As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

James McNeill Whis

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

James McNeill Whis

Art is coming face to face with yourself. That's what's wrong with Benton. He came face to face with Michelangelo-- and he lost.

Jackson Pollock

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance . . . and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

Henry James

All art is an individual's expression of a culture. Cultures differ, so art looks different.

Henry Glassie

Art among a religious race produces relics; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.

Henry Fuseli

Precision is not reality.

Henri Matisse

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Henri Matisse

The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl.

Heinrich Heine

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hofmann

A great artist… must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.

Goethe

They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it.

Georges Seurat

Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

Georges Braque

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

Frank Stella

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Francis Bacon