John Ruskin Quotes

In art there is no progress, only fluctuations of intensity.

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.

I wish to be of service to the artists of our own day, by showing them how a small beginning leads to the highest elevation, and how from so noble a situation it is possible to fall to utmost ruin, and consequently, how these arts resemble nature as shown in our human bodies.

The feat of superbly imitating a muscle, as Michelangelo did, or a face, as Raphael did, created neither progress nor a hierarchy in art. Because these artists of the sixteenth century imitated human forms, they were not superior to the artists of the high periods of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indochinese, Roman, and Gothic art who interpreted and stylized form but did not imitate it.

Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.

I am only satisfied insofar as I feel 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' is a definite progress, but even about this picture I am not quite satisfied. There is still too much of the old in it.

Artistic development is a thing of the past, sadly.

The process of art evolving is always one which has fascinated me.

From 1940 to the present, the art world - and particularly Los Angeles - has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.

I've tended to look at my albums as research and development. I was just trying to get someplace new on each one.

I think if you're a creative person, then you're always kinda looking to move things along - 'Where else can I go? Where can I take this?' From painters to photographers - anything creative in the arts - if you're a true artist, I think you'll always look to do something else. 'Where else can I go with it?' Do you know what I mean?

The art establishment has turned away from the old curriculum which puts beauty and craft at the top of the agenda.

When you create stuff, you're always going to be progressing and where you're at a year down the line, as the creator, it's always going to feel immature. You're going to notice the flaws and the things that you've learned in that year aren't going to be there. So, I think it's important to see stuff as a capture of time - that's what I was doing at that time - and not be ashamed of it. That's how I try to approach music.

Each period of a civilisation creates an art that is specific in it and which we will never see reborn. To try and revive the principles of art of past centuries can lead only to the production of stillborn works.

Any genuine work of art generates new work.

In the world of art, as in the whole of creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives.

I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.

The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and with the hope that it would always remain in the present.

To open up the new, to look back on the old may bring forth like discoveries in the practice of art.

Art changes all the time, but it never "improves." It may go down, or up, but it never improves as technology and medicine improve.

There have been countless changes in the long history of art. The most significant have been brought about by the genius of a single artist.

A strange thing has happened - while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Artistic productivity is the capacity for being voluntarily involuntary.

There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love.

Art demands of us that we shall not stand still.