Esthetic Quotes
More Esthetic Quotes
They are the gateway for our modern esthetic development, the prophets of the new time. They are most of all, the primitives of the way they have begun; they have voiced most of all the imperative need of essential personalism, of direct expression of direct experience.
marsden hartley— Whitman and Cézanne, in Adventures in the Arts, New York, Boni Liveright 1921, as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 34
Painting for me is like a fabric, all of a piece and uniform, with one set of threads as the representational, esthetic element, and the cross-threads as the technical, architectural, or abstract element. These threads are interdependent and complementary, and if one set is lacking the fabric does not exist. A picture with no representational purpose is to my mind always an incomplete technical exercise, for the only purpose of any picture is to achieve representation.
juan gris— "On the Possibilities of Painting," lecture, Sorbonne (1924-05-15)
If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.
max horkheimer— pp. 7-8 (Eclipse of Reason (1947))
We cannot credit our enjoyment of a flower or of the atmosphere of a room to an autonomous esthetic instinct. Man’s esthetic responsiveness relates in its prehistory to various forms of idolatry; his belief in the goodness or sacredness of a thing precedes his enjoyment of its beauty. The applies no less to such concepts as freedom and humanity.
max horkheimer— p. 36 (Eclipse of Reason (1947))
The important thing for me, then, is not the "work," but my life. Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical symbol of life.
thomas mann— Reflections of a Non-Political Man [Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen] (1918)
