Quotes: Mark Greenberg

(Photo from Dancing Mountain Flickr Group)

"Life is a series of thousands of tiny miracles" -Mark Greenberg

*This quote is so beautiful, because it is so true in life and art.  I paired it with a beautiful photo from the Dancing Mountain Flickr Group, whose collection of photographs- which range from fun snapshots to truly fine art- are a great example of the thousands of tiny miracles of life.

Quotes: Paula Rego

"Every change is a form of liberation.  My mother used to say a change is always good even if it's for the worse."

-Paula Rego

Personally, I don't think a change for the worse is always better than no change at all, but I think it's important to always be moving forward...and I love Paula Rego's work! :) ~Sarah

Quotes: Damien Hirst

"Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity."

-Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", 1992

This sculpture by Hirst is one of his most famous, and consists of a real tiger shark in formaldehyde in a glass case.  It is meant to represent life and death in an immediate, visceral way.  A shark can take your life, it is huge and scary, and at the same time it sits in front of you in its case, dead and decaying.  The piece is on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art until 2010.

Quotes: Andre Gide

"Art begins with resistance- at the point where resistance is overcome.  No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor."

-Andre Gide

(I had never heard of Andre Gide before, but he looks like he means business!)

Quotes: Helen Frankenthaler

"The landscapes were in my arms as I did it."

-Helen Frankenthaler on "Mountains and Sea"

*I am going to start including images with every quote I post- much more fun! ~Sarah

Quotes: Eckhart Tolle

"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness."
-Eckhart Tolle

One of the most well-known and best spiritualists out there, Eckhart Tolle is the author of "The Power of Now" and numerous other books.  The ideas in his books are wonderful and profound, and at least for me, often difficult to truly understand and practice.  He writes about being in the present, being in the now, and how this can bring about happiness and love, as well as inner peace.  These concepts relate very much to art and the process of making art.  Art is very therapeutic for many people, and this is probably because of it's ability to pull you into the present and wipe your mind of all worries while you are engaged in the physical and mental work of the visual process.  As Tolle says, you create from a place of "no-mind", which can be very soothing!  Art comes from the subconscious, from the spiritual side of our minds.  If ever you need to get in touch with yourself, your grace, your unconscious (as cheesy as it all may sound)- or if you even just need to calm down a bit- pick up a pencil and a piece of paper and just draw.  Even if you don't consider yourself an artist, the practice of making art can broaden your understanding of yourself as well as art in general. ~Sarah

Quotes: Mark Rothko

"I'm not an abstractionist.  I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else.  I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on."
-Mark Rothko

Quotes: William Dobell

"A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing."
- William Dobell

I honestly have no idea who this artist is, but I was searching around for a quote today and found this on a website devoted to quotes by famous artists and loved it.  I hope you love it too! I'm off to try and create "a living thing".  ~Sarah

Quote: Wassily Kandinsky

"To let the eye stray over a palette, splashed with many colours, produces a dual result.  In the first place one receives a purely physical impression, one of pleasure and contentment at the varied and beautiful colours.  The eye is either warmed or else soothed and cooled.  But these physical sensations can only be of short duration.  They are merely superficial and leave no lasting impression, for the soul is unaffected.  But although the effect of the colours is forgotten when the eye is turned away, the superficial impression of varied colour may be the starting point of a whole chain of related sensations."
-Wassily Kandinksy in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1977

Quotes: The Definition of "Art"

From Dictionary.com, the first definition of the noun "Art"(and my favorite definition of "Art" to date):
"The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance."

Marcel Duchamp's readymade, Fountain- a much debated piece of art

How do you define "Art"?  I feel this is a question everyone everywhere is always asking.  Art school teachers love to ask their art students this question.  Non-artists love to stand in front of a piece they find perplexing  or outside the realm of "traditional" art with which they're more familiar and ask, "What exactly makes this art?"  Books have been written on the topic.  Every person you ask will likely have a different answer.  The secret is, they are probably all right- especially under the terms of the above (awesome) definition from Dictionary.com.  I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer, a right or wrong definition of Art.  Everyone wants their answer to be right, and to convince others that they're right (I have been guilty of this, I will admit).  Every age and every era comes up with a new definition, which often becomes a movement or style that then becomes a chapter in Art History textbooks.  Rather than compete, I think we should try to enjoy the learning and appreciation that can come from hearing others' thoughts on what defines "Art"...even if they're wrong...(just kidding!)  ~Sarah

Quotes: Robert Quinn

"Our greatest joy no matter what our role comes from creating.  In that process people become aware that they are able to do things they once thought were impossible.  They have empowered themselves, which in turn empowers those with whom they interact."
-Robert Quinn

Quotes: Karl Andre

"We climb a mountain because it's there.  We make a work of art because it isn't." -Karl Andre

Quotes: Shakespeare

"Say that upon the altar of her beauty
You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart.
Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears
Moist it again, and frame some feeling line
That may discover such integrity:
For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands."

-Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 3, Sc. 2

Quotes: Wallace Stevens

"Quotes" will be another daily feature on Art Caravan.  They may be directly related to art, or they may be a poem or song or some other thing that is indirectly related to art but inspiring nonetheless.  For example, today's quote is a poem from the poet Wallace Stevens. This poem was shared with my Painting 1 class freshman year of college by our teacher, the Baltimore-based painter Timothy App.  From what I remember Timothy telling us, Wallace Stevens himself was an artist as well, and many of his poems relate to the process of art-making.  I am sure his poems mean many things to many different people, but I too saw the way Stevens' poems related to painting and art-making, and find his writing very beautiful!  Please feel free to comment on what any quote I post up here means to you!- I would love to know if you think this poem relates to painting and art-making, and if you think it does, how so?

Anecdote of the Jar:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around it, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

-Wallace Stevens