Inspirational Quotes on Art

“There's nothing needs such mathematical precision as a wild caricature.”

“In the entr’acte Levin and Pestsov fell into an argument upon the merits and defects of music of the Wagner school. Levin maintained that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their trying to take music into the sphere of another art, just as poetry goes wrong when it tries to paint a face as the art of painting ought to do, and as an instance of this mistake he cited the sculptor who carved in marble certain poetic phantasms flitting round the figure of the poet on the pedestal. "These phantoms were so far from being phantoms that they were positively clinging on the ladder," said Levin. [...] Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain its highest manifestations only by conjunction with all kinds of art.”

“To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles; in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him.”

“[T]he many use art and the few receive it. The many behave in this like a man who talks who should listen or gives when he should take. I do not mean by this that the right spectator is passive. His is also an imaginative activity; but an obedient one.”

“A crucifix exists in order to direct the worshipper’s thought and affections to the Passion. It had better not have any excellencies, subtleties, or originalities which will fix attention upon itself.”

“The greatest challenge in art is in dealing with disappointment.”

“A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book, even though it may be about the love of God. There are many who think that because they have written about God, they have written good books. Then men pick up these books and say: if the ones who say they believe in God cannot find anything better than this to say about it, their religion cannot be worth much.”