A Quote by Andrei Tarkovsky

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be changed in accordance with the ideals it expresses. Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good. It’s ridiculous to imagine that people can be taught to be good…Art can only give food – a jolt – the occasion – for psychical experience.

Andrei Tarkovsky

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Allowing Angels Anyone Anything Art Attention Be Good Become Been Cannot Capable Capacity Catharsis Changed Experience Expresses Food Four Give Good Had Human Human Soul Humanity Ideals Imagine Imagine That Learnt Long Long Ago Make Nothing Obvious Occasion Only Ourselves Paying People Receptive Ridiculous Shock Should Since Soul Taught Teach Thousand Thousand Years Through Years

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Andrei Tarkovsky
Russian - Director
April 4, 1932 - December 29, 1986

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.

Andrei Tarkovsky

When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician -- make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor -- make good art. IRS on your trail -- make good art. Cat exploded -- make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil or it's all been done before -- make good art.

Neil Gaiman

We need new art. Old art cannot do that. It can do lots of other things, and of course humanity hasn't changed that much in the last thousand or two thousand years.So that the old Greek dramas are still at the very heart, core, of human experience, but still we need new stuff.

Esa-Pekka Salonen

It is only through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; Through Art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

Oscar Wilde

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

Damien Hirst

The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more, making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive - non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective. the only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.

Ad Reinhardt

All art is propaganda. ... The only difference is the kind of propaganda. Since art is essential for human life, it can't just belong to the few. Art is the universal language, and it belongs to all mankind. All painters have been propagandists or else they have not been painters. ... Every artist who has been worth anything in art has been such a propagandist. ... Every strong artist has been a propagandist. I want to be a propagandist and I want to be nothing else. ... I want to use my art as a weapon.

Diego Rivera

My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don’t see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity. To make humanity uncomfortable, yes. But intrinsically to be against humanity, that I don’t take.

Chinua Achebe

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.

Anselm Kiefer

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator... Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

Seth Godin

It is not the poet's business to save man's soul but to make it worth saving . . . However, few poets have written with a clear theory of art for art's sake, it is by that theory alone that their work has been, or can be, judged; -and rightly so if we remember that art embraces all life and all humanity, and sees in the temporary and fleeting doctrines of conservative or revolutionary only the human grandeur or passion that inspires them.

James Elroy Flecker

I've been an art collector since the Sixties, and I kept it very separate from my showbusiness career. I've had art shows since the early Nineties, a museum show that travelled to four countries. I've had three or four art books; it's just another way I have to tell stories.

John Waters

It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.

Robert Rauschenberg

Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art.

Clement Greenberg

What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist’s subject be religious to be Christian? I don’t think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful

R. C. Sproul

Art exists for the human species. I think that all of the people who love art, those who teach art, and all of you should burn with the obligation to save the world.

Shinichi Suzuki

A Quote by Andrei Tarkovsky

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