Wednesday's Good Reading; quotes about art by various people (translated into English)

~Michelangelo:

"Good painting is nothing else but a copy of the perfections of God and a reminder of His painting."

"Good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate, and with great difficulty."

“And who is so barbarous as not to understand that the foot of a man is nobler than his shoe, and his skin nobler than that of the sheep with which he is clothed.”

"If people knew how hard I worked to achieve my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all."

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free”

 

~Pablo Picasso:

“As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.”

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

"To draw, you must close your eyes and sing." 

"People don’t realize what they have when they own a picture by me. Each picture is a phial with my blood. That is what has gone into it."

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

“My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”

 

~Al Capp:

“Abstract art is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.”

 

~Bruce Lee:

"Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own."

 

~Chuck Close:

"Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work."

 

~Dorothea Lange:

“The best way to go into an unknown territory is to go in ignorant, ignorant as possible, with your mind wide open, as wide open as possible and not having to meet anyone else’s requirement but your own.”

 

~E. Gibbons as inspired by Eugene Delacroix:

“To be an artist at twenty is to be twenty: to still be an artist at fifty is to be an artist.”

 

~Edmond & Jules de Goncourt:

“Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum.”

 

~Eugene Delacroix:

 “What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.”

“Talent does whatever it wants to do…. Genius does only what it can.”

 

~Howard Hodgkin:

"To be a painter now is to be part of a very small, endangered species."

 

~James McNeill Whistler:

“An artist’s career always begins tomorrow.”

 

~John Ferrie:

"Paint like nobody is watching and paint like you don’t need any money."

 

~Leonardo da Vinci:

"O painter skilled in anatomy, beware lest the undue prominence of the bones, sinews and muscles cause you to become a wooden painter from the desire to make your nude figures reveal all."

 

~Lila Wallace:

"A painting is like a man. If you can live without it, then there isn’t much point in having it."

 

~Mark Kostabi:

"One secret to my success is that I am faithful to my dreams and don’t cheat on my dreams by taking drugs or blaming others when things don’t go right."

 

~Norman Rockwell:

"Everyone in those days expected that art students were wild, licentious characters. We didn’t know how to be, but we sure were anxious to learn."

 

~Pietro Aretino:

"Why should I be ashamed to describe what nature was not ashamed to create?"

 

~Robert Brault:

“The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.”

 

~Salvador Dali:

"No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist."

 

~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."