Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

Jean Cocteau
About This Quote

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious. Great art combines the conscious and unconscious aspects of our minds. The conscious part of our mind is a part that we can control consciously. We can think about what we want to paint, how to paint, why we are painting, and who we want to paint it for.

We can also control what influences our subconscious mind. The subconscious part of our mind is a part that we cannot control consciously. This is where images come from, dreams come from, and dreams influence our actions in life.

While it's true that the conscious and subconscious parts of our minds are not completely separate, there are differences between them. For example, when you dream you aren't usually aware of the images in your dreams; however, you are still aware of them in your waking life. It's like knowing it isn't real but still seeing it anyway.

The same goes for most artists who work on their paintings in their free time while they aren't thinking about them consciously or even talking with others about them about their paintings. To be an artist you have to both be conscious and subconsciously aware of your painting at the same time so it's important to be able to create art while you sleep or while you're doing something else at the same time as your painting.

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More Quotes By Jean Cocteau
  1. Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
  2. The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
  3. Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
  4. A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability...
  5. The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
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