“I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts.”
"Physicist, Purge Thyself" in the Chicago Tribune Magazine (22 June 1969)
Various interviews
Context: I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Kurt Vonnegut 318
American writer 1922–2007Related quotes
“To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.”
Variant: It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.
“Art is the canary in the goldmine.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)
1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Context: I want to clarify our understanding of the word 'art' – to be sure, without an attempt to a definition. What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion.
Therefore, when I refer to 'art coefficient', it will be understood that I refer not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art in a raw state – 'à l'état brute' – bad, good or indifferent.
"The History of Pattern-Designing" lecture (1882) The Collected Works of William Morris (1910 - 1915) Vol. 22
“Mine is not an obedient writing. I think that literature as any art has to be irreverent.”
excerpt of her Journal, 1899; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 198
1899
“Sometimes I wonder if it does exist such a thing called personality.”
From the official website
Source: undated quotes, Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003,' (2004), p. 25.