A Quote by William Butler Yeats

All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.

William Butler Yeats

Quote Topics

Analysis Art Art Is Endeavor Flying Human Image Last Out Own Perfection Sake Vapor World

Quote Author

William Butler Yeats
Irish - Poet
June 13, 1865 - January 28, 1939

Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.

George Sand

Not just art for art's sake, but I want to have films out there that will provoke authentic, holistic conversations about the human condition. And not provide the easy answers, but put it out there.

Isaiah Washington

Warhol and other Pop artists had brought the art religion of art for art's sake to an end. If art was only business, then rock expressed that transcendental, religious yearning for communal, nonmarket esthetic feeling that official art denied. For a time during the seventies, rock culture became the religion of the avant-garde art world.

Dan Graham

Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highestquality toyourmomentsasthey pass,and simply for those moments'sake.

Walter Pater

Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. (1804)

Benjamin Constant

Artists used to argue about art for art's sake versus social realism etc, and now it's like the most dominate argument is related to "art for the market's sake." It's a necessity, somewhat, for some people.

Lee Klein

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Mao Zedong

Cookery is a wholly unselfish art: as 'art for art's sake' it is unthinkable. A man may sing in his bath every morning without the least encouragement, but no cook can cook just for his or her own sake in a like manner. All good cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience worth cooking for.

Andre Simon

In art school we're always taught that art is an end in itself - art for art's sake, expressing yourself, and that that's enough.

Eric Drooker

Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake", there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.

Vladimir Nabokov

Norman Rockwell spent his career painting pictures that helped people understand their own feelings...pictures that enriched their own experiences and celebrated their own lives. But the art establishment branded him an 'illustrator', a sentimental one at that. Real artists, they said were doing art for art's sake, not for the sake of the bourgeois public. Real artists were putting swiggles, smears or daubs of paint on the canvas. They were doing 'innovative' and 'creative' work. If they were hideous and grotesque; we know that's what life really is!

Bill Bonner

Becoming mature is not important for art. Technical perfection is not relevant to art. Precision in art is only achieved by total duty of loyalty. Love, lusciousness, birth and fertility are precise tools of art, like laws.

Jonathan Meese

Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.

Wole Soyinka

I mean, art for art's sake is ridiculous. Art is for the sake of one's needs.

Carl Andre

I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art's sake.