Rudolf Arnheim Quotes

This was my first encounter with art as art (he saw 'Pinky' painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and 'The Blue Boy" painted by Thomas Gainborough).. ..somebody actually MADE those paintings.. ..(it) was the first time I realized you could be an artist.

No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.

It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small 'yes' at the center of a vast 'no.'

Art is right reason in the doing of work.

Now sexual obsessions are the basis of artistic creation. Accumulated frustration leads to what Freud calls the process of sublimation. Anything that does not take place erotically sublimates itself in the work of art

Society takes what it wants. The artist himself does not count, because there is no actual existence for the work of art. The work of art is always based on the two poles of the onlooker and the maker, and the spark that comes from the bipolar action gives birth to something - like electricity. But the onlooker has the last word, and it is always posterity that makes the masterpiece. The artist should not concern himself with this, because it has nothing to do with him.

Your life can become the background for the art you create.

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

Only through apprehending, by means of present-day creations, how art is created, can the creations of other periods be genuinely appreciated.

I have nothing but respect for people who travel the world to make art and put exotic Indians in front of linen backdrops, but it's always been my philosophy to try to make art out of the everyday and ordinary.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.

All these troubles revolve around the irritable mutual dependence of life and art - with their need and contempt for one another. Of necessity, to create is a temporary state and cannot be possessed.

I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me."

A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and eye of man.

How much the work of an artist owes to an art movement to which he belongs can never be determined exactly, if only because the movement derives its character from the individual creations of its members.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

I find that it's a very odd thing to think of competition when you're talking about what I still think of as art. I don't think of competing with actors or filmmakers at all. You do compete, in a way, at the box office, but we're far enough apart when both films are coming out that I'm not concerned with that either.

Whenever I see a Frans Hals I feel like painting, but when I see a Rembrandt I feel like giving up!

An object of art creates a public capable of finding pleasure in its beauty. Production, therefore, not only produces an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object.

Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence . Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.

Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death. And here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of any form of art, art which affirms the value and the holiness of life, the artist must die. To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self.