Jean Arp Quotes

The creative act amazes me. Whether it's poetry, whether it's music, it's an amazing process, and it has something to do with bringing forth the old out into the world to create and to bring forth that which will rejuvenate.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Craft can get you through ninety percent of a piece, but it's art that carries you at the end.

Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.

For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, ‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.

For art is order, but it is born out of the chaos of life.

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.

Art is something you choose to make... it's a bringing together of... of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.

I love the creative process and being able to build something out of nothing.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

Modeling isn't boring.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

If you are a creative person, you try to create things that are an extension of yourself.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

Creativity is how we cope with creation. While creation sometimes seems a bit un-graspable, or even pointless, creativity is always meaningful.

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.

If I were to try and find a unifying emotion that kept me calm and focused while I was dancing or writing or solving a math problem, I think the one unifying thing about all those that keeps my interest is creativity.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.