“Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.”

—  Egon Schiele

Last update Feb. 26, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal." by Egon Schiele?
Egon Schiele photo
Egon Schiele 3
austrian painter 1890–1918

Related quotes

Charles Baudelaire photo

“Modernity is the transitory, fugitive, contingent, is but one half of art, of which the other half is the eternal and immutable.”

Charles Baudelaire Le Peintre de la vie moderne

La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié est l’éternel et l’immuable.
IV: "La modernite" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Modernit%C3%A9
Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863)

“Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

1960s, Modernist Painting (1960)

“The one place for art-as-art is the museum of fine art. The reason of the museum or fine art is the preservation of ancient and modern art that cannot be made again and that does not have to be done again. A museum of fine art should exclude everything but fine art, and be separate of museums of ethnology, geology, archaeology, history... Any disturbance of a true museum's soundlessness, timelessness, airlessness, and lifelessness is a disrespect.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 155

Jean Dubuffet photo

“Man's need for art is absolutely primordial, as strong as, and perhaps stronger than, our need for bread. Without bread, we die of hunger, but without art we die of boredom.”

Jean Dubuffet book Prospectus et tous écrits suivants

As quoted in Jean Dubuffet, Works, writings Interviews, ed. Valerie da Costa and Fabrice Hergott; Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona 2006, p. 14
1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967

Joseph Kosuth photo

“Art before the modern period is as much art as Neanderthal man is man.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

It is for this reason that around the same time I replaced the term "work" for art proposition. Because a conceptual work of art in the traditional sense, is a contradiction in terms.
Joseph Kosuth. (1969), as cited in: Claude Gintz, ‎Musée d'Art Moderne Paris (1989). L'Art conceptuel, une perspective: exposition au Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 22 nov. 1989 - 18 fév. 1990. p. 42

Hans Arp photo

“The man who speaks and writes about art should refrain from censuring or pontificating. He will thus avoid doing anything foolish, for in the presence of primordial depth all art is but dream and nature.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)
1950s

Rudolf Steiner photo

“The art is eternal, their shapes are changing.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist
Max Beckmann photo

“The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings. [arguing with Franz Marc who demanded in 'Der Blaue Reiter' circa 1912 a new modern art, in relation to its own - changing - time].”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

as quoted in the exhibition, 'Expressionisten, die Avantgarde in Deutschland 1905 - 1920', catalog Nationalgalerie Berlin, DDR, 1986, p. 109
1900s - 1920s

James Huneker photo

“Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.”

James Huneker (1857–1921) American music critic

The Pathos of Distance (1915), p. 120

Auguste Rodin photo

“In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Albert Edward Elsen (1985). The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin. p. 131
1950s-1990s
Context: In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred even when it takes for a subject the worst excesses of desire; since it has in view only the sincerity of observation, it cannot debase itself. A true work of art is always noble, even when it translates the stirrings of the brute, for at that moment, the artist who has produced it had as his only objective, the most conscientious rendering possible of the impression he has felt.

Related topics