John Ruskin Quotes

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

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

Artists change how we see the world - and that can have value in the way people do business.

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

Lots of ambitious work by young artists ends up in a dumpster after its warehouse debut. So an unknown artist's big glass vitrine holding a rotting cow's head covered by maggots and swarms of buzzing flies may be pretty unsellable. Until the artist becomes a star. Then he can sell anything he touches .

If a writer understands his work as something that originates with him but then, with any luck, gets away from him, then what he needs is someone who can grasp the potential of the piece and lead him to that higher ground.

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

It's really interesting with art-movies too, but art especially - to see how your attitude toward artists and works and your level of appreciation of them is always shifting and changing over the years.

To me I think artists in general make a statement - and for the rest of their lives - every album, every book - are variations on a theme.

I have never been able to understand the artist whose image never changes.

For the last three years, I've been working on 'Bromst,' and that's all that encompassed my brain. And now that it's out, it will change the way that I think musically.

The real change that paintings undergo is in the perceptions of the viewer.

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

Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I'm one person and by the time I finish I'm another.

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

Any artist should stay challenged as long as possible.

If people respect us as artists, they know we'll give them something different every time; they know we're pushing ourselves.

You don't have to compose a masterpiece every time, but I think the challenge of art is always searching for something different, searching for a new sensitivity, a new perspective, a new vision.

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?

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.

The price we sell things for is not important. What is important is we sell art that has to be replaced. You become good in art by doing art. The more you sell, the more you must produce.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

It is the death of present art when it returns again and again to the model. Use of the model is only an intermediate stage in artistic development. Create out of a living spirituality to overcome everything naturalistic.

I was trying. I was crawling. I was coming into myself. I was trying to in some ways get beyond - what is the word that I'm looking for? - metaphorical language in painting, and to create something that was more indexical. And what I mean by that is that when you go to the library there's an index card that refers to a book that's actual and real in the world. So that index relates to something real.

I'm a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste.