Robert Henri Quotes

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

The arts are not a way to make a living.

Art is something that nobody laughs at and nobody makes any money out of is the attitude, which I would dispute.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Theater doesn't bring money in general. That's not why you do it. If you go into theater for money then you've really gone into the wrong business.

But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.

All art is quite useless.

As soon as any art is pursued with a view of money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

As an artist, I will always give art more importance and preference than pure entertainment.

I've never been in this business to make money. I've always been in it to make good music.

Art is a gift and if nobody hears it, that doesn't make it any less of a gift.

Whether I'm writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It's a way to stay busy during one's ephemeral and confusing life.

When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.

All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it?

ART Art is that thing having to do only with itself—the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art. Unfortunately, there are no expamples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will ever exist. (Everything that has been made has been made with a purpose, teverything with an end exists outside of that thing, i.e., "I want to sell this", or "I want this to make me famous and loved", or "I want this to make me whole", or worse, "I want this to make others whole.") And yet we continue to write, paint, sculpt and compose. Is this foolish of us?

I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the practice of an art.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

If I want to pursue the art of painting - or music or writing or sculpture - it requires only my time and a few dollars for materials. If, however, I want to produce a motion picture I have to go out and raise a million dollars!

What I want any genre to do, what I want any work of art to do, is to illuminate the human condition.

All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.

Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don't want to just collect more fuel.

I'm making entertainment, but I'm making art. This is my art. Hopefully, it's profitable, hopefully it makes money, but at the end of the day I want it to be remembered for its artistic value as well as its entertainment value.

I was always an artist. I was a broker to earn a living, but I was always thinking about my art.