Art Van Quotes & Sayings

Too much analysis kills a thing. Art is created from passion and inspires passion. And passion is beyond reason. Don't you think? — Menna Van Praag

But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone standing next to me heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life - it was only my art that held me back. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

Herman Melville was supposed to be an accountant. Van Gogh was meant to be an art dealer. I was meant to take the train into New York and work for a bank. To be an artist, you have to say goodbye to your family. — Don McLean

I think a single sentence by Van Gogh is better than the whole work of all the art critics and art historians put together. — John Olsen

Architecture falls between art and airports. It's pragmatic-it helps you get from point A to point B. But it also works as art. It makes you think twice. It inspires you. It brings you back to yourself. — Ben Van Berkel

For a few minutes I stood alone in her chambers, appreciating the light and silence and art. There was a van Gogh on one of the walls, worth more than most planets could pay. It was a painting of the artist's room at Arles. Madness is not a new invention. — Dan Simmons

Well, I dare not allow myself any illusions, and I am afraid it may never happen that Father and Mother will really appreciate my art. It is not their fault; we do not see the same things with the same eyes, or have the same thoughts raised in us by them. They will never be able to understand what painting is. — Vincent Van Gogh

The real artist has no pride. Unfortunately he sees that his art has no limits. He feels obscurely how far he is from the goal.
While he is perhaps being admired by others, he mourns the fact that he has not yet reached the point to which his better genius, like a distant sun, ever beckons to him. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

Language is a social art. — Willard Van Orman Quine

It seems to me that not only the writing in most children's books condescends to kids, but so does the art. I don't want to do that. — Chris Van Allsburg

Modern man has lost the sense of wonder
about the unknown and he treats it as
an enemy. — Laurens Van Der Post

God sends us pieces of art so that we may see ourselves in them — Vincent Van Gogh

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. — Mark Van Doren

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospects of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout. — Ben Shahn

See the man on the TV with a phony smile. Bring you up, bring you down, he can turn your head around. — Van Morrison

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. — Vincent Van Gogh

No friend have I. I must live by myself alone; but I know well that God is nearer to me than others in my art, so I will walk fearlessly with Him. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

The building art is, in reality, always the spatial execution of spiritual decisions. It is bound to its times and manifests itself only in addressing vital tasks with the means of its times. A knowledge of the times, its tasks, and its means is the necessary precondition of work in the building art. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Van Gogh, among others, believed in the religion of art, which, whatever else it involved, made it clear that art is more than the sum of its material characteristics and not simply a reflection of everyday life. — Donald Kuspit

I believe that the art market is in a place similar to the music industry in 2005. Big changes are coming and the art market will most likely be very different in ten years. However, if you are the art equivalent of Van Halen, you don't really have to change anything. But if you are not Van Halen, then it is time to figure how to adapt to all the changes. — Mark Edward

Don't only practise your art, but force your way into its secrets. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don't believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life. — Steven Pressfield

This is the essence of Rembrandt's advice to Van Hoogstraten: the authentic craft develops naturally from one's own experience.
So, it seems reasonable to suggest that the search should not be for the lost secrets, but for one's own practice.
This is in fact easy, you start making things. At first they might not be perfect, but the information here should provide you with a running start. And, if you are cut out for this the learning curve will not be daunting, because you will realize that you are finally headed in the right direction: towards the living craft. — Tad Spurgeon

They say that art comes from the soul. The more drama in an artist's life, the more he can draw on for his art. Van Gogh and Picasso had troubled souls, but poor Steve Kaufman has been shot once, stabbed 3 times - all by women. That is a lot of drama for great art. — Robin Leach

Art demands of us that we shall not stand still. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

Van Gogh: It is precisely in learning to suffer without complaining,29 learning to consider pain without repugnance, that one risks vertigo a little; and yet it might be possible, yet one glimpses even a vague probability that on the other side of life we'll glimpse justifications for pain, which seen from here sometimes takes up the whole horizon so much that it takes on the despairing proportions of a deluge. — Liesbeth Heenk

Try to walk as much as you can, and keep your love for nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art more and more. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her. If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere. — Vincent Van Gogh

A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Everyday we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes. — Mary Oliver

Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought before and expressing it somehow.It could be with art, a sculpture, music or even in science. The difference, however, between scientific creativity and any other kind of creativity, is that no matter how long you wait, no one else will ever compose "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony" except for Beethoven. No matter what you do, no one else will paint Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Only Van Gogh could do that because it came from his creativity. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Early anthropology was not at all seen as art for art's sake; it was intended to facilitate the colonizer's work. — David Van Reybrouck

There is an old and a new consciousness of the age. The old one is directed towards the individual. The new one is directed towards the universal. The struggle of the individual against the universal may be seen both in the world war and in modern art. — Theo Van Doesburg

In science, if you don't do it, somebody else will. Whereas in art, if Beethoven didn't compose the 'Ninth Symphony,' no one else before or after is going to compose the 'Ninth Symphony' that he composed; no one else is going to paint 'Starry Night' by van Gogh. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Art value always goes up once the artist's associated with fucked-up things such as cutting off his own ear like Van Gogh, or marrying his teenage cousin like Poe, or having his minions murder a celebrity like Manson, or shooting his postsuicide ashes out of a huge cannon like Hunter S. Thompson, or being dressed up as a little girl by his mother like Hemingway, or wearing a dress made of raw meat like Lady Gaga, or having unspeakable things done to him so he kills a classmate and puts a bullet in his own head like I will do later today. — Matthew Quick

I thought art was dead rabbits hanging by their feet on a wall. I went to Italy and saw all the religious paintings, and they didn't move me all that much. Then someone invited me to see this van Gogh exhibit at the Rosenberg Gallery in San Francisco. — Irving Stone

Like most people, I've always felt using words like 'best' when applied to art is a fun way for critics to stay busy at the end of the year, and I guess a good way to help get ratings for awards shows, which is fine. — Steven Van Zandt

In all these products, whether iron bridges, locomotives, automobiles, telescopes, cottages, airport-hangars, funicular railways, skyscrapers, or children's toys, the will towards a new style expresses itself. The similarity of these examples to the new creations in art consists in the same striving for clear, pure form which expresses truth in the objects. — Theo Van Doesburg

It was a clear autumn day Sunday in 1876; Vincent van Gogh, twenty-three years old, left the English boarding school where he was teaching to give a sermon at a small Methodist church in Richmond, a humble London suburb. Standing in front of the lectern, he felt like a lost soul emerging from the dark cave in which he had been buried.

The sermon, which survives among Vincent's collected letters, reiterates universal ideas and is not an outstanding example of the art of homiletics. Nevertheless, his words grew out of his tormented life and had an intense emotional charge. Preaching to the congregation, he was also preaching to himself -- and of himself. The images he used were the same as those that were to be given powerful expression in his pictures.

The text chosen for the sermon was Psalm 119:19, 'I am a stranger on the earth, hide not Thy commandments from me.' — Albert J. Lubin

I make clothes people can wear; I don't make art. — Dries Van Noten

I'm as good as Jean-Claude Van Damme when it comes to martial arts. Sounding a little cocky aren't I — Talisa Soto

This is the second Old Master I have encountered that has the signatures of another artist forged over it. A painting that has been created by another artist entirely. It's like they played mix and match. — Dayna S. Rubin

But I must work on in full calmness and serenity ... The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on the earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express a sincere human feeling. So this work is the aim-and through concentration upon that one idea, everything one does is simplified. Now the work goes slowly-a reason the more to lose no time. — Vincent Van Gogh

Art as language ... in the future there will only be art. This common language will carry the message of love. — Theo Van Doesburg

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less. — Maya Angelou

As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see. — Vincent Van Gogh

The modern scene in decoration is not a unified or controlled one. The unified control of the arts during the reign of Louis XIV no longer exists; today the designer is free to achieve a wider variety and more personal approach to the interior. — Van Day Truex

Love is an art, Berk. Just like painting or music. Some painters draw mere lines, scratches on the canvas and call them art; some paint stars studded skies like van Gogh; or Chopin's music conquers the hearts of millions while the execrable disco music blaring out of the open windows of a car have also their audience. Some describe love in high-flown flowery language and you identify yourself with the hero and the heroine and feel yourself in the seventh heaven while some give such a lamentable picture of it that you almost curse it! — T. Afsin Ilgar

If cupcakes were art; Kate's would be Van Gogh's — C.T. Mitchell

Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more. — Vincent Van Gogh

Let me stop there, but my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live. — Vincent Van Gogh

Sometimes art seems to be something very sublime, and, as you say, something sacred. — Vincent Van Gogh

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess? — Ludwig Van Beethoven

Then I abandoned comics for fine art because I had some romantic vision of being like Vincent Van Gogh Jr. — Bill Griffith

I once heard some idiot on the radio saying that all great art has suffering as its dominant theme, and that the greatest artists are only able to create because they suffer immensely in their own lives. What a bunch of bullshit. Look at Van Gogh's paintings: there's as much joy in them as there is pain. Suffering is only a single color, and by itself it's boring. — Bart Yates

To the memory of Vincent Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, El Greco, and many others who came before me as well as those who will come after. We are one. Thank you. — Luther E. Vann

In politics, arts / no issue's dramatic / nor will 'play' till its heart's / simplified to fanatic. — Mona Van Duyn

I lost my job as an art salesman. It was the customer's fault. He wanted to buy the wrong paintings. — Vincent Van Gogh

Daemonic compulsiveness can kill as easily as it can save.
The true novelist must be at once driven and indifferent. Van
Gogh never sold a painting in his life. Poe came close with
poetry and fiction, selling very little. Drivenness only helps if
it forces the writer not to suicide but to the making of splendid
works of art, allowing him indifference to whether or not the
novel sells, whether or not it's appreciated. Drivenness is trouble
for both the novelist and his friends; but no novelist, I
think, can succeed without it. Along with the peasant in the
novelist, there must be a man with a whip. — John Gardner

It was Richepin who said somewhere, 'The love of art means loss of real love' ... True, but on the other hand, real love makes you disgusted with art. — Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh would've sold more than one painting if he'd put tigers in them. — Bill Watterson

Art is to console those who are broken by life. — Vincent Van Gogh

The same sensitivity that opens artists to Being also makes them vulnerable to the dark powers of non-Being. It is no accident that many creative people
including Dante, Pascal, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Beethoven, Rilke, Blake, and Van Gogh
struggled with depression, anxiety, and despair. They paid a heavy price to wrest their gifts from the clutches of non-Being. But this is what true artists do: they make their own frayed lives the cable for the surges of power generated in the creative force fields of Being and non-Being. (Beyond Religion, p. 124) — David N. Elkins

Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, - ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I had felt called upon to produce. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

I haven't a single friend; I must live alone. But well I know that God is nearer to me than to the others of my art; I associate with Him without fear, I have always recognized and understood Him, and I have no fear for my music,-it can meet no evil fate. Those who understand it must become free from all the miseries that the others drag with them. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

Do go on doing a lot of walking and keep up your love of nature, for that is the right way to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see. And there are painters who never do anything that is no good... — Vincent Van Gogh

Do you know that drawing with words is also an art ... ? — Vincent Van Gogh

What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had to
paint. Whether he painted well or badly didn't matter; painting was the
stuff that held him together as a man. The chief value of art, Vincent, lies
in the expression it gives to the artist. Rembrandt fulfilled what he knew
to be his life purpose; that justified him. Even if his work had been
worthless, he would have been a thousand times more successful than if
he had put down his desire and become the richest merchant in
Amsterdam. (Mendes Da Costa — Irving Stone

My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it. — Vincent Van Gogh

Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!! — Vincent Van Gogh

Throughout the history of art it has been art itself - in all its forms - that has inspired art ... today's photographs are so geared to life that one can learn more from them than from life itself. — Van Deren Coke

Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and continuous observations. By persistent, I mean not only continuous work, but also not giving up your opinion at the bidding of such and such a person. — Vincent Van Gogh

for instance, the theories and practices of art and photography with anthropological theory and practice (e.g. Edwards 1997a; da Silva and Pink 2004; Grimshaw and Ravetz 2004; Schneider and Wright 2005). The interdisciplinary focus in visual methods has also been represented in Theo van Leeuwen and Carey Jewitt's Handbook of Social Research (2000) and Chris Pole's Seeing is Believing (2004) both of which combine case studies in visual research from across disciplines. The idea that visual research as a field of interdisciplinary practice is also central to Advances in Visual Methodology (Pink 2012a) and is demonstrated by the work of the volume's contributors, as well as by the recent SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods (Margolis and Pauwels 2011). Likewise the interdisciplinary journal Visual Studies (formerly Visual Sociology) provides an excellent series of examples of visual research, practice, theory and methodology. — Sarah Pink

Art is but imitation of nature. — Vincent Van Gogh

While 'The Endless Summer' poster was designed at the Art Center College of Design in the contemporary style of its time, the image grew out of my relationship with Rick Griffin and our deep relationship to surf images. — John Van Hamersveld

It quite often makes me feel sad that painting's like a bad mistress one might have, who's always spending, spending and it's never enough.. [Letter 630, Arles, 23 June 1888] — Vincent Van Gogh

If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? He studies a single blade of grass. — Vincent Van Gogh

The great artist is the simplifier. — Vincent Van Gogh

'The Next Wave' started as a drawing for a new silkscreen fine art print. I ended up doing the prints digitally because the water-based inks were better for the environment than the oil based inks. So, I learned about the Epson digital printers to get the image I wanted. — John Van Hamersveld

How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone. — Vincent Van Gogh

Art and the triumph of the human spirit - the two combined thrill me. — Kristin Bauer Van Straten

Art is not for the personal satisfaction of one or the other, but art wants to return all what's in life ... Art wants to give back everything what's in our lives. The more comprehensive the artist stands in life the more powerful his work will speak, and therefore a work of art is a measure of the mental size of his creator. — Bram Van Velde

Let your deafness no longer be a secret - even in art. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

We all do things in a certain individual way, according to our temperaments.
Every human act - no matter how large or how small - is a direct expression of
a man's personality, and bears the inevitable impress of his nature. — S. S. Van Dine

It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important. — Vincent Van Gogh

Because this week I've started in on a hundred reproductions of Rembrandt van Rijn, a hundred portraits of the old artist with the mushroom face, the face of a man pushed to the brink of eternity by art and drink, the door handle starting to turn, the final door pushed open from without by an unknown hand, and I'm beginning to have his puff-paste face, that peeling, piss-soaked wall of a face, I'm beginning to smile his half-moronic smile, to look at the world from the other side of human causes and events, and all my bales these days are framed with that portrait of Rembrandt van Rijn as an old man while I keep filling my drum with wastepaper and open books. — Bohumil Hrabal

I dream my painting and I paint my dream. — Vincent Van Gogh

The art of reading is the art of adopting the pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed. — Mark Van Doren

Wherever at least two art lovers meet, Vincent Van Gogh's name is holy. — Irving Stone

The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on. — Gus Van Sant

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life - it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

What are you going to do if you find art, Pen? You going to steal some and put it in the van?"
"I'm going to remember. When there was art. — Francesca Lia Block

I don't think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great - I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had. — David Lynch

We are all a bunch of human-shaped wounds on each other's hearts. And that is why art exists. — Erin Van Vuren

I went to school for fine art. I'm a decent housepainter, but I'm a really good fine art painter. — Kristin Bauer Van Straten

Like most geniuses, the Countess was a very limited person. Sigmund Freud was so ignorant of the art that Surrealist painters had to explain then- use of Freudian symbols over and over again, and he still didn't get it. Einstein never could remember to take the biscuits out of oven. Those same forces that drive a genius to create things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces (Should you invite Van Gogh to your home he might stand on your sofa in his muddy boots and pee where he pleased), and the very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance, and certainly that sputter less little candle. Same of the mediocre mind known as "common sense" has never produced anything worth celebrating. — Tom Robbins

The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech. — Vincent Van Gogh

We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words — Vincent Van Gogh

My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life, but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar. — Gus Van Sant

Common one, my illuminated one, oh my high in the art of suffering. Take a walk with me. — Van Morrison

Life is too short to do the whole. — Vincent Van Gogh