Quotes & Sayings About Decorative Art

As a composer I might class myself as a Neo-Romantic, inasmuch as I have always regarded music as a highly personal and emotional form of expression. I like to write music which takes its inspiration from poetry, art and nature. I do not care for purely decorative music. Although I am in sympathy with modern idioms, I abhor music which attempts nothing more than the illustration of a stylistic fad. And in using modern techniques, I have tried at all times to subjugate them to a larger idea or a grander human feeling. — Bernard Herrmann

For I wish rather, in this lecture at least, to dwell on the effect that decorative art has on human life - on its social not its purely artistic effect. — Oscar Wilde

Two centuries ago Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians and a founder of number theory, described his brainchild as "the queen of mathematics." Queens are regal, but they are also largely decorative, and this nuance was not lost on Gauss. — Ian Stewart

I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and not the different decorative branches, flowers or leaves. It is futile to argue as to which leaf, which design of branches, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the root, you understand all its blossoming. — Bruce Lee

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art, but by no means all, seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting. — Edward Hopper

The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves. — Edward Albee

Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and ... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful. — Henri Matisse

A chair is not just a product of decorative art in a space, it is a form and a space in itself — Finn Juhl

The "Art Nouveau" appeal of smoking: manufacture your own pneuma, spirit. "I'm alive." "I'm decorative. — Susan Sontag

Jack was too absorbed in his work to hear the bell. He was mesmerized by the challenge of making soft, round shapes of hard rock. The stone had a will of its own, and if he tried to make it do something it did not want to do, it would fight him, and his chisel would slip, or dig in too deeply, spoiling the shapes. But once he had got to know the lump of rock in front of him he could transform it. The more difficult the task, the more fascinated he was. He was beginning to feel that the decorative carving demanded by Tom was too easy. Zigzags, lozenges, dogtooth, spirals and plain roll moldings bored him, and even these leaves were rather stiff and repetitive. He wanted to curve natural-looking foliage, pliable and irregular, and copy the different shapes of real leaves, oak and ash and birch. — Ken Follett

When art calls, you have to follow it. It doesn't happen often, so take the opportunity when it strikes. In all reality, what I do is art. I do create fabulous pieces of decorative baked goods. — A.M. Willard

I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.. I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman. — Georges Braque

I was doing something that the officials or art commission probably didn't consider important ... I was experimenting with different kinds of realistic art, impressionism and the more decorative compositions of different forms of painting, which took away from the earlier photographic realism that I was doing. — E. J. Hughes

Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. — Georges Braque

Jewels have played a colorful part in the evolution of world affairs. Because precious stones tend to inspire both admiration and greed, leaders have found convenient excuses for seeking them and have used them to impress crowds, reward friends, deprive foes, forge alliances, and justify war. Jewels may find their highest expression in the decorative arts, but they have also earned a place in the art of the possible. — Madeleine Albright

One of the first principles of decorative art is that in all manufactures ornament must hold a place subordinate to that of utility; and when, by its exuberance, ornament interferes with utility, it is misplaced and vulgar. — George Mason

Art is not merely a decorative enhancement of our lives, but a sign of our desire to live in the world fully and honestly. — Jan Zwicky

One can trace the relics of this former happiness in the trim shapes of the buildings, the occasional graceful churches, and the evidences of original art and background in bits of detail here and there - a worn flight of steps, a wormy pair of decorative columns of pilasters, or a fragment of once green space with bent and rusted iron railing. — H.P. Lovecraft

The debut show, "Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary," is supposed to be about how artists reuse humble or unusual materials. There's good work here, but much of what's on view is actually more about obsession and repetition: a couch made out of 3,500 quarters, a necklace composed of 100 handgun triggers. The building [of Museum of Arts and Design], too, seems caught between wanting to be an object of decorative delectation and making an architectural statement. — Jerry Saltz

If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir; a decorative litt — George Bernard Shaw

Wall-to-wall masterpieces, after all, ought to be preferred to wall-to-wall decorative arts, even if the decorative arts are of the highest quality peppered and salted with dukes and tiaras. — Joseph Alsop

No word meaning "art" occurs in Aivilik, nor does "artist": there are only people. Nor is any distinction made between utilitarian and decorative objects. The Aivilik say simply, "A man should do all things properly." — Edmund Snow Carpenter

Many cherish art as a special haven within an over-schematized world, where ambiguities can thrive. If an artwork's message is self-evident, maybe it's just an illustration, a decorative non-entity, a well-executed craft object, hardly counting as 'significant' art at all. It's not just that without an explanation the viewer is lost; without some written framework to steady it, the art itself risks losing its way, never gaining traction in the contemporary art system. From this perspective, both viewer and artwork alike are as if handicapped without the art-world's special assistance. — Gilda Williams

I detest my past, and anyone else's. I detest resignation, patience, professional heroism and obligatory beautiful feelings. I also detest the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, voices making announcements, aerodynamism, boy scouts, the smell of moth balls, events of the moment, and drunken people. — Rene Magritte

Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted. — Rebecca West

The shaping of taste is essentially the science of merchandising, whether of detergents or cars or books or objects of fine and decorative art. — Russell Lynes

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up. — George Orwell

Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music.
Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or try to conceal it.
Don't allow "influence" to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets who you happen to admire. — Ezra Pound

For me there is no gap between my painting and my so-called 'decorative' work. I never considered the 'minor arts' to be artistically frustrating; on the contrary, it was an extension of my art. — Sonia Delaunay

We'll stick close together, but make no sign we are acquainted. The girls should go ahead so that they get through first. We'll follow close behind to be there for any trouble."

"Don't worry, my dears," said the professor gallantly, "I'll rescue you from any difficulties."

Yelena laughed and kissed the old man on the cheek. "Of course you will. I don't know why we bother with these other men, do you, Tashi?"

"But they are decorative, aren't they?" the Princess replied archly. It was fun to have a girl with whom she could gang up against the boys--she'd never had a friend like that before. "They give us something to look at on the boring stretches of the road." She let her eyes linger on Ramil, who appeared very warm all of a sudden.

Yelena swung herself into the saddle. "My, my, Princess, I didn't know you could flirt."

"I'm learning from a master--or should I say mistress--of that art," Tashi said with a bow. — Julia Golding

Just as pure abstract art is not dogmatic, neither is it decorative. — Piet Mondrian