Robert Henri Quotes about Art - Page 2

Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy.

There is no art without contemplation.

Each sensation is precious, protect it, cherish it, keep it. Never give it away. You must develop that balance which allows all of the world to come in to you, and only that which you have expressed in your art to move back out again into the world.

All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.

In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended.

Through art, mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.

There are people who buy pictures because they were difficult to do, and are done. Such pictures are often only a record of pain and dull perseverance. Great works of art should look as though they were made in joy. Real joy is a tremendous activity, dull drudgery is nothing to it.

Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him. ... The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well. ... Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order.

Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.

Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure.

Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.

The world will see many fashions of art and most of the world will follow the fashions and make none. These cults - these 'movements' - are absolutely necessary, or at any rate their causes are, for somewhere in their centres are the ones who bear the Idea, the ones who have questioned, 'But what do I think?' and 'How shall I say it best?

After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.

Perhaps whatever there is in my work that may be really interesting to others and surely what is interesting to me, is the result of a sometimes successful effort to free myself from any idea that what I produce must be art.