Agnes Martin Quotes

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.

Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

It is only through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; Through Art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

If I had to pick an artist that I look up to and am inspired by, it's Matisse because of how many times he would paint the same idea until he felt like he maybe got it right, and I try to do the same thing with my writing.

Works of Art can only be produc'd in Perfection where the Man is either in Affluence or is Above the Care of it.

Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who can't attain it in anything.

There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations.

I think attempting to make art is a utopian process in itself, definitely. Nothing I do is ever equal to the ideas in my head. You do the best you can, you do it with patience and love, and then you give up. The moment you give up is when you know the book is done.

He who excels in his art so as to carry it to the utmost height of perfection of which it is capable may be said in some measure to go beyond it: his transcendent productions admit of no appellations.

What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.

Artists who approach perfection do not have many ideas.

One meets the cat in nearly all forms of art...curiously enough she is not a conspicuous figure in Roman or Greek art.

The perfection of art is to conceal the sources.

My analysis of the situation was that Roman Polanski wasn't trying to break us down or get a performance out of us by destroying us. He was absolutely, very simply, trying to recreate this clear picture in his head. And the pictures he creates are absolutely perfect, and they are exactly what he saw in his head.

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

Ancient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece and the servant of Rome.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

I am not likely to die of bashfulness but neither am I prepared to be crucified to attest the perfection of my art. I dislike to hear of any stray heroics on the prowl for me.

The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose

What I like so much about Corot is that he can say everything with a bit of tree; and it was Corot himself that I found [back] in the museum of Naples - in the simplicity of the work of Pompeii and the Egyptians. These priestesses in their silver-grey tunics are just like Corot's nymphs.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.