“Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the smoke with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
So I say, if you cannot learn to love real art; at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. It is not because the wretched thing is so ugly and silly and useless that I ask you to cast it from you; it is much more because these are but the outward symbols of the poison that lies within them; look through them and see all that has gone to their fashioning, and you will see how vain labour, and sorrow, and disgrace have been their companions from the first — and all this for trifles that no man really needs!”

Speech, London (10 March 1880).
Context: Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the smoke with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
So I say, if you cannot learn to love real art; at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. It is not because the wretched thing is so ugly and silly and useless that I ask you to cast it from you; it is much more because these are but the outward symbols of the poison that lies within them; look through them and see all that has gone to their fashioning, and you will see how vain labour, and sorrow, and disgrace have been their companions from the first — and all this for trifles that no man really needs!

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 9, “Pages in an Old Book” (p. 296).

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IV "Sand" Sec. 1
Context: In walls of masonry the first question must be with regard to the sand, in order that it may be fit to mix into mortar and have no dirt in it. The kinds of pitsand are these: black, gray, red, and carbuncular. Of these the best will be found to be that which crackles when rubbed in the hand, while that which has much dirt in it will not be sharp enough. Again: throw some sand upon a white garment and then shake it out; if the garment is not soiled and no dirt adheres to it, the sand is suitable.

Quoted by Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus in The Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, ch. 1, Pg. 3 (1880)

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Source: Individuals (1959), p. xiv.

Madness in the Family (1988)

Quote in Gainsborough's letter, 14 Sept. 1767, to his friend William Jackson of Exeter; as cited in The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall, 1961
1755 - 1769

Medium Raw (2010)
Source: Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook