Art Quotes
More Art Quotes
The private ownership of great art, its seclusion from the general view of men and women, let alone from that of interested amateurs and scholars, is a curious business. The literal disappearance of a Turner or a Van Gogh into some Middle Eastern or Latin-American bank vault to be kept as investment and collateral, the sardonic decision of a Greek shipping tycoon to put an incomparable El Greco on his yacht, where it hangs at persistent risk — these are phenomena that verge on vandalism.
George Steiner— "The Cleric of Treason"
It's sad that the art form is not appreciated in its place of origin, Lucknow, despite being popular across the globe.
Birju Maharaj— “Kathak faces fusion challenge”
Cicero is hardly to be reckoned ...for he delighted so much more in the practice, than in the theory, of his art, that he is perpetually drawn off from the rigid philosophical analysis of its principles, into discursive declamations, always eloquent indeed, and often highly interesting, but adverse to regularity of system, and frequently as unsatisfactory to the practical student as to the Philosopher.
Richard Whately— Elements of Rhetoric, Introduction (1828, p. 19)
Biological determinism, to paraphrase the great literary critic Roberto Schwarz, is a socially necessary illusion well-grounded in appearance. Much like art and literature, science "is historically shaped and? ... ?registers the social process to which it owes its existence." Scientists inherit the prejudices of the societies in which they live and work. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the modern incarnation of biological determinism with its decidedly neoliberal assumptions about humans and societies.
— Pankaj Mehta, There's a gene for that, Jacobin, February 2014
The single greatest influence on my work as a filmmaker has been the celebrated Interviews with Francis Bacon (1980) by David Sylvester. Sylvester is a master of the art of complicity: he knows how to manipulate and exploit it. Complicity requires being cautiously intellectual yet profoundly human in the sense that the interviewer must act as the concerned midwife, allowing the interviewee to express himself while at the same time guiding his thoughts to a satisfactory conclusion through sensitive provocation.
damian pettigrew— On Fellini’s favorite directors
A writer and, I believe, generally all persons must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
jorge luis borges— Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty Conversations with Borges, Including a Selection of Poems : Interviews by Roberto Alifano, 1981–1983 (1984)
His imperial fancy has laid all Nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation and every walk of art.
robert hall— On Burke; Apology for the Freedom of the Press, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Far from affording artists continuous inspiration, mass-media sources for art have become a dead end. They have combined with the abstractness of institutional art teaching to produce a fine-arts culture given over to information and not experience. This faithfully echoes the drain of concreteness from modern existence— the reign of mere unassimilated data instead of events that gain meaning by being absorbed into the fabric of imaginative life.
robert hughes— "Introduction: The Decline of the City of Mahagonny"
Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
jesus christ— The Gospel of Matthew 16:23 (KJV), said to Peter.
Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.
— w:Neil Marcus, Storm Reading, 1993, quoted in p 23 Making an entrance: theory and practice for disabled and non-disabled dancers By Adam Benjamin
Remember to be submissive, thou art analien, a fugitive, and in need.
Aeschylus— Supplices, l.202 (translated by H Weir Smyth).
Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art which is art.
joseph conrad— chap. 7 (The Mirror of the Sea (1906))
It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.
wolfgang amadeus mozart— Spoken in Prague, 1787, to conductor Kucharz, who led the rehearsals for Don Giovanni, from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)
In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.
Susan Sontag— "Against Interpretation" (1964), p. 14
Karanth made Yakshagana more popular through the ballet adaptation of the art.
— Prof B A Vivek Rai in . Deccan herald. 11 October 2013. Retrieved on 19 January 2014.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
don marquis— Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel (1927), "certain maxims of archy"
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
cyril connolly— 1938 Enemies of Promise, ch.14.
My God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not saya literal God? But thou art also?a figurative, a metaphorical God too.
john donne— 1624 Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Expostulation19,'The Language of God'.
By "Suprematism" I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling.
kazimir malevich— The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism (1926), trans. Howard Dearstyne [Dover, 2003, ISBN 0-486-42974-1], part II: Suprematism (p. 67)
I find above all that the expression, "atonal music," is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying "the art of not falling," or swimming "the art of not drowning."
arnold schoenberg— "Hauer's Theories" (Notes of November 1923) Style and Idea (1985), p. 210
It [Kathak] is a different art form, where there is more of abhinaya.
— In Quotes. Narthaki.com. Retrieved on 17 January 2014.
Bad art is more tragically beautiful than good art, because it documents human failure.
— Henry Letham, Stay
art, industry, and commerce, so long crushed and overborne, were stirring into renewed life, and a crowd of adventurous men, nurtured in war and incapable of repose, must seek employment for their restless energies in fields of peaceful enterprise.
francis parkman— Pt. II, Ch. 2
Riches and art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty .
George Bernard Shaw— #104. (Maxims for Revolutionists (1903))
