Oscar Wilde Quotes About Art

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of Art.

In judging of a beautiful statue the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us.

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play, more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.

For that beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

Art never expresses anything but itself.

Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.[Also known for:]Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

All art is quite useless.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.