Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.
~ Theodor W. Adorno

Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.
~ A. Alvarez

Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem.
~ Lindsay Anderson

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.
~ Guillaume Apollinaire

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.
~ Guillaume Apollinaire

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.
~ Jean Arp

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
~ James Baldwin

Pop artists deal with the lowly trivia of possessions and equipment that the present generation is lugging along with it on its safari into the future.
~ J. G. Ballard

The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious.
~ Lester Bangs

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.
~ Daniel Barenboim

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure
~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.
~ Jacques Barzun

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
~ Charles Baudelaire

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.
~ Charles Baudelaire

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.
~ Stephen Bayley

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.
~ Simone De Beauvoir

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.
~ Beck

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?
~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.
~ Saul Bellow