“artists have sex but art has none”

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.”

“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.”

“The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.”

“Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.”

“Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.”