Classic Art Quotes

Real beauty in the arts is eternal and would be accepted at all periods; but it wears the dress of its century: something of that dress clings to it, and woe to the works which appear in periods when the general taste is corrupted.

Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.

Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.

Something happened when I was in elementary school. A Disney artist named Bruce McIntyre retired, and he had done drawings for 'Pinocchio' and 'Snow White' that was just classic stuff. He moved to the town I grew up in, Carlsbad, and he became a part-time art teacher at our elementary school.

I read somewhere that Rubens said students should not draw from life, but draw from all the great classic casts. Then you really get the measure of them, you really know what to do. And then, put in your own dimples. Isn't that marvelous!

Don't be carried off your feet by anything because it is modern - the latest thing. Go to the Louvre often and spend a good deal of time before the Rembrandts, the Delacroixs.

The grand style is available now only in old poems, museums, and parodies.

I don't think you can ever remake a classic.

I really prize and love great painting. It's so out of date now. It's slightly come back in.

Shouldn't it give us pause that the oldest works of art are as impressive today in their beauty and spontaneity as they were many thousands of years ago?

I don't think there's an illustrator who's as good as a Titian or a Rembrandt... but then, Rembrandt was a bit of an illustrator on the quiet, you know?

To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.

All of the vintage photos of Ballets Russes are so inspiring.

To be honest, I sort of feel like 'movie actor' isn't of this time. I love it. But it's a 20th-century art form.

If something becomes old-fashioned, it was no good to start with. Think about it. Michelangelo is not old-fashioned.

Do not help the quick moneymakers who have delusions about taking possession of classics by smearing them with paint.

Opera singing is in every way of inestimable value; a real heritage for all mankind that has been reached over centuries of studies, attempts, flights of the spirit.

I'm attracted to the past.

In art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them.

I hate flatscreens. I don't want to see anything in that much pixilation. I don't need to see the pimple on someone's face. I love the world through glass. The more old, dusty and tainted that glass is, the prettier and more impressionistic that is to me. I don't need to see everything perfectly. I don't like it.

Good art doesn't really have an expiration date on it.

I'm just really impressed by oil paintings - I don't see how people do it! That's the style I like: classic oil paintings. Abstract art just isn't my thing.

I like the classics!