What is Art?

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Quotes selected by Maria Popova


Leo Tolstoy, in his essay “What Is Art?”:

    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.

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Frank Lloyd Wright, writing in 1957, as cited in Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture, Nature, and the Human Spirit: A Collection of Quotations:

    Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use.

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Steven Pressfield in The War of Art, one of 5 essential books on fear and the creative process:

    To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

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Charles Eames, cited in the fantastic 100 Quotes by Charles Eames:

    Art resides in the quality of doing; process is not magic.

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Elbert Hubbard in a 1908 volume of Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers:

    Art is not a thing â€" it is a way.

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Oscar Wilde in The Soul of Man Under Socialism:

    Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

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Thomas Merton in No Man Is An Island:

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

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Francis Ford Coppola in a recent interview:

    An essential element of any art is risk. If you don’t take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby. You have to take a risk.

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André Gide in Poétique:

    Art begins with resistance â€" at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

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Friedrich Nietzsche, made famous all over again by Ray Bradbury in Zen in the Art of Writing:

    We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.

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Michelangelo Pistoletto in Art’s Responsibility:

    Above all, artists must not be only in art galleries or museums â€" they must be present in all possible activities. The artist must be the sponsor of thought in whatever endeavor people take on, at every level.

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Federico Fellini in a December 1965 piece in The Atlantic:

    All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.

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Hugh MacLeod in Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity:

    Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it.

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The Greek philosopher Aristophanes, writing in the 4th century B.C.:

    Let each man exercise the art he knows.

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Henry James in his short story The Middle Years:

    We work in the dark â€" we do what we can â€" we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

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Maria Popova, in a recent piece written for the National Endowment for the Arts:

    This is the power of art: The power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness.