Under the Microscope Prof William RevilleToday, I offer you a selection of quotations on the arts. You can find many more on the website of the Maricopa Centre for Learning and Instruction.
Beauty is the purgation of superfluities. - Michelangelo
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.
- Abraham Maslow
(American psychologist, 1908-1970)
All art is but imitation of nature.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC-AD 65)
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
- Aristotle (382-322 BC)
Art is a higher type of knowledge than experience.
- Aristotle
Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.
- Rene Magritte
(Belgian surrealist artist, 1898-1967)
Art is a lie that helps us to realise the truth.
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.
- Pablo Picasso
Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
- Georges Braque
(French painter and sculptor, 1882-1963)
Art is not the bread, but the wine of life.
- John Paul Richter (German novelist, 1763-1825)
Art is the signature of civilisations.
- Beverly Sills (American opera singer, (1929-)
Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.
- Henry Miller (American writer, 1891-1890)
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
- Eugene Delacroix (French painter, 1798-1863)
Colour in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.
- Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)
He who works with his hands is a labourer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.
- St Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)
I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.
- Henri Matisse (French painter, 1869-1954)
If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens. - Grandma Moses (American folk artist, 1860-1961)
Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.
- John Ruskin (Art and social critic, 1819-1900)
The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.
- Paul Klee (Swiss painter, 1879-1940)
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college and that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, 'You mean they forget?'
- Howard Ikemoto (American artist and teacher)
Every good painter paints what he is.
- Jackson Pollack (American painter, 1912-1956)
Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
- Stella Adler (American actress and teacher, 1901-1992)
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
- Twyla Tharp (American dancer, 1941-)
If a work of art or a new style disturbs you, then it is probably good work. If you hate it, it is probably great.
- Leo Steinberg (American art historian, 1920-)
Art is not what you see but what you make others see.
- Edgar Degas (French artist, 1834-1917)
William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and public awareness of science officer at UCC. http://understandingscience.ucc.ie