Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

Art is a habit-forming drug. Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. People always speak of it with this great, religious reverence, but why should it be so revered?

Art is pattern informed by sensibility.

I think art is more glorious than life but not more real.

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.

When you have spent an important part of your life playing Let's Pretend, it's often easy to see symbolism where none exists.

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Art is a deception that creates real emotions - a lie that creates a truth. And when you give yourself over to that deception, it becomes magic.

There can be no literary equivalent to truth.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

Sometimes my art is just an illusion - or is it?

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Art is more engaging that propaganda.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.

Everything for me becomes allegory.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

You can be very honest without telling the truth, at least in art.

Style is objective, akin to art, so it varies.

Art is a never-ending dance of illusions.

Truth is a matter of the imagination.