Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Art is not about understanding, it’s about experience.

My first love is art, and I see a lot of things in an artistic way.

Acting school was summer camp, and I needed concentration camp. I had so many different ideas swirling between culture and how to tie things together.

What is art but a way of seeing?

I try to figure out - intellectually, philosophically, psychologically - what the experience of beauty is.

All good art, to me, is uncertainty.

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

Art is truth.

Art is great. At its best, it engages the intellect and challenges the spirit; it connects us across history and reminds us of our humanity.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

Without artists, the sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed.

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made - I try to act in the gap.

A poem is no place for an idea.

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.

The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.

From music and dance to painting and sculpting, the arts allow us to explore new worlds and to view life from another perspective. They also encourage individuals to sharpen their skills and to nurture their imagination and intellect.

I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.

Even luxuries are arranged according to ideas and ideals, to make them reflect as much of thought-life as possible - and this is Art.

What is art? It is not just nature, it is nurtured nature. It is intelligence applied to what physical ability you have.

The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition-and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty and pain.

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.

I don't understand why people talk of art as a luxury when it's a mind-altering possibility.

The great thing about this thing we call art is that it has no rules.

Poetry is that sentiment of the soul, or faculty of the mind, which enables its possessor to appreciate and realize the heights and depths of human experience. It is the power to feel pleasure or suffer pain in all its exquisiteness and intensity.

So every creative act strives to attain an absolute status; it longs to create a world of beauty to triumph over chaos and convert it to order.