Top 100 Why Art Quotes
#1. Oh, my soul! why art thou so often disquieted within thee? How is it that thou hast so little faith? Wilt thou never learn that Jesus has even the least of His little boats always under His watchful eye, and all the winds and the waves obey Him?
Theodore L. Cuyler
#2. [Art is] very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.
James Baldwin
#3. Out of the fragrant heart of bloom, The bobolinks are singing; Out of the fragrant heart of bloom The apple-tree whispers to the room, Why art thou but a nest of gloom While the bobolinks are singing?
William Dean Howells
#4. We are all a bunch of human-shaped wounds on each other's hearts. And that is why art exists.
Erin Van Vuren
#5. MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Now is a time to storm; why art thou still?
TITUS ANDRONICUS: Ha, ha, ha!
MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Why dost thou laugh? it fits not with this hour.
TITUS ANDRONICUS: Why, I have not another tear to shed:
William Shakespeare
#6. GEN4.6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? GEN4.7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
Anonymous
#7. The world is divine because the world is inconsequential. That is why art alone, by being equally inconsequential, is capable of grasping it.
Albert Camus
#8. Imagination is tapping into the subconscious in a form of open play. That is why art or music therapy, which encourages a person to take up brushes and paint or an instrument, and just express themselves, is so powerful.
Phil 'Philosofree' Cheney
#9. A good face they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World!
Henry Fielding
#10. 5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
Various
#11. As an artist, one doesn't know what is real. And so there's a search and a process of trying to locate something that feels or appears or somehow resonates with us on a deeper level. This is why art is such an interesting business to be in.
Chris Martin
#12. Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.
Fernando Pessoa
#13. O sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead?
Leonardo Da Vinci
#14. Why should not the camera artist break away from the worn out conventions and claim the freedom of expression which any art must have to be alive.
Alvin Langdon Coburn
#15. Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.
Alexander Calder
#16. That is why my pictures don't look like modern art. It's some sort of timidity on my part I'm sure.
Paula Rego
#17. Youth, art, love, dreams, true-heartedness - why must they go out of the summer world into darkness?
Willa Cather
#18. Reality is not enough for us, that's why we have invented art to create different realities!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#19. Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that's why I made works of art.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
#20. Why are other people profiting off that? I can see that if I have the page and sold it for $50 and 20 years later somebody's got it for $200, okay. That's business. But I had no say in that art being out there. It just really burns me.
Mike Royer
#21. Our lives are constantly changing. Different things become relevant at different times in our lives. We are motivated by our changing sensibilities. Why can that not be applied to art?
Sarah Thornton
#22. Great art is difficult," Caleb said. After a few moments, he said, "But I don't understand why it has to be so difficult sometimes.
Kevin Wilson
#23. Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job.
Andy Warhol
#24. The real question is, Why do you feel as though that's emasculating? A man can't have a conflict? When you try to do art, it's how it lands on people, and hopefully some people will see it the way that I saw it, which is all of these awful choices come from the place of a man who's damaged.
Wendell Pierce
#25. I have never understood, for instance, why some people see contemporary art as divided between 'painting' and 'conceptual art', as though this represented a genuine division.
Michael Craig-Martin
#26. I love art, I love music. I can listen to Stockhausen and a very experimental, avant-garde approach, and I can listen to Beethoven and have a more classical, traditional approach. Why not be able to do that with film performance?
Nicolas Cage
#27. A photographer is a photographer and an artist is an artist. I don't believe in labels or titles. Why should a painter or sculptor who has probably never challenged the rules be an artist just because his title and an art school education automatically make him one.
Peter Lindbergh
#28. Every nation has its prestigious military academies - or so few of them - that reach not only the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining it? I mean attaining and protecting it by means other than weapons, the tools of war. Why are we surprised whenever war recedes and yields to peace?
Elie Wiesel
#29. 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
#30. Help me....Hellmouth, oh where art thou, hellmouth? Why have you forsaken me in my hour of desperation? Open quick and I'll throw myself in.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#31. The most authentic Russian Impressionism leaves one perplexed if one compares it with Monet and Pissarro. Here, in the Louvre, before the canvases of Manet, Millet and others, I understood why my alliance with Russia and Russian art did not take root.
Marc Chagall
#32. Some believe that art is the imitation of nature; in fact, nature is so sublime that it cannot be imitated. However noble it may be, art cannot perform a single one of the miracles of nature. And besides, why imitate nature when it can be perceived by all those endowed with senses?
Kahlil Gibran
#33. The world is beautiful but not sayable. That's why we need art.
Charles Simic
#34. A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.
Robert Henri
#35. Political consultants are pugilists, masters in the dark art of negativity. Which is why it's surprising to hear Democrats such as Steve McMahon and Republicans like Rich Galen urging their presidential candidates to be more, well, positive.
Ron Fournier
#36. It's just odd that something as essential in life as sex has been flattened out in mainstream cinema - and in art cinema. Even in art movies, sex always seems to be treated negatively. Why does it always end in disaster?
John Cameron Mitchell
#37. Art is a habit-forming drug. Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. People always speak of it with this great, religious reverence, but why should it be so revered?
Marcel Duchamp
#38. This is the art of rationalization, and we do it so often that some researchers believe that a majority of our time is spent rationalizing. That is, we go around much of the day lying to ourselves about why we are doing most of the things we do. When
Hugh Howey
#39. All great movies have one thing in common: every frame of every scene could stand alone as a work of art. Why should it be different in a book?
Sean Hinn
#40. Art is not fashionable. That's why fashion and art are two different things. Fashion can never be art because fashion deals with whim, what is temporary, what changes, what is transient, what is now and not now. Art has to deal with issues that are timeless, that never change.
Duane Michals
#41. Personally, I'm not much for symbolism. I never get it. Why can't things be just as they are? I never thought to psychoanalyze Seymour Glass or sought to break down "Desolation Row." I just wanted to get lost, become one with somewhere else, slip a wreath on a steeple top solely because I wished it.
Patti Smith
#42. True art is creation, and creation is beyond all theories. That is why I say to any beginner: Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories but your own creative individuality alone must decide.
Carl Jung
#43. Thou art My light and My light shall never be extinguished; why dost thou dread extinction? Thou art My glory and My glory shall fadeth not; thou art My robe and My robe shall never be outworn.
Baha'u'llah
#44. In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet - that's why it's art.
Peter Hedges
#45. I do not see the process of blogging as a separate thing from creating art. This is in part why I do not like to be known for being a 'blogger,' as this is just one form of output for creative ideas.
Keri Smith
#46. Christianity was preached by ignorant men and believed by servants, and that is why it resembles nothing ever known.
Joseph De Maistre
#47. I should mention that I am a brilliant deflector. So brilliant that I could get a full scholarship to college and major in it, except why bother? I've already mastered the art.
Jennifer Niven
#48. Why seekest thou rest when thou art born to labour? Prepare thyself for patience more than for comforts, and for bearing the cross more than for joy.
Thomas A Kempis
#49. We live in constant danger of coming apart. The mystery of why we do not always come apart is the animating tension of all art.
Virginia Woolf
#50. People that went to art house theatre have more options, I used to go, but now think any movie can be delivered in a red envelope three months after it's released so why not watch it on my flat screen in the comfort of home.
Edward Burns
#51. Why would anyone even bring up the issue (of the statues) in a country where there are more than 10 state-owned institutions that teach sculpting and more than 20 others that teach the history of art?
Gamal El-Ghitani
#52. I had something like a revelation: why did we keep making new art, and so much of it so bad, when we were surrounded by work that needed only the proper context to shine?
Brendan Mathews
#53. All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared
to learn to draw?
Banksy
#54. I don't get it. I just don't get it. If Art is supposed to imitate Life, why do they want all the actors to be thin? There are fat people in the world. Shouldn't there be a few of us actors to represent them?
Camryn Manheim
#55. Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.
E. M. Forster
#56. Reading and analyzing what you are reading, why you like this or don't like that, can only make you a better writer. So reading is a must! Just like art students study the masters, we too should study and learn from those we adore and/or aspire to be like.
Darynda Jones
#57. As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?
Stephen King
#58. I think a lot of America turned to art and culture after Sept. 11. I know the sales of bibles went shooting up, but so did the sales of poetry. I think in a crisis one looks to one's culture, partially to give validation to why one would want that culture to survive.
Art Spiegelman
#59. Everything too fast is not good but everything too slow is also not good. You need balance. That's why I like martial arts: it always tells you how to control your body, your mind, your heart. Balance. Balance can keep the world's peace. I think that's a very good thing.
Jet Li
#60. Great leaders are those who trust their gut. They are those who understand the art before the science. They win hearts before minds. They are the ones who start with WHY.
Simon Sinek
#61. That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.
Herbert Read
#62. I can't understand why most people believe in medicine and don't believe in art, without questioning either.
Damien Hirst
#63. Poetry is not mainstream, but then neither is serious fiction, really. But I don't think there's a lot to worry about in this particular 'problem'. Why does art have to be mainstream to be significant?
Jonathan Galassi
#64. Has the painter not always gone to an art school, or at least to an established master, for instruction? And the composer, the sculptor, the architect? Then why not the writer? Good poets, like good hybrid corn, are both born and made.
Paul Engle
#66. This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told, 'You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it.
Anthony Burgess
#67. Creativity, imagination and talent can only get you so far -- you still need luck and money -- And that's why they call it Show Business and not Show Art
Wayne J. Keeley
#68. Should you care to write (and only the saints know why you should) you must needs have knowledge and art and magic - the knowledge of the music of words, the art of being artless, and the magic of loving your readers.
Kahil Gibran
#69. Art is not that much needed in life, we only need sleep and food. But why do people want art? Because they want to feel emotion! So emotionally moving things is great art to me!
Hiromi
#70. Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious temperament and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile?
Aristotle.
#71. It should be obvious why it's easier to copy someone else's painting, rather than work on site or even from a photograph. All the selection, rejection and design have already been done for you.
Ron Ranson
#72. On the wall hung a picture of an ugly old Cape Cod house. His friends said, 'Why do you have that ugly thing hanging there?' and Bull said, 'I like it because it's ugly.
Jack Kerouac
#73. Malraux says art is our rebellion against man's fate.
La condition humaine is what I have never accepted. That is why I tried to create my own world.
Anais Nin
#74. Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity. The majority spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another, or why one picture works and another doesn't.
Charles Saatchi
#75. [after discussion about what evil is, a question asked to Elphaba on why she killed Madame Morrible]
"Why did you do it?" asked the hostess with spirit.
The Witch shrugged. "For fun? Maybe evil is an art form.
Gregory Maguire
#76. The educator and the public need to have an opportunity to discuss why certain art is important.
David Elliott
#77. The universe has no mind and that's why it can never reach perfection! Perfection is the art of meticulous high-mind!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#78. I choose color on the spur of the moment. People ask me why I paint in red. I do not have the slightest idea. I was painting in blue, then I had a need to paint in red. To be able to interact with the medium, this is the key. There are no sure ways to do art.
Guido Molinari
#79. In America, film is the highest form of art that the public aspires to. People will come to me and say 'Oh, your book was so good, they ought to make a movie out of it!' To which I reply 'Well, why? It's already a book.
Orson Scott Card
#80. What I do, basically, is look at things from different angles. That is what I do on stage comedically, and that is what I do in art. I was always fascinated by the structure of things, why things work this way and not that way. So I like to see how things behave if you change the point of view.
Ursus Wehrli
#81. How can we ultimately fail to twig that the apparent impiety of contemporary art is only ever the inverted image of sacred art, the reversal of the creator's initial question: why is there something instead of nothing?
Paul Virilio
#82. To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things.
Ian McEwan
#83. Why make art ? To quiet the mind thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
John Cage
#84. My art tends toward the literary. My pictures tend toward the outskirts of painting: But why generalize? It is possible to realize one thing or another, according to the impressions gained from one point of view or another. But it is too difficult to make a general rule.
James Ensor
#85. Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?
Jeff Lemire
#86. Yangi, a philosopher, art historian and poet, had evolved a theory of why some objects - pots, baskets, cloth made by unknown craftsmen - were so beautiful. In his view, they expressed unconscious beauty because they had been made in such numbers that the craftsman had been liberated from his ego.
Edmund De Waal
#87. If diplomacy is the art of persuading others to act as we would wish, effective foreign policy requires that we comprehend why others act as they do
Madeleine K. Albright
#88. You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.
Chuck Close
#89. Henry James hated epilogues and refused to use them in his fiction. He said that life granted us no "epilogues", so why should art or literature?
Dan Simmons
#90. All the traumas I went through separating art from writing don't exist anymore. That's why I love being in rock 'n' roll. It's a whole life thing.
Patti Smith
#91. That's why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#92. Calls for the simplification of abstract or allusive art have always come from governments suspicious of artists themselves. This is why totalitarian regimes have always legislated some form of realism.
Russell Smith
#93. Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#94. A game of chess holds many secrets. Fortunately! That is why we cannot clearly state whether chess is science, art, or a sport.
Garry Kasparov
#95. Why should art continue to follow nature when every other field has left nature behind?
Piet Mondrian
#96. Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.
Pablo Picasso
#97. Art's a very metaphysical activity. It's something that enriches the parameters of your life, the possibilities of being, and you touch transcendence and you change your life. And you want to change the life of others, too. That's why people are involved with art.
Jeff Koons
#98. Sometime when I was in my mid-twenties I noticed, "Hey, even I don't go into too many art galleries. Why? Because I don't like the vibe in them. If even I'm not going into galleries, then who goes into art galleries in the first place?" It's just a certain, very narrow percentage of the population.
Eric Drooker
#99. If debates about beauty in nineteenth-century
France were fierce, that was because beauty was seen to matter. This
was a world of political revolutions, of social reformism, of belief in
progress and human perfectibility. Why was it that beauty mattered so
much in such a world?.
Elizabeth Prettejohn
#100. It's been so long now and so much has happened that I am able now to look back with much less emotion and my take on Andy as an artist now comes down to a simple sentence: he made religious art for a secular society which is why it has so much appeal.
Bob Colacello
