Robert Musil Quotes

We should always remember that sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art.

Art has always been and is in its very essence the boldest departure from nature. It is the bridge into the spirit world.

I do believe abstraction is and was meant to embody deep emotion. I believe that's its job, in the history of art.

If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.

We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary.

Art is an intersection of many human needs.

What kind of art do I want to make? What do I stand for? What inspires me? And then to have people in return respond to that... I think that's the greatest thing because throughout dancing, I'm always looking for that.

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

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

Art is good, bad, boring, ugly, useful to us or not. It does or doesn't disturb optical monotony, and succeeds or fails in surmounting sterility of style or visual stereotype; it creates new beauty or it doesn't.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

When art seems to be empty of meaning, as no doubt some of the abstract painting of our own day actually does seem, what the painting says, indeed what the artist is shrieking at the top of his voice, is that life has become empty of all rational content and coherence, and that, in times like these, is far from a meaningless statement.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be?

Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.

A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.

Don't make the mistake of believing it's enough to reproduce the realities of life.... The object of art is to give life a shape, and to do it by every conceivable artifice.

The Arts are man's most useless ... and essential ... activity.

Art is the most benign cultural practice, and yet art has an upper bound of personal revelation that is so far away it is basically a horizon.

Film is abstract, not definite. It is a dream.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

You want to make entertainment sometimes, and sometimes you want to make art, because I think the way we understand ourselves as human beings is through art, and the way we process emotions - I know I do - is through recognizing experiences on screen or in novels or in paintings.

That's really the whole point of art - it's to take something commonplace and draw people on a path so that, all of a sudden, they have a new impression of everything around them.

When you think about alien intelligences making art, you then have to think about what art is and how bound up it is in the nature of consciousness. Why do we make art? And what can we expect to have in common with other creatures in universe?

Humanity looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.

As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings