Duke Ellington Quotes

There is no art when one does something without intention.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

Art needs to stand for something.

There are those who think that Zeffirelli's Hamlet is the way to treat Shakespeare. I think that cinema can handle much more. We somehow expect cinema to provide us with meaning, to console us. But that's not the purpose of art.

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.

What I am really concerned about is what art is supposed to be - and can become.

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

I'm not about either entertaining or instructing. The entertaining and instructing are secondary fallout from the fundamental thing, which is basically to create an aesthetic object.

The magic question is, 'What for?' But art is not for anything. Art is the ultimate goal.

As an artist, the most important thing and the most special thing is when your intention shines through on the work.

I think that's always the goal of art, is to make people ask themselves questions.

Ideally, it would be cool to actually get to know artists enough to know what their feelings are, what they believe in, what they want people to get from them, what they represent.

I just want to make cool art work that has some meaning.

As an artist, I often wonder what my purpose is or why I do what I do.

When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional - a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful.

I don't see art as entertainment.

To make art you need to be inspired.

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae.

My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don’t see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity. To make humanity uncomfortable, yes. But intrinsically to be against humanity, that I don’t take.

Arguments against photography ever being considered a fine art are: the element of chance which enters in, — finding things ready-made for a machine to record, and of course the mechanics of the medium. I say that chance enters into all branches of art.