Barack Obama

I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.  Now, nothing wrong with an art-history degree - I love art history.
[President's remarks in Waukesha, Wisconsin, January 30, 2014]

Andrew O'Hagan

Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp.  [The Telegraph, Jan 1, 2005]

Kakuzo Okakura
(1862-1913)

The canvas upon which the artist paints is the spectator’s mind.

Georgia O'Keeffe
(1887-1986)

Nobody sees a flower, really – it is so small – we haven't time, and to see
takes time, like to have a friend takes time.

Georgia O'Keeffe

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment.  I want to give that world to someone else.  Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower.  I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I have a single track mind.  I work on an idea for a long time.  It's like getting acquainted with a person, and I don't get acquainted easily.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter.  I guess he wasn't a painter at all.  He had no courage and I believe that to 
create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Filling a space in a beautiful way – that's what art means to me.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way - things I had no words for.  [1923]

Georgia O'Keeffe

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore. 

Georgia O'Keeffe

I like to convey the idea that art is important in everyday life.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I know I cannot paint a flower.  I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.

Claes Oldenburg
(born 1929)

I am for an art that is political-erotic-mystical, that does something else than sit on its ass in a museum.  [1961]

Claes Oldenburg

Because my work is naturally non-meaningful, the meaning found in it will remain doubtful and inconsistent -- which is the way it should be. All that I care about is that, like any startling piece of nature, it should be capable of stimulating meaning.

Claes Oldenburg

The main reason for the colossal objects is the obvious one, to expand and intensify the presence of the vessel -- the object.

Frederick Law Olmstead 

The Park throughout is a single work of art, and as such, is subject to the primary law of every work of art, namely, that it shall be framed upon a single, noble motive, to which the design of all its parts, in some more or less subtle way, shall be confluent and helpful.  
[Writing about Central Park, NY] 

George Orwell
(1903-50)

The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K.; kicking little girls in the head is O.K.; even a film like L’Age d’Or is O.K.

George Orwell

One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously… that [Salvador] Dalí is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being.