“The work of art that says something confronts us itself. That is, it expresses something in such a way that what is said is like a discovery, a disclosure of something previously concealed.”

— Hans-Georg Gadamer

Source: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics (1964), p. 101 http://books.google.com/books?id=7RP-TggufEEC&pg=PA101 (quotation is from Goethe) <br class="br">Context: The work of art that says something confronts us itself. That is, it expresses something in such a way that what is said is like a discovery, a disclosure of something previously concealed. The element of surprise is based on this. "So true, so filled with being" [So wahr, so seiend] is not something one knows any other way. Everything familiar is eclipsed. To understand what the work of art says to us is therefore a self-encounter.

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Hans-Georg Gadamer16

German philosopher 1900–2002

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Source: Color, Format and Abstract Art' (1977), pp. 99 – 105

“The dominant tradition in the sociology of art… defines art as something more special, in which creativity comes to the surface and the essential character if the society expresses itself, especially in the great work of the genius.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p.xi.

“Every work of art must retain something from the first days of creation, something of the smell of earth, or one could even say: something animate.”

Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881–1919) German sculptor

As quoted in The Art of Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1972) by Reinhold Heller

“What are you?" I whispered.
He shrugged again.
"Something," he said. "Something like you, something like a beast, something like a bird, something like an angel." He laughed. "Something like that.”

David Almond book Skellig

Source: Skellig

“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

“Express thyself! Say something loudly! Aaaaaaah!
What's in that room, Sonny?”

Nick Cave book King Ink

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), King Ink

“As you [Tono] has written, people say that my works are 'neutral'. But if you paint something, it is 'something', and it cannot be neutral. Being neutral is a mere expression of a form of intention.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Quote from: Jasper Johns in Tokyo, Yoshiaki Tono, Tokyo August 1964, as cited in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 101
1960s

“A good work of art reveals something that is in reality. A new metaphor, a new myth, a new type of character, all these reveal a feature of reality for which we previously had no name.”

Michael Roberts (writer) (1902–1948) English schoolteacher and man of letters

Hulme and Modrern Poetry' in ' T E Hulme ',Carcanet Press,Manchester, 1982

“What happens when a new work of art is created, is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it.”

T.S. Eliot book Tradition and the Individual Talent

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Context: What happens when a new work of art is created, is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.

“Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork.... they will receive my new work as they always have when something new presents itself: with indignation and screams of scorn.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1910s
Source: 'Merz Painting' (1919); as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 91.

“The work of art that says something confronts us itself. That is, it expresses something in such a way that what is said is like a discovery, a disclosure of something previously concealed.”

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Hans-Georg Gadamer16

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