Ilya Ehrenburg Quotes

One can rightly speak of an evolution in plastic art. It is of the greatest importance to note this fact, for it reveals the true way of art - the only path along which we can advance.

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.

The process of art evolving is always one which has fascinated me.

In music, they're not endlessly rewriting Beethoven's 'Third Symphony;' in visual art, they aren't painting portraits of 16th-century royalty. Art moves forward.

I guess with any type of music or any art, there's always an evolution.

In the world of art, as in the whole of creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives.

Progress in art does not consist in reducing limitations, but in knowing them better.

I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.

No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist's consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress.

In art there is no progress, only fluctuations of intensity.

There's nothing more tragic than artists from the 70s still doing art from the 70s.

No art can develop until it penetrates deeply into the life of the people.

There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love.

Art demands of us that we shall not stand still.

Every work of art changes its predecessors.

The feat of superbly imitating a muscle, as Michelangelo did, or a face, as Raphael did, created neither progress nor a hierarchy in art. Because these artists of the sixteenth century imitated human forms, they were not superior to the artists of the high periods of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indochinese, Roman, and Gothic art who interpreted and stylized form but did not imitate it.

The culture of any country is gauged first by its progress in art.

Movies are brand new. Film is less than 150 years old. It's brand new, compared to any other art form, all of which are thousands of years old.

If people really stopped and realized how much art and creative people move the world versus politics and religion, I mean it’s not even up for debate. An artist at least creates things, puts things into the world. Where as these other people are destroying things, taking things out of the world.

All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed.

Only by pairing knowledge with inspiration will art evolve. Without these conditions any musician will remain a flawed artist, if one may speak of an artist at all.

The price we sell things for is not important. What is important is we sell art that has to be replaced. You become good in art by doing art. The more you sell, the more you must produce.

I wanted to show painting paintings first, then the plate paintings; now I can show that I've sort of freed myself from stylistic inhibitions.

What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?

The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.