Eva Figes Quotes

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

I don't think there's any formula for what makes great art.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

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

Painting was a problem - you produce a thing, and then you sell it and get money, and that was quickly considered totally uncool.

I personally don't distinguish between artistic and commercial films.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

I don't think I'm making any great statements, and I certainly don't think I'm making art.

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

We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.

My work is through my emotions, so everything kind of goes together.

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class.

You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.

But the business side of it, as with most creative things, there is no room for business. It is about art. It's not about marketing.

As soon as any art is pursued with a view of money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

I don't think we should be deceived that art is such a moral thing.

It's not always about huge giant commercial success. It's about art.

I think that there is not really a difference between a 'Peanuts' and a beautiful Renaissance painting. There is something very romantic in the 'Peanuts' - it's at the same level of a novel or a Jane Austen story or a beautiful embroidered rose fabric. It is a piece of romanticism.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.