1. “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands-on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by these feelings and also experience them.”
“Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.”
Leo Tolstoy
2. “Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”
Leonardo da Vinci
3. “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”
Michelangelo
4. “Art is everywhere you look for it; hail the twinkling stars for they are God’s careless splatters.”
El Greco
5. “Art is a mediator of the unspeakable.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
6. “What is art? Nature concentrated.”
Honore de Balzac
7. “Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish. The artist gives us knowledge of nature’s unrealised ends.”
Aristotle
8. According to Kant; except art itself, there is no purpose. Its only purpose is itself. Only genius create fine art.
9. According to Hegel: beauty in art is superior to beauty in nature. Art is the product of the human mind. He must find himself a purpose other than an imitation of nature.
10. According to Benedetto Croce: emphasizes expression instead of beauty. Art is the unity of intuition and expression. It is an individual and theoretical activity. Nature can be beautiful with the artist's interpretation.
11.According to Heinrich Heine: Art, just like the world, is imperative, and art must be independent of the temporary concepts of people, as the world always remains the same while the understanding of the world is constantly changing; Thus, art must remain morally independent because morality changes constantly whenever a new religion emerges and pushes the old aside.
12.According to Ernst Fischer: In a decaying society, art should reflect decay if it is true to reality. And if he doesn't want to disconnect from his social function, art must also show that the world is changeable. And it should help change.
13. According to Schopenhauer: The attractiveness of objects is such that they do not touch us. Life is never beautiful; beautiful are just descriptions of life.
14 “Art work is the relationship of shape, line and color elements that create aesthetic taste as a whole”
Clive Bell
15. “Art is the expression of emotions, but this can be understood when it turns into a work of art.”
Collingwood
16. “The work of art is consciously made by human beings, acting for a certain social institution, the Art World, a person or individuals who have agreed on some of its features, has original qualities, and is a candidate to gain appreciation.”
George Dickie
17. “Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
18. “To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.”
Steven Pressfield
19. “Art resides in the quality of doing; process is not magic.”
Charles Eames
20. “Art is not a thing — it is a way.”
Elbert Hubbard
21. “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
Oscar Wilde
22. “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
Thomas Merton
23. “Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.”
André Gide
24. “All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.”
Federico Fellini
25. “Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it.”
Hugh MacLeod
26.“Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, proposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only – having no desire to teach.”
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
27.“Art isn’t something you marry. It’s something you rape.”
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
Edgar Degas
28.“Art is a harmony parallel with nature.”
Paul Cezanne
29. “A work of art is a corner of nature seen through a temperament.”
Emile Zola
30. “Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
31. “Art is a mad search for individualism.”
Paul Gauguin
32. “Art is a line around your thoughts.“
Gustav Klimt
33. “Art is the signature of civilization.”
Jean Sibelius
34. “Art is when things appear rounded.”
Maurice Denis
35. “Art isn’t everything. It’s just about everything.”
Gertrude Stein
36. “Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.”
James Joyce
37. “Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth.”
Marcel Duchamp
38. “Art seems to me to be a state of soul more than anything else.”
Marc Chagall
39. “Art is the escape from personality.”
T.S. Eliot
40. “Art is science made clear.”
Jean Cocteau
41. “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
Karl Marx/Berthold Brecht
42. “Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.”
Theodor W. Adorno
43. “Art is manipulation without intervention.”
Louise Bourgeois
44. “What is art? Art grows out of grief and joy, but mainly grief. It is born of people’s lives.”
48. “Art is an effort to make you walk a half an inch above ground.”
Yoko Ono
49. “Art is visceral and vulgar – it’s an eruption.”
Georg Baselitz
50. “Art is art. Everything else is everthing.”
Ad Reinhardt
51. “A work of art means a work that awakens and revives the values of man under the consciousness with the technique of his technician called artist. ”
İsmail Hakkı Baltacıoğlu
52. “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.”
Rene Magritte
53. “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”