Some arty quotes
I’m working on a poster for the National Endowment for the Arts. To get into the groove I’ve been reading famous quotes on the importance of art. I thought I’d share a few
Great designers innovate, good designers emulate.
Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only be explored by those willing to take the risks.
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.
An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.
Art is a way of saying what it means to be alive, and the most salient feature of existence is the unthinkable odds against it. For every way that there is of being here, there are an infinity of ways of not being here. Historical accident snuffs out whole universes with every clock tick. Statistics declare us ridiculous. Thermodynamics prohibits us. Life, by any reasonable measure, is impossible, and my life—this, here, now—infinitely more so. Art is a way of saying, in the face of all that impossibility, just how worth celebrating it is to be able to say anything at all.
There must be something about art… almost all cultures have done art. Its a refining of the senses, which are there to keep us alive. As far as we know, no other animals do that.
Life is not a support system for art. It is the other way around.
I’ll post the poster when it’s finished.
