Leonard Bacon Quotes

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

In love as in art, good technique helps.

With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.

I'm always in awe of people who are artists in their fields - people who understand that simply by taking ideas and translating them into reality, they've created value in the world.

You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.

In the world of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure, was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different minds which assisted in its development.

I had a natural feeling for sculpture, and the nudes are my sculpture.

Part of my work is dedicated to artisanship and can only be done by very few people because it requires a specific technique. Being an artist is being at the service of yourself; I am at the service of other people.

I think when dance is mediocre, it's painful. But when dance is really impressive, it destroys.

I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.

When you are an artist, you want your audience to think it's effortless and easy.

Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn't worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value.

I don't think that I'm over his influence but they probably don't look like Picassos; Picasso himself would probably have thrown up looking at my pictures.

I sometimes make pictures which are not up to my standard, but then it can only be said of a mediocrity that all his work is up to his standard.

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.

Even a true artist does not always produce art.

There's nothing more special than intellect and labour that makes painting work. There's no magic there; it's information, and it's work.

I know how to paint... In a way there is a boredom there because a lot of the magic is gone.

I've always believed that you have to have the skills before you destroy the skills. If you want to be crude, be crude, but don't be crude because you don't know how to do it, because you're not perfect at drawing and pattern-cutting.

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

One type of concentration is immediate and complete, as it was with Mozart. The other is plodding and only completed in stages, as with Beethoven. Thus genius works in different ways to achieve its ends.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

In abandoning the vagueness of the sketch the artist shows more of his personality by revealing the range but also the limitations of his talent.