated

Sun Tzu

#42. Looking back upon my work today, I think the best I have done grew out of things deeply felt, the worst from a pride in mere talent.

Diego Rivera

#43. A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

Alexander Pope

#44. My work comes from the experience of crowds, injustice, and aggression ... I feel an affinity for art when it was made a form of existence, like when shamans worked in the territory between men and unknown powers ... I try to bewitch the crowd.

Magdalena Abakanowicz

#45. Just as no significant work of art can be created without the element of irrationality that is in fact the artist's talent." p.179
"He wondered if there was a greater distance than the one between two people in the same bed pretending to sleep." p.213

Henning Mankell

#46. I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents! It's an art form. I talk a lot. And I think a lot. And I draw a lot. But never in a million years would I have been a parent. That's just work that's too hard.

Maurice Sendak

#47. A simple equation for the production of successful art work is lots of reference material plus lots of art supplies equals lots of painting happiness.

Robert Genn

#48. I've never had to work out of the arts. I've always either been a writer or an editor, or something where I've made my living from doing what I love. You can't get any better than that.

Len Wein

#49. A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art.

Truman Capote

#50. A photograph can, by the addition of an unimportant spot of color, become a photomontage, a work of art of a special kind.

John Heartfield

#51. Bit by bit, putting it together ...
Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art.
Every moment makes a contribution,
Every little detail plays a part.
Having just the vision's no solution,
Everything depends on execution,
Putting it together, that's what counts.

Stephen Sondheim

#52. It takes time to build a corporate work of art. It takes time to build a life. And it takes time to develop and grow. So give yourself, your enterprise, and your family the time they deserve and the time they require.

Jim Rohn

#53. The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.

Robert Henri

#54. Confidence and courage are special skills to the art ... Within the four walls of his study, the artist should be modest, work diligently and conscientiously. While for the public, he'll show himself audacious, yes even into cheerful boldness. And so a new public's darling has arisen.

Robert Schumann

#55. If we examine a work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear - but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented.

Edgar Allan Poe

#56. Basically, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another person's taste, and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator.

Henry Flynt

#57. They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud." "So life became a work of art," I marveled.

Kurt Vonnegut

#58. She had stayed home and worked hard and a posthumous recognition had eventually followed. Not that Buck hadn't worked hard, sure he did, but in the end the body won't hold up as a work of art.

Duff Brenna

#59. Ethan, this is my favorite moment, before all of my other favorite moments are created with a new client. You are my work of art, mine to possess, sculpt, mend, bend, and make beg for mercy. You will adore worshiping, pleasing and serving me." ~ Mistress

Ruby Madden

#60. Secrets can actually be quite important. A work of art that reveals its meaning or its power too quickly is uninteresting. It might not even be a good work of art.

Thomas Koerfer

#61. We feel more emotion ... before an amateur photograph linked to our own life history than before the work of a Great Photographer, because his domain partakes of art, and the intent of the souvenir-object remains at the lower level of personal history.

Chris Marker

#62. The increased abstraction in mathematics that took place during the early part of this century was paralleled by a similar trend in the arts. In both cases, the increased level of abstraction demands greater effort on the part of anyone who wants to understand the work.

Keith Devlin

#63. The finest productions of human art are immensely short of the meanest work of Nature. The nicest artist cannot make a feather or the leaf of a tree.

Thomas Reid

#64. A great work of art, if it accomplishes anything, serves to remind us, or let us say to set us dreaming, of all that is fluid and intangible.

Henry Miller

#65. A composition - and every work of art is one - is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative process.

Jostein Gaarder

#66. Never judge a work of art by its defects.
They same is true with people.

Jose N. Harris

#67. a square is also an organism, not just a work of art and architecture [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].

Catie Marron

#68. The reason companies work is because you're able to get a lot of people doing the work; it's not because of this visionary. Steve Jobs didn't make Apple; it was a bunch of people. The building of the right team is an art in and of its own right.

D.A. Wallach

#69. Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.

Andy Goldsworthy

#70. Now a work of art is a work of nature, but it is a work of human nature. It is a work of the mind: and it's a work of the mind in circumstances for an occasion which, to which, for which, and which it may be supremely natural and simple and effective.
"The Nature of Art" December 19, 1954

Frank Lloyd Wright

#71. Fairly early in my career, I had a passion for wine just as a consumer, and I started to learn about the whole process, starting with a piece of raw ground, and ending up with a work of art in a bottle.

Drew Bledsoe

#72. Thus, the earlier part of her life had taught her that, while you can tell stories or write poems about life, you cannot make life poetic, live it as though it were a work of art...

Hannah Arendt

#73. The novel, as a living force, if not as a work of art, owes an incalculable debt to what we call, mistakenly, the new psychology, to Freud, in his earlier interpretations, and more truly, I think, to Jung.

Ellen Glasgow

#74. You are an artist," she said. "But then all scientists are artists, my father used to say. You think like an artist, at any rate, and I can see that you want what you create to be a work of art.

Pearl S. Buck

#75. You are both a work of art and an artist at work.

Erwin McManus

#76. It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.

Plutarch

#77. Why should I need an artist to explain a work of art to me? Why should it not speak out to me itself?

Mahatma Gandhi

#78. Art is not made only one way, art is a point of view? Rembrandt in our days would be Rembrandt again, because the work of the master is his self. But in order to be Rembrandt in ourdayshe would have used new ways that would give a new culture.

Marianne Von Werefkin

#79. I believe that a picture, a work of art, lives and dies just as we do ...

Marcel Duchamp

#80. The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art you can create at that point in your life - a book that may only reach or move a few people but will seem to those people somehow transformative. That's the ideal; that's always the motivation.

Claire Messud

#81. You create a work of art. You do not know whether it will get public sanction. Sometimes outstanding films do no business, and sometimes films which are not so good work.

Dev Anand

#82. The final test of a work of art is not whether it has beauty, but whether it has power.

John Hersey

#83. To me you are a work of art, and I would give you my heart - that's if I had one.

Morrissey

#84. Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.

Anthony Burgess

#85. Edward Gibbon, in his classic work on the fall of the Roman Empire, describes the Roman era's declension as a place where bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.

Edward Gibbon

#86. Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet you're my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek, is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart?

Chet Baker

#87. This telegram is a work of art if I say it is.

Robert Rauschenberg

#88. I cannot conceive any work of art as having a separate existence from life itself

Antonin Artaud

#89. I like a lot of modern art. I like Chuck Close a lot. It doesn't necessarily directly influence the work I draw on the page.

Jim Lee

#90. All a work of art can do is present the surface. I can't know the insides of people. I know very little about the inside of myself.

John Banville

#91. A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#92. Happiness is a work of art. Handle with care.

Edith Wharton

#93. The true work of art continues to unfold and create within the personality of the spectator. It is a continuous coming into being.

Mervyn Levy

#94. To see distinctly the machinery
the wheels and pinions
of any work of Art is, unquestionably, of itself, a pleasure, but one which we are able to enjoy only just in proportion as we do not enjoy the legitimate effect designed by the artist.

Edgar Allan Poe

#95. I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it.

Peter Greenaway

#96. Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits. Is not that all an artist should wish for?

Camille Pissarro

#97. A great friendship was like a great work of art, he thought. It took time and attention, and a spark of something that was impossible to describe. It was a happy, lucky accident, finding some kindred part of yourself in a total stranger. pg. 287

Elise Broach

#98. The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

#99. Most of the books that I've adapted I'm doing because I love the book and I feel like it's a great work of art in itself, and when it's a great book I feel as a director or a writer that I have a responsibility to rise to the level of the original. It makes me try to reach higher.

James Franco

#100. I don't care about truth; I care about art and style and writing and occupying the wall. For me, my writing style is very linked to the fact that it is a work of art on the wall. I had to find a way to write in concise, effective phrases that people standing or walking into a room could read.

Sophie Calle

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