29 Insightful and Short Art Quotes

Check out our favorite inspirational art quotes from artists, creators and famous people.

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Short Art Quotes

Insightful Art Quotes

“I’ve never been a big fan of subtle art. I like art that gets deep into my head and starts my brain spinning with new ideas and inspiration and my whole body is full of energy.” – Jello Biafra

“Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.” – Henry Rollins

“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.” – J.D. Salinger

“All art is dependent on technology because it’s a human endeavour, so even when you’re using charcoal on a wall or designed the proscenium arch, that’s technology.” – George Lucas

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams

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“The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.” – Jackson Pollock

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“I feel like there’s so many voices, and it’s necessary for there to be a lot of different voices because we can’t all like the same art.” – Amanda Shires

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” – Albert Einstein

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.” – Henry David Thoreau

“In painting, you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.” – Edgar Degas

“I never called my work an ‘art’. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.” – Walt Disney

“My painting carries with it the message of pain.” – Frida Kahlo

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“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” – Pablo Picasso

“”The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.” – Henry Moore

“It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.” – Henri Matisse

“Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.” – Auguste Rodin

“Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: darkness, light, solidity and color, form and position, distance and propinquity, motion and rest.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

“I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.” – Georgia O Keeffe

“People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.” – Claude Monet

“Hip-hop is the last true folk art.” – Mos Def

“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” – Leo Tolstoy

“What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit.” – John Updike

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“Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.” – Harry Truman

“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

“Art for art’s sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” – C.S. Lewis

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.” – Kurt Vonnegut

Insightful Art Quotes

I hope you enjoyed this list of insightful art quotes! Were there any that I missed? Let me know on social media!

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