Dorothea Lange

A good photograph is not the object. The consequences of the photograph are the objects. So no one would say "How did you do that?" or "Where did you find it?" but they would say "How can such things be?"

D.H. Lawrence

Don't believe the writer. Believe the tale.

John Lennon

Avant garde is French for bulls**t.

Leonardo da Vinci

My advice is not to trouble yourself with words unless you are speaking to the blind.

Leonardo da Vinci

The painter coud get inspiration from stains on walls.

Leonardo da Vinci

In life beauty perishes, but not in art.

Leonardo da Vinci

To see is to understand.

Leonardo da Vinci

Tell me if anything at all was done. 
[He wrote this over and over in his last notebooks].

Wyndham Lewis
 (1882-1957)

Ah, sir, as to the artist in England! I have often thought it would solve a great many problems if English painters were born blind.

Sol Le Witt 
 (1928-2007)

The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product.   [1969]

Daniel Libeskind

As the Chinese said - people don't see unicorns, but they are there. The world is wondreous and surprising, but if you don't look for the surprise then you'll miss it. That's why I love art and the richness of humanity. [in interview, 2016]

Max Liebermann
(1847-1935)

The art of drawing is the art of omission.

Max Liebermann

A well painted turnip is as beautiful as a well painted Madonna.

Maya Lin
(born 1959)

I really did mean for people to cry, then have to turn and walk into the light.  [About her Vietnam Veteran's Memorial]

Maya Lin

We form art - art forms us.

Alain Locke

In contemporary American art of this generation, both the Negro and the White artist stand on common ground in their aim to document every phase of American life and experience.  More and more you will notice in their canvasses the sober realism which goes beneath the jazzy, superficial show of things or the mere picturesqueness of the Negro to the deeper truths of life, even the social problems of religion, labor, housing, lynching, unemployment, and the like.  For today's beauty must not be pretty with sentiment but solid and dignified with truth.   
[July 1940 for Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro: 1851-1940)]

John A. Locke
(1632-1704)

That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.

Adolph Loos

 Ornament is a waste of labor and thus a waste of health. It has always been like this. But today it also means wasted material, and both mean wasted capital.  [Ornament and Crime, 1908]

Alfred de Lostalot

Impressionism offers everything for the eye and nothing for the thought.

Martin Luther
(1483-1546)

Without images we can neither think nor understand anything.
[quoted in The Economist, Dec 17, 2011]