Artistic Morality Quotes

Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.

Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.

The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind.

An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

The true artist doesn't substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one.

The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it when it is broken to moral uses--in other words, when its innocence is pumped out of it, and it is purged of gusto.

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

Where beauty is worshipped for beauty's sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction is apt to set in. The lives of the aesthetes are the far from edifying commentary on the religion of beauty.

It is not sufficient merely to be a great master in painting and very wise, but I think that it is necessary for the painter to be very moral in his mode of life, or even, if such were possible, a saint, so that the Holy Spirit may inspire his intellect.

The names of great painters are like passing-bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; .in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality.

The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings.

What we also need to have a discussion on the philosophy of art: so we must ask what is it that we want in the first place? Is it just about saying and doing whatever you want, or is it about something more? We should let the artist be free, but we must also question how exactly he deals with freedom. Is it arts for elevation or arts for destruction? Is there dignity in the process?

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

The greatest works of literature seem to embody both "art" and "morality".

If you look at how great artists of the past, like Beethoven, for example dealt with art and morality, you see that there was torture and pain in their work, but there was also dignity in the way that was dealt with. So I don't buy this contemporary notion that the only way to be artistic is to be arrogant, offensive or immoral.