Edith Wharton Art Quotations

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation.

Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation and thought can make a work of art without the cook's intervening.

I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.

Happiness is a work of art. Handle with care.

One of the first obligations of art is to make all useful things beautiful.