Classical Art Quotes

Classical art stands for form; romantic art for content.

My landscapes are not only beautiful or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful'.

With a limited palette, the older painters could do just as well as today what they did was sounder.

The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon.

The romantic artist expects people to ask, 'What has he got to say?' The classical artist expects them to ask, 'How does he say it?

I studied shades, textures by painting after the Old Masters, the classical European paintings, as part of my educational process.

I've fallen in love with the classical world of imagery, and what I'd like to do now over the last bit of my life is to photograph some nudes.

I have a fairly good collection of paintings, both classical and contemporary.

You must be mistaken," Isabel said, unconcerned by the insult that the words carried. "I assure you i am not. Voluptas is nearly always portrayed wrapped in roses. If that were not enough, her faces confirms her identity." "You cannot tell a goddess from a face carved in marble," she scoffed. "You can tell Voluptas by her face." "I've never even heard of this goddess, and you know what she looks like?" "She is the goddess of sensual pleasure." Isabel's mouth fell open at the words. She could not think of a single thing to say in response. "Oh

In the world of classical ballet there are only a handful of story ballets, so getting a new one is cause for excitement.

The art of sculpture is long ago perished to any real effect... it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the manly labour of a wise and spiritual nation.

Among my classical dances, I loved my 'Mrig Trishna' dance. People should try that on stage. I don't know why they don't. It's beautifully written.

One meets the cat in nearly all forms of art...curiously enough she is not a conspicuous figure in Roman or Greek art.

I don't really look like people in films; I look like people in paintings.

Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.

The classical artist can be recognized by his sincerity, the romantic by his laborious insincerity.

Suddenly I've got an overwhelming desire to surround myself with the aura of classical and Romantic art.

It seems strange to me that someone thought of making marble statues.

At the Museum of Roman Art, the logic of the forms is very much modern. But in spite of that, the idea of the construction could be related to a historical time.

I don't disagree with seeing a Rubens of a nude body, but I don't believe in a nude body in action. With Rubens, thank goodness, they aren't in action.

You may go from the Battery to Harlem, and in our monuments and statues of public men you will see the slavish adherence to Greek and Roman ideals, from which our artists cannot get away.

In her early days she had that beatific expression characteristic of Victorian prettiness - like a sheep painted by Raphael.

In judging of a beautiful statue, the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us.

I am a big fan of the Impressionists, and in my school days, I was inspired by Caravaggio, Velazquez and Rembrandt.

The violent quarrel between the abstractionists and the surrealists seems to me quite unnecessary. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious.