“What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.”

Source: The Recognitions

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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William Gaddis8

Novelist 1922–1998

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Louis Nizer (1902–1994) American lawyer

Between You and Me, Beechurst Press, 1948.

“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

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“The true test of any scholar's work is not what his contemporaries say, but what happens to his work in the next 25 or 50 years.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

As quoted in The Power of Choice (January 2007)
Context: The true test of any scholar's work is not what his contemporaries say, but what happens to his work in the next 25 or 50 years. And the thing that I will really be proud of is if some of the work I have done is still cited in the text books long after I am gone.

“The architect hands over to the rich man with the keys to his palace all the ease and comfort to be found in it without being able to enjoy any of it himself. Must the artist not in this way gradually become alienated from his art, since his work, like a child that has been provided for and left home, can no longer have any effect upon its father? And how beneficial it must have been for art when it was intended to be concerned almost exclusively with what was public property, and belonged to everybody and therefore also to the artist!”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Dem Reichen übergibt der Baumeister mit dem Schlüssel des Palastes alle Bequemlichkeit und Behäbigkeit, ohne irgend etwas davon mitzugenießen. Muß sich nicht allgemach auf diese Weise die Kunst von dem Künstler entfernen, wenn das Werk wie ein ausgestattetes Kind nicht mehr auf den Vater zurückwirkt? Und wie sehr mußte die Kunst sich selbst befördern, als sie fast allein mit dem öffentlichen, mit dem, was allen und also auch dem Künstler gehörte, sich zu beschäftigen bestimmt war!
Bk. II, Ch. 3, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 170
Elective Affinities (1809)

“[This work] would be inexcusable to suppose it to be exhaustive. It is not even defensive. It is a projectile, and projectiles do not apologize.
It intends to be followed.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Preface"
Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered before the Chicago Vegetarian Society (1895)

“A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with his previous one. When he loses a critical attitude toward his own work, he ceases to be an artist.”

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New York Times, October 25, 1959.

“What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Ce qu'on appelle la postérité, c'est la postérité de l'œuvre.
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“An artist without a heart is worth nothing. Before creating any work, the true artist gives voice to his heart.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Un artista senza cuore non vale nulla. Prima di creare qualsiasi opera, il vero artista dà voce al suo cuore.
Source: prevale.net

“We must take note of the fact that the artist nowadays is occupied with painting flags, posters, pots and pans textiles and things like that. What is referred to as 'artistic work' has on the vast majority of occasions nothing whatever to do with creative effort: and the term 'artistic work' is used in order to demonstrate the 'sacredness' of the work which the artist does at his easel. The conception of 'artistic work' presupposes a distinction between useful and useless work and as there are only a few artists buyers can be found even for their useless products. The artist's work lies beyond the boundaries of the useful and the useless.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

“What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.”

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William Gaddis8

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