Artistic Ingenuity Quotes

After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting, since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process, sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany the lights.

Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.

I don't dare to think my paintings are great. I can't understand the arrogance of someone saying, 'I have created a big, important work.'

To me, very much of what is artistic is people's very creative and inventive ways out of impossible situations.

At first he who invented any art that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility.

You can teach people a lot about craft and various techniques, and you can certainly teach them to appreciate, but you cannot give them spirit or soul if it's not there.

Dryden 's genius was of that sort which catches fire by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by driving fast.

This man was so absent-mindedly clever that he could paint pictures that didn’t just follow you around the room but went home with you and did the washing-up.