George Santayana Quotes

The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality.

I want that every piece of art be honest, never mind what it is about.

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

I'm inspired by art - in whatever form it takes. I love when I see a painting or a photograph that captures my attention.

Beauty has became a pejorative word in art. It was not something one should aspire to, because it was pedestrian. Beautiful things became cheap and easy. If it's cheap and easy, then upper classes aren't going to aspire to it. So, they have to find something more esoteric. I wanted the paintings to be realistic enough that you would have the ability to forget that I'm showing them to you.

Painting and sculpture help other people to see what a wonderful world we live in.

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

Sometimes good art jumps out at me; most of the time I see bad art, or see nothing at all and just drift, feeling weird, pretending to be fine.

The reason some portraits don't look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures.

Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth.

The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.

... the image of feeling created by artists, in every kind of art -- plastic, musical, poetic, balletic -- serves to hold the reality itself for our labile and volatile memory, as a touchstone to test the scope of our intellectual constructions.

In art there is a need for truth, not sincerity.

If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation like "Goodness alive!" would be the best criticism of the most deserving work of art. There are critiques which say nothing but that, only they do so more extensively.

In all great arts, as in trees, it is the height that charms us; we care nothing for the roots or trunks, yet it could not be without the aid of these.

For everyone who, having no artistic sense-that is to say, no submission to subjective reality-may have the knack of reasoning about art till doomsday, especially if he be, in addition, a diplomat or financier in contact with the 'realities' of the present day, is only too ready to believe literature is an intellectual game which is destined to gradually be abandoned as time goes on.

Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, mush less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back on content so we can see the thing at all. The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us.

Art is truth.

It's really amazing to stand in front of a work you haven't seen before and be almost overwhelmed by its beauty and the vision and execution of the artist.

I just sing what I feel in my heart. I ain't trying to prove nothing, and I don't think I ever did.

Don't think too much. The best pictures come naturally.

There's traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that's the last thing on an artist's mind.

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