Wynton Marsalis Quotes

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

I still hope that more people can create art, even though artistic genres may never be the most popular or money-making genres. But the thing is, I think art is more long-lasting. It stays in people, and it changes them.

A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

Art is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar. We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother tongue.

Art still has truth. Take refuge there.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

From music and dance to painting and sculpting, the arts allow us to explore new worlds and to view life from another perspective. They also encourage individuals to sharpen their skills and to nurture their imagination and intellect.

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all - no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself - a game of make-believe, or re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it.

We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe

The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect.

I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.

Didacticism is the death of art.

The art world is the biggest joke going. It's a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak. And modern art is a disgrace - never have so many people used so much stuff and taken so long to say so little.

I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

What would life be without art? Science prolongs life. To consist of what-eating, drinking, and sleeping? What is the good of living longer if it is only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life? All this is nothing without the charm of art.

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.

Beauty, which is what is meant by art, using the word in its widest sense, is, I contend, no mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of life.

Music is the perfect type of art.

Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world. Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament.

The power of works of art still continues to be secretly nourished by imitation... kitsch

I don't how I can describe the quality that is only found in art (be it music, literature, painting, or whatever), this quality, it's just there, and it endures.