30 Art Quotes to Appreciate The Beauty of Creation

Beauty captivates and leaves us speechless. Whether we’re looking at a painting, a sculpture, reading a great book or listening to some good music, we’re being flooded with emotions that are hard to describe.

But some artists and art lovers managed to capture into words those overwhelming feelings, and the following art quotes are proof of that.

Art appeals to all our senses when its creator has put his own soul into it. A true masterpiece carries the artist’s emotions. It can make you think or take you places. One look and you can feel their joy, sadness, love or chaos. A few sounds and you are almost able to transcend reality. That’s how powerful art can be!

Everyone loves art and wall art in at least one of its many forms because it is essential to the human spirit. While some see it as something nice to have, others are inspired by it. To some, it is something that depicts culture and tradition, yet to others art is vital and irreplaceable -- they can’t imagine living without it.

Here are 30 art quotes to appreciate the beauty of creation:

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

The power of nature is such that it’s what all art strives to be. The more we can get in tune with the harmony of the planet, the more our art can benefit from that relationship.

RICK RUBIN

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

THOMAS MERTON

Man needs music, literature, and painting – all those oases of perfection that make up art – to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.

FERNANDO BOTERO

Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented – which is what fear and anxiety do to a person – into something whole.

LOUISE BOURGEOIS

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.

STELLA ADLER

The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

Art is either revolution or plagiarism.

PAUL GAUGUIN

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

A work of art is a scream of freedom.

CHRISTO

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

EDGAR DEGAS

In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (more Ernest Hemingway quotes)

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

LEONARDO DA VINCI (more Leonardo da Vinci quotes)

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

OSCAR WILDE (more Oscar Wilde quotes)

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

SCOTT ADAMS

Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics.

VICTOR PINCHUK

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.

ANAIS NIN (more Anais Nin quotes)

Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy.

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.

JOHN LUBBOCK

When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.

AGNES MARTIN

Art must destroy violence, only it can do it.

LEO TOLSTOY (more Leo Tolstoy quotes)

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.

AUGUSTE RODIN

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI 

Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

PAUL CEZANNE