Don McLean Quotes

Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

If you have the opportunity for your art to meet activism, you shouldn't pass that up when it comes your way.

There are those who say that poets should use her and his art to change the world. I'd agree with that, but I think everybody should do that. I think the chef and the baker and the candlestick maker - I think everybody should be hoping to make it a better world.

Everything about art has become problematic; its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist.

It's the duty of art to ask questions, not to provide answers. And if you want a clearer answer, I'll have to pass.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable.

The arts teach and moralise by their beauty alone, not by translating a philosophical or social formula. For the truly artistic person, painting has itself as it's purpose, which is quite enough.

Our jobs as artists is to make sure our art tells a real story and let people see themselves in these characters. It's about having a conversation about being better people.

All art is propaganda. ... The only difference is the kind of propaganda. Since art is essential for human life, it can't just belong to the few. Art is the universal language, and it belongs to all mankind. All painters have been propagandists or else they have not been painters. ... Every artist who has been worth anything in art has been such a propagandist. ... Every strong artist has been a propagandist. I want to be a propagandist and I want to be nothing else. ... I want to use my art as a weapon.

As an artist, I have to be the ambassador of everything.

Art is not the spiritual side of business.

Art's task is to save the soul of mankind.. anything less is a dithering while Rome burns.

By beauty of course I mean truth, for the one involves the other; it is only the false in art which is ugly, and it is only the ugly that is universal.

The great end of all arts is to make an impression on the imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds.

What we also need to have a discussion on the philosophy of art: so we must ask what is it that we want in the first place? Is it just about saying and doing whatever you want, or is it about something more? We should let the artist be free, but we must also question how exactly he deals with freedom. Is it arts for elevation or arts for destruction? Is there dignity in the process?

Where war destroys, art inspires. And in order to inspire, you need to penetrate the brain. In order to penetrate the brain, you need something to react to. To have something to react to, you need to get your emotions up and running. To get your emotions up and running, you need to have something that ... whatever direction you go in, it has to be a movement between you and the experience.

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.

To be sure, a good work of art can and will have moral consequences, but to demand of the artists moral intentions, means ruiningtheir craft.

In all great arts, as in trees, it is the height that charms us; we care nothing for the roots or trunks, yet it could not be without the aid of these.

Art needs to stand for something.