Real art is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind, and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possible is a benefactor of humanity.

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

Divine Nature gave the fields, human art built the cities.

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.

I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me.

The work of art is always unfaithful to its creator... Art lays at a higher level; it says something more, and almost always, it says something different from what the artist wanted to say.

Picasso said, 'Art is a lie that tells the truth.' What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

I get strength from my art - all the paintings I own are powerful.

The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. The web of life is a perfectly finished work of art right where I am sitting now.

I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.

One's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes.

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

I collect human relationships very much the way others collect fine art.

Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.

Art and music is part of what it means to be a human being. And if you're neglecting that, you're basically ignoring a huge side of the brain and a huge side of what it means to be human.

As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.

Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line: that which is conquered, conquers at the same time.

Postmodernism surely requires an even greater grasp of symbolism, as it's increasingly an art of gesture alone.

Listen to your inner-voice: Surround yourself with loving, nurturing people. Fall in love with your art and find yourself. Music is the great communicator.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

Art is not in some far-off place. A work of art is the expression of a man's whole personality, sensibility and ability.

The ultimate art form of fashion is couture. I completely geek out when it comes to couture. It shows fashion as it used to be. I don't know how many people can actually afford the clothes, but in a way, that's beside the point.

There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

That's what all art's about - a sense of moving away from boundaries that you can't in real life. Like a dancer is always trying to fly, really - to do something that's just not possible. But you try to do as much as you can within those physical boundaries.

Filmmaking is a huge privilege; it's not brain surgery. It's art, and art is supposed to be an enjoyable process, and it is an enjoyable experience for me.

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture.

The entire world of art has reached such a low level, it has been commercialized to such a degree that art and everything related to it has become one of the most trivial activities of our epoch.

Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

What is art but a way of seeing?

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

I will preach with my brush.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

Wherever art appears, life disappears.

Far from being dominated by ideas from Paris and New York, Latin American artists were often the innovators. They were doing drip paintings in advance of Pollock, creating language art before the American conceptualists, and fashioning shaped canvases decades before Kelly or Stella.

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer.

Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

Art is subject to arbitrary fashion.

Every picture shows a spot with which the artist has fallen in love.

I am not strong on perfection.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.