Art Philosophy Quotes

“Ik ga voor je zingen, een beetje vals misschien, maar ik zing toch. Ik zing terwijl jullie creperen, ik dans op je gore lijk...”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“As any painter, writer, or
composer knows, artworks arise from the tension between their physical
materials and the thought or spirit that shapes them from within. Though
they require some outward, physical element, they cease to function as art
when they are reduced to their objectlike, artifactual element. This definitive tension underlies art’s varied social uses and explains how it came to
be celebrated on the one hand as an expression of the highest spiritual
achievements of humanity and, on the other, criticized as merely another
precious object—a trapping of wealth, privilege, and social exclusion.
Even in the heyday of classical music, there was always a gap between the
philosophical claims for music and social practice”
― Julian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music?: Cultural Choice and Musical Value

“Es gibt viele Leute mit Talent und Lust, und viele von ihnen bringen es nie zu etwas. Das ist erst der Ausgangspunkt, um im Leben etwas zu erreichen. Das Talent ist wie die Kraft eines Athleten. Man kann mit mehr oder weniger Fähigkeiten geboren werden, aber niemand wird nur aus dem Grund Athlet, weil er von Natur aus groß oder stark oder schnell ist. Was den Athleten - oder den Künstler - ausmacht, das ist die Arbeit, das Handwerk, die Technik. Die Intelligenz die einem in die Wiege gelegt wird, ist bloß die Munition. Um damit etwas anfangen zu können, muss man seinen Geist zu einer Präzisionswaffe machen. <...> Jedes Kunstwerk ist aggressiv. Und jedes Kunstleben ist ein kleiner oder großer Krieg, angefangen bei einem selbst und den eigenen Beschränkungen. Um zu erreichen, was man sich vorgenommen hat, braucht man vor allem Ehrgeiz, dann Talent, Wissen und schließlich eine Chance.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

“I'll never understand any artist who agrees to be paid to create empty work or work for unnecessary appeasement. Art is always a statement. It should at the very least, be thought-provoking. To write an empty message is a disgusting vandalism.”
― Sasha Scarr

“I'm only interested in an art which can change the ideology of society....Art which is only committed to aesthetic values is incomplete.”
― Marina Abramović

“Art itself is a philosophy; it allows us to immerse ourselves freely in our own identities, and in our own pace.”
― Caroline Dahyot

“Art mediates our experience of the world and of ourselves by dealing
with limits, boundaries, and borders in a way that real life rarely allows. Not only is art often concerned with the outer limits of our experience; it is often concerned with the limits of its own expressive capacities. Art claims a unique capacity for representing and enacting the transgression of limits. It defines limits through its discursive logic, which it transgresses even as it presents them. In this, it articulates a fundamental human aspiration; in the activity of its thinking, it goes beyond its material individuality. It projects a symbolic meaning through the patterning of its materials without obliterating their particularity. In this way art accomplishes its primary goal: to recreate the world, to transform it in the crucible of human creativity.”
― Julian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music?: Cultural Choice and Musical Value

“Hume emphasized education and experience: men of taste acquire certain abilities that lead to agreement about which authors and artworks are the best. Such people, he felt, eventually will reach consensus, and in doing so, they set a ‘standard of taste’ which is universal. … Hume said men of taste must ‘preserve minds free from prejudice’, but thought no one should enjoy immoral attitudes or ‘vicious manners’ in art … Kant too spoke about judgements of taste but he was more concerned with explaining judgements of Beauty.
He aimed to show that good judgements in aesthetics are grounded in features of artworks themselves, not just in us and our preferences. Kant tried to describe our human abilities to perceive and categorize the world around us. There is a complex interplay among our mental faculties including perception, imagination, and intellect or judgement. Kant held that in order to function in the world to achieve our human purposes, we label much of what we sense, often in fairly unconscious ways.”
― Cynthia A. Freeland, Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Cynthia Freeland, Oxford University Press

“Art without purpose is decoration; life without art is hollow.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul