Edgar Degas Quotes

Art is manipulation without intervention.

Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.

Thus all Art is propaganda and ever must be.

All art is propaganda.

When I make art, I think about its ability to connect with others, to bring them into the process.

That dichotomy between the public consumption of the work and my intent and practice in making it is an uneasy one for me, on occasion.

All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.

Paintings don't just happen. I am not a proponent of the idea of an artist as someone who kind of magically makes things and has no real control or isn't willfully producing a certain kind of thing. It is labor-intensive, and it is research-intensive. You are making one decision after another, trying to get at something you think is important.

The saying "the business of art is different than the purpose of art" makes sense, and what are you going to do about that? You have some obligation to get the work out there, you believe in it enough that it should be out in the public, but of course it goes through a system that takes it pretty far away from the reasons you made them.

It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.

One cannot create an art that speaks to men when one has nothing to say.

Art consists in making others feel what we feel.

Just give us 50 years where we're the only ones who are allowed to profit from art, and then you can do whoever you want. In fact, I'll buy you the paint. Whatever you want. Just give us 50 years. 50 years. That's it.

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

If I set out to sculpt a standing man and it becomes a lying woman, I know I am making art.

ART Art is that thing having to do only with itself—the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art. Unfortunately, there are no expamples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will ever exist. (Everything that has been made has been made with a purpose, teverything with an end exists outside of that thing, i.e., "I want to sell this", or "I want this to make me famous and loved", or "I want this to make me whole", or worse, "I want this to make others whole.") And yet we continue to write, paint, sculpt and compose. Is this foolish of us?

The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art.

Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.

Sometimes art is just about getting a reaction, that's really the end-all be-all.

I don't like the word 'calculated' because it sounds pejorative. Intentional. Intentional is better, I think. Wild in passion and intentional in expression.

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.

I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.

My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.

Personally, I never believe an artist saying "I do it for myself" is saying the truth, because why would you go through the trouble of making something that goes out into the world if you didn't care about somebody else seeing it? It's like the difference between those who choose "more comfortably termed entertainment" versus what people think of as the "art life," which is supposedly more monastic or spiritual. I don't believe in those distinctions.

Art is a delivery system for worldviews.