John Cage
(1912-1992)

If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.

John Cage

Art is a sort of experimental station in which one tries out living.

Alexander Calder

I paint with shapes.

Albert Camus
(1913-1960)

Without culture . . . society, even when perfect, is no more than a jungle.     This is why every creation is a gift to the future.

Al Capp
(1909-1979)

Abstract Art:  A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. [quoted in National Observer, 1963]

Henri Cartier-Bresson

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Degas was right when he said something like ‘You must copy, copy before you are entitled to paint a radish from nature.’  He meant you have to
learn from others, from the past. . . You need a sense of culture to cultivate yourself.  [quoted in New York Times Aug 20, 1995]

Jules-Antoine Castagnary

There is no need to return to history, to take refuge in legends, to summon powers of imagination - Beauty is before the eyes - not in the brain - in
the present not in the past - in truth not in dreams.

Nick Cave

I sometimes think simplicity is the most powerful form.

Paul Cézanne
(1839-1906)

I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front.  [Comment made as he abandoned a portrait of Ambrose Vollard after 115 sittings]

Paul Cézanne 

Right now a moment of time is fleeting by!  Capture its reality in paint!  To
do that we must put all else out of our minds.  We must become that moment, make ourselves a recording plate . . . give the image of what
we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.

Surely, a single bunch of carrots painted naively just as we personally see
it, is worth all the endless banalities of the Schools, all those deary
pictures concocted out of tobacco juice according to time-honored formulas?  The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed,
will set off a revolution. [Quoted in Norman Gutterman, ed., The Anchor Book of French Quotations: With English Translations, 1963]

Paul Cézanne 

You should sit like an apple.  Whoever saw an apple fidgeting?  
[Ambrose Vollard, Recollections of a Picture Dealer, 1936]

Paul Cézanne 

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to an object God made
like a tree or flower.  If it clashes, it is not art.

Paul Cézanne 

Art is a harmony that runs parallel to nature--what is one to think of those imbeciles who say that the artist is always inferior to nature?
[Letter to Emile Bernard, 1897]

Paul Cézanne 

A work of art that did not begin in emotion is not art.

Paul Cézanne 

You don't paint souls, you paint bodies; and when the bodies are well-painted, dammit, the soul - if they have one - shines through all over the place.

Paul Cézanne 

Chatter about art is almost always useless.

Paul Cézanne 

The Louvre is the book in which we all learn to read.

Paul Cézanne 

I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature.

John Chamberlain
(1927-2011)

I think of my art materials not as junk but as garbage.  Manure, actually;
it goes from being the waste material of one being to the life source of another.   [Quoted in obituary, New York Times Dec 22, 2011]

John Chamberlain

A sculpture is something that if it falls on your foot, it will break it.
[Quoted in obituary, New York Times Dec 22, 2011]

G.K. Chesterton
(1874-1936)

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

G.K. Chesterton

Art consists of limitation.  The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Winston Churchill

The arts are essential to any complete national life. The state owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them.

Dave Chihuly

I never met a color I did not like.

John Anthony Ciardi 

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

Cicero
(106 BCE-43 BCE)

Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.

Chuck Close

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

Chuck Close

Art saved my life in two ways.  It made me feel special, because I could do things my friends couldn't, but it also gave me a way to demonstrate to my teacher that, despite the fact that I couldn't write a paper or do math, I was paying attention. [Village Voice, 18 July, 2012]

Jean Cocteau
(1889-1963)

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time.  Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

Jean Cocteau

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture. [Newsweek, May 16, 1955]

Jean Cocteau

When a work appears ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

Robert Colescott

The way that one serves [the black community] is to serve art first; the way you serve art is by being true to yourself.  
[Answer when asked if he did not feel an obligation to serve the black community]

R. G. Collingwood

As a child growing up among artists I learned to think of a picture not as
a finished product exposed for the admiration of the virtuosi, but as
the visible record, lying about the house, of an attempt to solve a definite problem in painting.  [Autobiography, 1939]

John Coltrane

You've got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.

Confucius

The young should be dutiful at home, modest abroad, careful and true, overflowing in kindness for all, but in brotherhood with love.  And if they have strength to spare they should spend it on the arts. 
[Sayings of Confucius]

John Constable
(1776-1837)

It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.
[Letter to Archdeacon Fisher, 1821]

John Constable

I do not consider myself at work unless I am before a six-foot canvas.
[Letter to Archdeacon Fisher, 1821]

John Constable

We see nothing truly until we understand it. 

Francis Ford Coppola

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk than how are you going to make something really beautiful, that thasn't been seen before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby.  You have to take a risk.

Alistair Cooke

I prefer radio to TV because the pictures are better.

Camille Corot

Never lose the first impression that has moved you.

Camille Corot

I always entreat the good Lord to give me my childhood back, that is to say, to grant that I may see nature and render it like a child, without prejudice.

Holland Cotter

Art is by nature promotional, pushing beliefs, broadcasting status, aggrandizing personalities. [New York Times, July 4, 2008]

Le Courboisier

I prefer drawing to talking.  Drawing is faster and leaves less room for lies.

Le Courboisier

The more cultivated a people become, the more decoration disappears.

Louis Croquer
(director Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit)

Artists are visionaries.  When you are in touch with work that helps you think outside of the box, you become enlightened and liberated in a way. [Quoted in Detroit Free Press, February 2009]

Gustave Courbet
(1819-1877)

To be able to represent the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my
own era as I see them, in a word, to create a living art, this has been my aim.

Gustave Courbet

When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important.

Gustave Courbet

Show me an angel, and I'll paint one!