“No art can be judged by purely aesthetic standards, although a painting or a piece of music may appear to give a purely aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic enjoyment is an intensification of the vital response, and this response forms the basis of all value judgements. The existentialist contends that all values are connected with the problems of human existence, the stature of man, the purpose of life. These values are inherent in all works of art, in addition to their aesthetic values, and are closely connected with them.”

The Chicago Review (Volume 13, no. 2, 1959, p. 152-181)

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Colin Wilson192

author 1931–2013

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“I never view aesthetic ideas as having an existence purely of their own but as a function they have in connection with political or moral values.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Source: undated quotes, Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003,' (2004), p. 24.

“Purity" of and in art — any art, including music and dance — is an illusory notion, of course. It may be remotely conceivable or imaginable, but it can't be realized because it can't be recognized any more than a "pure" human being or a "pure" (or, for that matter, gratuitous) act can be. All the same, for Western art in its Modernist phase "purity" has been a useful idea and ideal, with a kind of logic to it that has worked, and still works, to generate aesthetic value and maintain aesthetic standards as nothing else in our specializing culture has over the last hundred-odd years.But this logic has also worked to exclude the decorative — the decorative insofar as it functions solely as decoration. It's as though aesthetic value, quality, could be preserved only by concentrating on "absolute" or "autonomous" art: thus on visual art — including even architecture — that held and moved and stirred the beholder as sheer decoration could not. Decoration is asked to be "merely" pleasing, "merely" embellishing, and the "functional" logic of Modernism leaves no room, apparently, for such "mereness.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

This is part of the pity of Modernism, one of the sacrifices it enjoins.... <br class="br"> "Detached Observations" http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/detached.html, Arts Magazine (December 1976) <br class="br">1970s

“Art is an expression and stimulus to the imaginative life rather than a copy of actual life. Art appreciates emotion in and for itself. The artist, is the most constantly observant of his surroundings and the least affected by their intrinsic aesthetic value. As he contemplates a particular field of vision the aesthetically chaotic and accidental conjunction of forms and colours begin to crystallize into a harmony.”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

An essay on aesthetics (1909) from Vision and design by Roger fry, Forgotten Books , 2012
Art Quotes

“Why do I paint? In my work as a mathematician, form, structure, and economy of expression are important. In music, add tone quality, balance and harmony. And now in painting, these aesthetic values are enhanced by color, contrast, and composition.”

Robin Hartshorne (1938) American mathematician

Robin Hartshorne Fine Art, fineartstudioonlione.com http://robinfaso.fineartstudioonline.com/about

“The aesthetic value of these objects cannot be arrived at by reasoning. Familiarization is necessary.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

En.wikiquote.org - Alexander Calder / Quotes / 1930s / Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)
1930s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)

“Imitation of the art of earlier centuries, as that done by Picasso and Modigliani, is carried on not to perpetuate ancient values but to demonstrate that new aesthetic orders now prevail.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 138, "Criticism and Its Premises"

“Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976)

“Human philosophy tends to shake down into values which might be categorizes as intellectual, religious, moral, and aesthetic.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 41 (p. 419)

“I strive to make my art bear the same relation to painting that polyphony bears to music. Illustrative music is a thing of the past: it has become abstract and purely aesthetic, dependent for its effect upon rhythm and form.”

Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890–1973) American artist

Quoted in Bryant American Pictures And Their Painters (1917), p. 302

“A sort of egotistical self-evaluation is unavoidable in those joys in which erudition and art mingle and in which aesthetic pleasure may become more acute, but not remain as pure.”

Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French novelist, critic, and essayist

Preface (1910) to The Bible of Amiens by John Ruskin, translated by Proust (1904); from Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin, trans. Jean Autret and Philip J. Wolfe (Yale University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-300-04503-4, p. 53

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