Artistic Philosophy Quotes

It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.

The artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled sculptor, Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] the good musician, and the immortal Poussin, tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.

Rather than say art is art and life is life, I like to say that they're joined and inextricable.

I don't paint nature. I am nature.

I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful

In my mind, the plays I was writing were extreme examples of art for art's sake. I didn't necessarily think that other people would love them, though I thought they probably would.

I'm one of those lazy actors; I like to take what the playwright wrote and work with that.

I think most of the art now is involved with a denial of any kind of absolute morality, or general morality.

poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

I do not paint nature. I am nature.

This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society.

I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.

I only understand realism.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon would often write a song a day, so I have the same workmanlike philosophy.

The Minimalists are idealist. They want to minimize themselves in favor of the ideal... But I just can't. You see, my paintings are not cool.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

I don't believe in creating exclusionary art.

Poetry isn't an activity, it's a way life is lived.

When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.

I'm a situationist when it comes to anything creative, and that stands with the visual part of anything I do as well. I deal with the concrete things I have in front of me, and I think that's a wise way to be.

I'm really open-minded, musically. The credo I ascribe to is, 'Take care of the music, and let the rest take care of itself.' Growing up, I was a sponge and soaked up everything I was exposed to.