Salvador Dali
(1904-1989)

When I paint, the ocean roars.  Others merely paddle in their bath.

Jacques-Louis David
(1748-1825)

To give a body and a perfect form to one's thought, this – and only this – is to be an artist.

Miles Davis

A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
[quoted in ARTnews April 2010]

Stuart Davis
(1892-1964)

Jazz always plays a part in my inspiration, because I always think of it as art, and think well if they can do it, maybe I can too.  Only I’m making a painting.

Robin Day

Things should work well, they should function, construction techniques, materials and economics are relevant.  Along with that, hopefully, some poetry and pleasantness in terms of looks, but these practical things are essential.  Without it design is a waste of time.  [2005]

Giorgio de Chirico

To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits; logic and common sense will only interfere.

Edgar Degas
(1834-1917)

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people. 

Edgar Degas

The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting's expense.

Edgar Degas

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Edgar Degas

Literature has only done harm to art.

Edgar Degas

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

Edgar Degas

Painting My dear friend, you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent at all. [To J.A.M.Whistler]

Willem de Kooning

I think of myself as a really talented housepainter who got a little excited.

Willem de Kooning

I like a nice, juicy, greasy surface.

Eugène Delacroix
(1798-1863)

What creates men of genius - or, rather, what they themselves create - is not new ideas.  It is the obsessive notion that what has been said has still not been said enough.

Eugène Delacroix
(on painting)

For the last four months I have been getting up at dawn and hurrying off to this enchanted work as though I were rushing to the feet of a beloved mistress.

Eugène Delacroix

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Eugène Delacroix

You always have to mar a picture a little in order to finish it.

Jeremy Deller 
(won 2004 Turner Prize)

Art isn't about what you make but what you make happen.

Maurice Denis
(1870-1943)

Before a picture is a war horse, a female nude or some anecdote it is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.  [Art et Critique 1890]

Maurice Denis

Art is when things appear rounded.

Andre Derain

I'd like to study the drawings of kids.  That's where the truth is, without a doubt.

Paul Desjardins

Pastel is the lightest, most fugitive of techniques - like the pollen of a lily, or the dust from a butterfly's wing that an artist scatters and fixes on paper.
[1889]

Nicolette Devas

The sitter must give himself over to the artist and offer him the freedom to research into his hidden secret character, so that while the brush explores the nostril it also describes the soul.  [Two Flamboyant Fathers, 1966]

Thomas Dewar

Minds are like parachutes.  They only function when open.

Denis Diderot
(1713-1784)

You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his. [Salons]

Denis Diderot

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder, outrage me.  Only then delight my eyes if you can.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(1821-1881)

Beauty will save the world. [The Idiot]

Arthur Dove

I would like to make something that is real in itself, that does not remind anyone of any other thing, that does not have to be explained like the letter A, for instance.

Theodore Dreiser

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.

Jean Dubuffet

The real function of art is to change mental patterns . . . making new thought possible.

Jean Dubuffet

Art is the most frenzied orgy man is capable of.

Marcel Duchamp

In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of posterity.

Marcel Duchamp

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

Marcel Duchamp

I'm not at all sure that the concept of the ready-made isn't the most important single idea to come out of my work.

Marcel Duchamp

I threw the bottle rack and the urinal into to their faces as a challenge, and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.

P. Duncum

Art opens doors; equally it establishes the doorframe.  [1951]