Voltaire Quotes

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

It's hard to explain your emotions when you see a work of art.

Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.

All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.

I can weep pretty easily. I can get tears in my eyes from a beautiful work of art.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.

When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

To be full of joy when looking at an oeuvre is not a little thing.

But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life - namely, Beauty.

Grant that the true organ with which the beautiful is apprehended is the imagination, and it follows that all arts are likely to affect the feelings indirectly.

When you see or hear something beautiful, it's like that thing is transmitting a kind of energy, and if that energy helped create the work, the only thing I can do is play it when I finally show the work.

An art aims, above all, at producing something beautiful which affects not our feelings but the organ of pure contemplation, our imagination.

Art is inspiring. Walking into a gallery, or when the lights go up on a stage; that thrill of getting something that has nothing to do with acquisition.

There isn't any art until some creature sees and consumes it. And has a reaction.

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

I am very conscious of the viewer because that's where the art takes place. My work really strives to put the viewer in a certain kind of emotional state.

I have no interest in making a work that doesn't elicit a feeling.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.

The claims I'm making for art are simply the claims that we naturally make around music or around poetry. We're much more relaxed around those art forms. We're willing to ask, 'How could this find a place in my heart?'

If buying art is to matter to us deeply, then it has to engage with our emotions and bring something to what one might as well, and with no supernatural associations whatsoever, call our souls.

I get inspired by the sounds that evoke an emotion from me. That's what I am drawn to; that's what turns me on.

Any piece of art has the potential to emotionally touch you and nudge you.