artSavant on Why Art?

As Arthur vos Savant once said, "Art is vital to my life for several reasons. First of all, while Life is long, Art is short . . . for Arthur."
Secondly, as expressed in this ancient song, Art is a source of enduring enjoyment:
Take a harp and wander about the city,
O forgotten harlot!
Make sweet melody, sing many songs,
So that you will be remembered.
Isaiah 23:16
Third, art is not a noun, it's a verb. Eating an orange is like art, the stuff critics discuss is the peel that is left over. To put such discussions in another light appropriate to digital art, science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else.

Wouldn't comments like these be more fun for you next time you peruse the notes at a gallery show? And more accurate. Tired of noisy post-deconstructionist silences, holistic multivariate singularities, and other not-for-the-masses driveling blabble? Then send your own eloquently inarticulate comments on art (or some appropriated ones) for inclusion on this page. And don't worry about backlash. We'll take your most secret thoughts to the grave with us. Whereupon, of course, they will rise dramatically in price and overnight become the focus of grant awards everywhere.

Until then, here is a final inspiration: Have as your goal always the creation of Art-To-Choke hearts.

Artists Respond! Why Art?

"I'm almost quoting, not quite paraphrasing, Gertrude Stein who was almost quoting and definitely not paraphrasing Pablo Picasso when she said that he said: 'When something is made for the first time ever, it is bound to be ugly. But others can come along after you and make it pretty, since they didn't have to go through all the work to be the first to have made it.'"
Howard B. Des Chenes
Nothing Box

"What is required of art is not a copy of the world; one of the damn thing is enough."
critic Rebecca West

"Got an art on for my muse.
Why she do me so darn wrong?
Got on art on an' it's blue.
Why she tease me, leave me drawn?
Art keeps beating, beatin' on me.
Naught but tears and lies at dawn."
Guillermo "Memo" Saenz
Can Don't Mean You Should

"The artist's most profound dread, that God will make you an artist but only a mediocre artist, did not in retrospect apply."
David Bowie
on publication of Nat Tate: An American Artist (1928-1960)

"A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness."
Jean Genet
Miracle of the Roses

"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless."
Oscar Wilde
The Critic As Artist

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
Albert Einstein

"When visiting an exhibition of children's drawings, Picasso remarked: 'When I was their age I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.'"
Pablo Picasso
Picasso: His Life and Work

"Why create a work of art when it so beautiful to dream it?"
Piero Passollini
in his film The Decameron

Send your own quote for others to see on this page.

guest illustration ©Mind Killaz Graphix

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