Art Quotes by Charles Baudelaire

A work of art should be like a well-planned crime.

— Charles Baudelaire

What is art? Prostitution.

— Charles Baudelaire

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

— Charles Baudelaire

“The Beautiful is always strange.”

— Charles Baudelaire

The beautiful is always bizarre.

— Charles Baudelaire

Photographers, you will never become artists. All you are is mere copiers.

— Charles Baudelaire

Blessed art Thou, Lord, who giveth suffering As a divine remedy for our impurities.

— Charles Baudelaire

There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.

— Charles Baudelaire

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries with terror before being defeated.

— Charles Baudelaire

The will to work must dominate, for art is long and time is brief.

— Charles Baudelaire

Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?

— Charles Baudelaire

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it's destiny; good is always the product of skill.

— Charles Baudelaire

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before he is defeated.

— Charles Baudelaire

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and…

— Charles Baudelaire

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural…

— Charles Baudelaire

Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools !), then photography…

— Charles Baudelaire

In art, there is one thing which does not receive sufficient attention. The element which is left to the human will is…

— Charles Baudelaire

An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power…

— Charles Baudelaire

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing,…

— Charles Baudelaire

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.

— Charles Baudelaire

Torture, as the art of discovering the truth, is barbaric nonsense; it is the application of a material means to a spiritual…

— Charles Baudelaire

Imagination is an almost divine faculty which, without recourse to any philosophical method, immediately perceives everything: the secret and intimate connections between…

— Charles Baudelaire

An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which…

— Charles Baudelaire

Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the…

— Charles Baudelaire

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely…

— Charles Baudelaire

In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France, is this: ... I believe…

— Charles Baudelaire

As for techniques and processes, as seen in the works themselves, neither public nor artists will find anything about them here. Those…

— Charles Baudelaire

The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of…

— Charles Baudelaire

A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands,…

— Charles Baudelaire

My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the…

— Charles Baudelaire

...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

— Charles Baudelaire

“The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.”

— Charles Baudelaire

It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.

— Charles Baudelaire

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

— Charles Baudelaire

This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.

— Charles Baudelaire

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

— Charles Baudelaire

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

— Charles Baudelaire

To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by…

— Charles Baudelaire

If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks…

— Charles Baudelaire

The artist is today and has been for many years, despite his absence of merit, simply a spoiled child. So many honors,…

— Charles Baudelaire