“An epoch can only be reproduced by its own artists, I mean by the artists who lived in it. I hold the artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century-in other words, of painting the past or the future.”

— Gustave Courbet

1860s, Realist Manifesto' - an open letter, 1861

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Gustave Courbet 30

French painter 1819–1877

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“[An artist must apply] his personal faculties to the ideas and the events of the times in which he lives... [A]rt in painting should consist only of the representation of things which that are visible and tangible to the artist. Every age should be represented only by its own artists, that is to say, by the artist who have lived in it. I also maintain that painting is an essentially concrete art form and can exist only of the representation of both real and existing things... An abstract object, not visible, nonexistent, is not within the domain of painting.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote in an open letter ('Credo'), (Paris, end of December 1861), published in the 'Courier du Dimanche', (addressed to prospective students); as quoted in Letters of Gustave Courbet, transl. & ed. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, University of Chicago Press 1992, pp. 203-204
1860s

“It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat — as is the case with the better artists.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Kierkegaard Journals and Papers 1A, 86 September 29, 1835
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat — as is the case with the better artists. But it does not seem right that they stop with the historical themes already given and, so to speak, think that only these are suitable for poetic treatment, because these particular themes, which intrinsically are no more poetic than others, are now again animated and inspirited by a great poetic nature. In this case the artists advance by marching on the spot. — Why are modern heroes and the like not just as poetic? Is it because there is so much emphasis on clothing the content in order that the formal aspect can be all the more finished?

“To regiment artists, to make them servants of some particular cause does violence to the very springs of artistic creation. But it does more than that. It betrays the very cause of a better future it would serve, for in its subjugation of the individuality of the artist it annihilates the source of that which is genuinely new. Where the regimentation is successful, it would cause the future to be but a rearrangement of the past.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

“When I hear people speak of the evolution of an artist, it seems to me that they are considering him standing between two mirrors that face each other and reproduce his image an infinite number of times, and that they contemplate the successive images of one mirror as his past, and the images of the other mirror as his future, while his real image is taken as his present. They do not consider that they all are the same images in different planes…”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
Quotes, 1920's

“If you could not accept the past and its burden, there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other, and […] if you could accept the past you might hope for the future, for only out of the past can you make the future.”

Robert Penn Warren book All the King's Men

Source: All the King's Men (1946)

“I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States (1980), Ch. 1

“Entrepreneurs are artists and I mean “artists” in the true sense of the word: they see something no one else does.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Steve Blank in interview with Jake Cook, "Steve Blank: Lessons From 35 Years of Making Startups Fail Less" http://99u.com/articles/7256/steve-blank-lessons-from-35-years-of-making-startups-fail-less, U99 website, 2013.

“He was one of those scientist-artists who comes along every few centuries to justify the existence of that overworked word “genius.””

Roger Zelazny book Today We Choose Faces

Part 2, Chapter 6 (p. 108)
Today We Choose Faces (1973)

“I thank heaven that I was born in the same century as this remarkable artist”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

= Daubigny
a remark c. 1865; as quoted in Corot, Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède - Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), National Gallery of Canada, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), 1996, p. 272 – quote 65
1860s

“I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.”

Gregory Maguire book Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

“An epoch can only be reproduced by its own artists, I mean by the artists who lived in it. I hold the artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century-in other words, of painting the past or the future.”

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Gustave Courbet 30

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